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An Appropriate Fiasco
The embarrassing squabble of the House GOP over the selection of Speaker is actually a pretty honest reflection of the state of the GOP in its two parts: (1) A conventional, ideologically pale establishment that believes that avoiding controversy and offering modestly different alternatives will allow the party to win elections in those intervals when the commies running the other party overreach and upset the voters and (2) an angry faction that shares an (accurate) intuition that much is wrong with the country but which faction really has no idea what to do about it. Neither side has anything resembling a long-term strategy.
Meanwhile, the woke rot has infected schools, government at all levels, media, and even corporate board rooms. Perverts and anti-Americans no longer even have to win elections to keep gaining destructive power. Elections are unlikely to be more than an occasional inconvenience. Monolithic media power combined with corrupt new election processes funded by mind-boggling wealth means that the bad guys will never be badly beaten in elections even with weak candidates. If Biden succeeds in burying Texas and Florida with a tsunami of illegals (i.e., voters-in-waiting) and perverts get another ten years of control of elementary and middle school education, the national identity and cultural memory could be largely erased.
Last fall, despite the manifest, unprecedented failures of the Biden regime, the GOP was out-hustled by the other party’s organizers, outthought by the manipulators of election processes, and proved to be pathetically incapable of overcoming a silly electoral message that was nothing more than Orange Man Bad–and the Orange Man was not even on the ballot.
The other side funds their perverts, NGOs, agencies, and grifters who staff its political operation. It legislates advantages for their side whenever possible and faithfully parrots the party line at all times, however stupid. Having momentum and purpose matters. Voters tend to prefer the side that seems to have its stuff together, even if its platform is distasteful. In 1932, 52% of German voters pulled the lever for either the Nazis or the Communists instead of any of the other 60 (!?) parties in the clown show that comprised the moderate alternative.
We need leadership that aids the requisite fight at every level and does so with skill, savvy and long game. Regardless of who is the next Speaker, the leader we need is not likely to emerge from the current GOP congressional leadership.
Published in General
I think that having a black Republican speaker of the house might wake up a few Americans in terms of stereotyping Republicans as racist. Plus, McCarthy is another version of Mitch McConnell, more or less, and who needs that?
It’s hard to disregard the 89 percent of Republicans who support Kevin McCarthy, regardless of whether McCarthy is actually the right man for the job.
That’s why there is such as thing as a conference vote where all 222 Republicans can select who they will unite behind.
The 89 percent of House Republicans who support McCarthy could simply let the other 11 percent of House Republicans dictate to them who they should support as Speaker. But they are more likely to think, “What makes those 19-20 Republicans so special? Sure, they have their opinions. But so do we.”
Looks like they got some notes on the script.
Well, I hope someone can establish a “sufficient counter-movement is established in our academia, culture, and government.” Maybe I’m just getting old and have heard the same arguments for forty years. But if someone could do that as easy as expressed it would have been done.
Which leads us back to the original question. How did the left accomplish this and why can’t the right?
The left’s message is more intuitively appealing to the psychology of human beings: Blame the rich and the big corporations rather than take personal responsibility.
The right’s message is correct: One must take responsibility for oneself and not blame others.
Human beings suffer from moral and intellectual limitations. It is the imperfections of human beings that make them vulnerable to the Left’s platitudes. Unfortunately, human nature isn’t changeable. So, the right will always be fighting an uphill battle.
This is correct, sort of. The conference vote isn’t a primary, the winner doesn’t become the GOP candidate for Speaker. It simply lets them know what their support is. Usually, if there is a challenge, as happened with Nancy Pelosi when she became Speaker in 2018 had to fend off challenges by promising that she would only hold the position for four years. Frankly, it is a sign of McCarthy’s unfitness for the office that he cannot convince his caucus to vote for him.
Or it could be a sign that those 19-20 Republicans who won’t vote for the Republican choice for Speaker are unfit for office.
Isn’t the point of having caucuses to give a united group of representatives leverage when pushing for a legislative agenda closer to their position? How else do conservatives make any progress in the GOP? If McCarthy won the first vote without issue, what would change in the status quo?
One way to make progress in the GOP Republican House caucus is to win a majority of the conference vote.
But when only 19-20 out of 222 Republicans support a position, it is reasonable for the other 201 House Republicans to simply laugh off the demands of the 19-20.
Not when the Republican margin over the Democrats is so small.
Reasonable or otherwise, they’re not laughing now. The 19-20 have the leverage to stop it. This is what real negotiation looks like. It’s been so long since we’ve seen it, that we’ve forgotten.
If the rest of the party understood how to negotiate like this, we would be far better off.
But if the 201 House Republicans begin to think that it would be easier to cut a deal with the 212 House Democrats, the 19-20 House Republicans will have egg on their faces.
DING DING DING
Negotiations always carry risks like that. It’s a game of chicken, where you weigh the probabilities and severities of the potential outcomes.
If the other Republicans do strike a deal with the Democrats, it would have to be of such a leftist bent that their reputations will be tarnished beyond repair. The 20 holdouts think the rest are bluffing, and are calling the bluff.
But among the 19-20 House Republicans who are holding out, how many of them are truly persuadable?
That’s the calculation that the other 201 House Republicans will have to make.
The whole (emergent) two-party system is predicated upon one of the two parties absorbing minority positions in order to maintain a majority. That is also the manifest purpose of “big-tent” organizing. Minority defections don’t have to go to the opposite party if they are large enough. It is enough to absquatulate the scene of neglect, reducing the power of the party in question.
Third parties do one of three things — either they die, or they linger as unviable minorities, or they grow and replace one of the two major parties. In any of those cases, the major party they came from gets banged up at a minimum. The GOP has been offered several opportunities to get right with us.
@drewinwisconsin posted an excerpt from a magnificent 2016 Glenn Reynolds article on another thread — I posted this excerpt from it as well, which is just a good a fit here:
There is a straight line connecting the Tea Party, Trump, and this “new” thing going on — it’s actually the old thing, and we remember.
Also correct. That’s the name of the game.
I’d much rather see this type of negotiation than the “negotiation” we’ve seen from senate GOP where we accept everything the Democrats want, and debate about little trifling details on the margin.
Not at all. We’ll know trhat the session was going to be a farce to begin with, and will have shown these defector McClellan Republicans to the whole country. You think they’re getting grief now? This is how parties cease to be. Why would anybody vote for Democrat-lite, when they can just vote Democrat? So much for the supposed middle.
If the 201 House Republicans determine that at least 5 of the 20 are not going to change their minds, they will open up negotiations with the Democrats in order to prevent the government from shutting down.
I don’t think the holdouts are unpersuadeable. I don’t believe the other Reps think so either. A sufficiently large deal in their favor would likely get them on board. All I can say with certainty is that something has to change with the way things are going in the GOP. Conservatives are tired of being told to just toe the party line, when the party line is indistinguishable from the Democrat party position of 5 years ago.
But if a large number of the 201 House Republicans disagree with the demands being made by the 20 Republicans, they might just tell the 20 Republicans to go jump in a lake, depending on the substance of those demands and how vehemently the 201 Republicans oppose those demands.
Gee, too bad those 201 were so opposed to incorporating the conservative view that they would rather see Democrats win.
The options are either they strike a deal with conservative Republicans or strike a deal with Democrats. Given the state of the Democrat party, a deal with them would be far worse for the moderate Republicans than a deal with conservatives.
Exactly! Which option is worse here?
Isn’t the point of the GOP to be a small-government, conservative party? What is the message of the GOP, if not that?
I’m glad you leave open the possibility that the 201 House Republicans might disagree but compromise.
So what. It’s no different from a bunch of Never-Trump not voting for the winner of the primary. Shoe is on the other foot now, and elites are squealing. Same old, same old.
At what point in this fiasco a career limiting move by these 20 hold outs? They’re not supported by the Trump wing of the party, they’re not supported by the economic, military, or social conservatives. They’re not supported by any wing of the party. They’re not even supported by the conservative commentators. They’re a wing in themselves with no leadership support. It seems to me if they don’t have huge support back home, they’re not going to last long.
Oh but they are supported by the “Trump wing”. More than Trump is these days.
Interesting video. She explains why the holdouts are not going along with McCarthy. It’s the backroom political machine being exposed to the light of day that establishment types most fear.