The Monkeys Flinging Poo Caucus hit their target last night, taking out Kevin McCarthy, who declared he will not run again for Speaker of the House. America got splattered in the crossfire of monkeys flinging poo and dogs catching cars. Now what? There is no real plan to move forward at this time while the clock ticks on the continuing resolution. House Republicans, who oppose Ukraine funding, are about to choke on it. Why? The moderate Republicans sucked it up and put up with a deal that put House Freedom Caucus conservatives on the Rules Committee and Appropriations Committee. They went along with a House Freedom Caucus measure to cut the government by eight percent.
We can slam Gaetz all we wish. It was wrong how he rolled this circus into his pocket and how the future is going to be such that now the whole country is going to have to take a bite of that big ol’ fecal sandwich which is coming. But guess what, the country and Gaetz did not suffer through fifteen elections to become Speaker of the House all the while piling on promises that were made just to satisfy the no-votes, McCarthy did. Promises that were not kept. Rather than play the victim, McCarthy needs to man-up and admit he took the Speakers gavel, then began enjoying the warmth of the position rather than do what HE promised to do. Had he kept his promises, we would be enjoying the latest presidential gaffe, not dealing with McCarthy’s pseudo knighthood process to become speaker and then being called out when he reneged.
The problem is that an entire major party wants free everything for its constituents, mandatory sex change for all conservatives and communist indoctrination of all children til age 30. If Republicans don't get it together they're going to get in the aas
"Chaos is not leadership. It is also not a strategy," is your statement and that's just horsepoop. McCarthy has been a surprisingly effective Speaker but he stepped in it when he agreed to this "continuing resolution" to keep spending trillions (yes, trillions with a capital T) of our #$%@&ing money for no apparent reason. Congress increased the budget by a couple trillion because of "pandemic" needs but then never reduced the level of spending, proving just as they have with the border situation, that they are not serious. And people like you, who moan that "funding must be approved to keep the lights on" are voicing simply ridiculous fears. How about that $5 trillion that Treasure is likely to pull out of us taxpayers to "keep the lights on?" This kind of crazy spending has to stop and Gaetz has done us all a favour. Come the next vote, let's explain clearly what's at stake to the American public, then vote to "shut it down" until Congress gets serious.
On the plus side, seems the chaos is resulting in more favorable people stepping up. Those people taking the reins could have other downstream effects, but we shall see.
We can only hope those who did this (Especially the Dems) will wind up w/ someone they will really be sorry to be in that role.
Erick - I think you are way to emotionally fatalist about all of this. The political process just did its thing. Your side of the GOP lost the vote. The GOP is going through a transformation to break up the old losing ways. It will emerge as better and stronger. It will not become some radical bastard of the right, but it will definitely move in an America-first direction and that is good for the nation and good for the GOP.
The world-is-ending handwringing over McCarthy losing his speakership is just Dem media sensational twaddle. It is what the Democrat want... continued division of the party that opposes them.
If you can lose the cult of anti-Trump perspective for a bit and just run over the inventory of platform ideas that the likely replacement for McCarthy, Jim Jordan, will attempt to deliver... then all good REAL Republicans should be good with the changes.
The point is not that McCarthy should not go but that the timing is bad, if shutdown proceeds the optics on this one will be very hard to overcome and it will ALL be against Repub's. The real steal was the media and we gave them so much ammo. The GOP "transformation" won't start until enough new blood gets in H & S not likely for a while. Gaetz has "sound bites" but doesn't or can't understand that fact or that you do have to negotiate in reality not fantasy. The behavior, the siding w Dems, not having solid plan for forward, losing the little momentum we had, petty items like moving Pelosi now so childish and vindictive. Yes, should have moved her in beginning but now really. Hopefully Jim Jordan will win after basically being forced to apply by this stunt to save the party. Hopefully they ALL will actually support and work with him.
The handwringing over media treatment is a GOP death sentence. The media is hostile to the GOP no matter what the GOP does or who does it. The Dems control 2 of three branches, and have gone radical. So "compromise" ends up so far left that in reality it is the same as far left as measured only a few years back. Reagan got things done with two chambers in Dem hands, but that was a different time when Democrats were reasonable political animals.
The best we can hope for is blocking the Dems. McCarthy was not doing that.
I am having a really hard time being concerned. I am visiting my children in California and gas is over 6$ a gallon. My give a damn, I think, is busted. Meanwhile, I will read the daily scripture reading and go to Mass in a moment, all while drinking my 5$ cup of Joe. Speaking of Joe, have you seen or heard him? If I did not have faith and a religion, I would really be in trouble!
And Interim Speaker McHenry, while funny, how does taking Nancy Pelosi's office away and putting her new office across from the public restrooms help to address soaring inflation, entry of 10,000 illegals a day across the boarder and out of control crime in the cities?
Extremely well said, thank you Erick. So who now can be placed in the speakership who can truly do any better? How did this chess move do one thing to help us with soaring fuel prices, inflation and the border crisis? Taking out McCarthy as a means of purging self-serving politics from Congress is like taking down confederate flags to purge our society of racism.
Jeff Childers reminded us this morning that the new interim House Speaker, Patrick McHenry (NC) ordered Nancy Pelosi to physically vacate the Speaker's office. Why is this of interest? Because bold Speaker McCarthy never gave such an order in any of the time he was Speaker. Remind me again why I whould wring my hands over Mr. Kevin's ouster.
You shouldn’t wring your hands over a dead man walking. You should wring your hands over the timing and method of execution. Impulse control is the problem. Ousting him now creates more problems than it solves for the right.
McCarthy went against his word and cut a backdoor deal with the Democrats to maintain Ukraine funding. His reward? The Dems helped vote him out of them speakership. Lie down with dogs and you'll get up with fleas. I hope Mr. Kevin is pleased with the results.
All very true, but timing as they say is everything, this timing with GOVT shutdown with so many already hurting financially will be bad for Republicans. Yes, we get blamed anyway but folks have no reserves right now. Yes, they have always gotten back pay but that doesn't help current bills. We were getting some of what we needed but the Senate could still gut so bird in hand or bush? Well it is done now so unless voters can make them work together or all of them give a little to get 100% votes none will matter or care who is speaker. Ouster bad press, sending them home, bad press, not getting anything done, very bad press, voting with DEMS great press for alphabet media. We need the independent vote to win and this not a good look.
Gaetz is a disciple of Trump so all of these shenanigans will have been a huge success, and the next speaker will cut the most beautiful deal with conservatives all because Matt will simply say it is so. As you acknowledged yesterday, there are plenty of stupid people on our side (i would have used the word gullible, but am fine using your word). It will be interesting to see how conservative media portrays this though. Matt doesn't have the same magnitude of cult of personality as Trump, so they may not be willing to blow smoke about how successful this poop fest is though I do not have much faith.
Well….it’s time to stop the “ain’t it awful” discussion and look for the next best course of action. We can’t give up as we have “so much” to fight for!
Maybe we select a speaker who can pull this situation out of the ditch.
If, as Erick says, "the House moderates want to fund Ukraine", they are no longer moderates. They are extremist hacks, in league with the Democrats. They can all go to sheol, the sooner the better.
It really, really is time to burn the entire DC establishment down. The Founders, bless their hearts, crafted a Constitution that is based on a naive assumption: that the folks it governs will be moral and faithful people. I guess hanging out with the Puritans made the Founders overly optimistic.
Ukraine is a much more complicated issue than "they are no longer moderates. I don't agree we have handled it that well at all but there are valid reasons for funding/not funding on both sides including our future security. I am so tired of all one-point type arguments and stupid blanket statements even my own. Life & politics are complicated especially when we do not have full control of H & S. We HAVE to learn to work together like adults. Just tearing down w/o plans that will work gets us 2024 Dem Pres.
The "one point" argument we confront is that of the professional politicians who have turned much of government into a private club, where membership is for life, and succession is controlled by the "My Turn" principal. Advancements in the club are made by quiet offstage handshakes and cloakroom whispers. Play according to those rules, and one day it'll be "Your Turn" at the top of the ticket. Doubt me? Why else did Hillary rail so against Barack and Donald?
Paraphrasing Ray Stantz, many of us here in the electorate work in the private sector, and we expect results. The club's main interests over the past several decades have been the preservation of their own sinecures, influence networks, and financial well-being. The security of the electorate and, indeed, the nation itself, is secondary to that of the club members.
I've been politically aware for nearly 60 of my 76 years (I campaigned for JFK while in junior high school). I can remember exactly two Presidents who were not members of the "My Turn" society: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Those two men brought this nation's people greater economic progress and security than all the others combined, and it's because they aimed for the Oval Office out of a sense of duty to our nation first and foremost. Ansd in the process of serving, they pulled the curtain back, and showed the electorate many of the puppet strings that control what usually goes on in DC. Once seen, that bit of education cannot easily be unlearned, and that's a large gain for our nation's future.
Perhaps the Founders were naive in writing a Constitution that assumed an electorate of morality and faith. Perhaps, had they looked harder at humankind's history, they would have put some enforceable clauses and restrictions into our documents dealing with term limits, outside funding and the like. Perhaps if Thomas Jefferson had not taked it upon himself to ignore the warning of Revelation 22:19 and not worked so hard at removing Jesus from the Bible, he and his confreres would have remembered that all mankind is fallen, and cannot be assumed to be moral and of good faith.
We really need to Pick BETTER candidates and vote them out when fail on promises that should be able to go forward. They all promise the sky, say what we want to hear. I agree completely with your final paragraph. We do need to make it easier for the less wealthy to run. Get term limits. We have been choosing by Image/looks, how exciting they are. We don't look at what they have actually done in life, do they have integrity or how they handled things in the past. Emotion, like-ability not actual skills. Take Doug Collins, he thought it should be his turn to get Senate seat, if he had stayed put, we probably would have had at least on Republican Senator now and a conservative in House. We tell ourselves it will be different this time but actually do more real research buying a car. It is hard now with all the misinformation out there. We are the ones that allowed careers for life. Make new ones take a pledge for 1 or 2 terms that's it in house and hold them to it. I would also add a math, budgeting proficency test! Is it easy NO, but need to start somewhere we can't keep making same mistakes over & over. One reason why No to Trump this time aroound his errors in judgement at end destroyed most of the good he did do and now he is worse than before though not hard to see why with what he is going through but he is not a good choice for future. Will we vote emotions or common sense in 2024.
My apologies for the dealy in responding. You describe a set of problems that will be difficult to solve, as they are rooted in our terribly UNeducated electorate.
With the agendas driving most public school curricula today, and knowing that we are in the third generation of this deliberate sabotage of critical training for our youth, I don't see how this gets turned around, short of something cataclysmic - which sort of event might have no return path whatsoever. The candidate pool seems to be filled with folks who are either agenda-pushers themselves, or elitists. Neither has the knowledge, the skillset, nor the will to right our ship.
Neal Boortz (whose program used to precede Erick's on WSB) repeatedly said that history shows that the few governments formed as republics in history lasted less than 200 years. By that standard, we are already on borrowed time.
Amen what you say about Doug Collins - he repped my district and was an honest, willing man who was also very approachable.
Matt Gaetz reminds me of my 4 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
We can slam Gaetz all we wish. It was wrong how he rolled this circus into his pocket and how the future is going to be such that now the whole country is going to have to take a bite of that big ol’ fecal sandwich which is coming. But guess what, the country and Gaetz did not suffer through fifteen elections to become Speaker of the House all the while piling on promises that were made just to satisfy the no-votes, McCarthy did. Promises that were not kept. Rather than play the victim, McCarthy needs to man-up and admit he took the Speakers gavel, then began enjoying the warmth of the position rather than do what HE promised to do. Had he kept his promises, we would be enjoying the latest presidential gaffe, not dealing with McCarthy’s pseudo knighthood process to become speaker and then being called out when he reneged.
The problem is that an entire major party wants free everything for its constituents, mandatory sex change for all conservatives and communist indoctrination of all children til age 30. If Republicans don't get it together they're going to get in the aas
"Chaos is not leadership. It is also not a strategy," is your statement and that's just horsepoop. McCarthy has been a surprisingly effective Speaker but he stepped in it when he agreed to this "continuing resolution" to keep spending trillions (yes, trillions with a capital T) of our #$%@&ing money for no apparent reason. Congress increased the budget by a couple trillion because of "pandemic" needs but then never reduced the level of spending, proving just as they have with the border situation, that they are not serious. And people like you, who moan that "funding must be approved to keep the lights on" are voicing simply ridiculous fears. How about that $5 trillion that Treasure is likely to pull out of us taxpayers to "keep the lights on?" This kind of crazy spending has to stop and Gaetz has done us all a favour. Come the next vote, let's explain clearly what's at stake to the American public, then vote to "shut it down" until Congress gets serious.
On the plus side, seems the chaos is resulting in more favorable people stepping up. Those people taking the reins could have other downstream effects, but we shall see.
We can only hope those who did this (Especially the Dems) will wind up w/ someone they will really be sorry to be in that role.
Erick - I think you are way to emotionally fatalist about all of this. The political process just did its thing. Your side of the GOP lost the vote. The GOP is going through a transformation to break up the old losing ways. It will emerge as better and stronger. It will not become some radical bastard of the right, but it will definitely move in an America-first direction and that is good for the nation and good for the GOP.
The world-is-ending handwringing over McCarthy losing his speakership is just Dem media sensational twaddle. It is what the Democrat want... continued division of the party that opposes them.
If you can lose the cult of anti-Trump perspective for a bit and just run over the inventory of platform ideas that the likely replacement for McCarthy, Jim Jordan, will attempt to deliver... then all good REAL Republicans should be good with the changes.
The point is not that McCarthy should not go but that the timing is bad, if shutdown proceeds the optics on this one will be very hard to overcome and it will ALL be against Repub's. The real steal was the media and we gave them so much ammo. The GOP "transformation" won't start until enough new blood gets in H & S not likely for a while. Gaetz has "sound bites" but doesn't or can't understand that fact or that you do have to negotiate in reality not fantasy. The behavior, the siding w Dems, not having solid plan for forward, losing the little momentum we had, petty items like moving Pelosi now so childish and vindictive. Yes, should have moved her in beginning but now really. Hopefully Jim Jordan will win after basically being forced to apply by this stunt to save the party. Hopefully they ALL will actually support and work with him.
The handwringing over media treatment is a GOP death sentence. The media is hostile to the GOP no matter what the GOP does or who does it. The Dems control 2 of three branches, and have gone radical. So "compromise" ends up so far left that in reality it is the same as far left as measured only a few years back. Reagan got things done with two chambers in Dem hands, but that was a different time when Democrats were reasonable political animals.
The best we can hope for is blocking the Dems. McCarthy was not doing that.
I am having a really hard time being concerned. I am visiting my children in California and gas is over 6$ a gallon. My give a damn, I think, is busted. Meanwhile, I will read the daily scripture reading and go to Mass in a moment, all while drinking my 5$ cup of Joe. Speaking of Joe, have you seen or heard him? If I did not have faith and a religion, I would really be in trouble!
And Interim Speaker McHenry, while funny, how does taking Nancy Pelosi's office away and putting her new office across from the public restrooms help to address soaring inflation, entry of 10,000 illegals a day across the boarder and out of control crime in the cities?
Extremely well said, thank you Erick. So who now can be placed in the speakership who can truly do any better? How did this chess move do one thing to help us with soaring fuel prices, inflation and the border crisis? Taking out McCarthy as a means of purging self-serving politics from Congress is like taking down confederate flags to purge our society of racism.
On Election Day, just ponder on “am I better off now than four years ago?”.
https://twitter.com/JusTradez/status/1709232615746646494
Jeff Childers reminded us this morning that the new interim House Speaker, Patrick McHenry (NC) ordered Nancy Pelosi to physically vacate the Speaker's office. Why is this of interest? Because bold Speaker McCarthy never gave such an order in any of the time he was Speaker. Remind me again why I whould wring my hands over Mr. Kevin's ouster.
You shouldn’t wring your hands over a dead man walking. You should wring your hands over the timing and method of execution. Impulse control is the problem. Ousting him now creates more problems than it solves for the right.
Don’t disagree with that necessarily. But in my opinion it was going to happen. Better now than later.
If all things are faith in things happen for a reason then I believe this too is that. We must have patience and let the process play out.
McCarthy went against his word and cut a backdoor deal with the Democrats to maintain Ukraine funding. His reward? The Dems helped vote him out of them speakership. Lie down with dogs and you'll get up with fleas. I hope Mr. Kevin is pleased with the results.
The perspective on McCarthy & Company, from a writer who is an actual conservative:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-tells-republican-caucus-he-will-not-seek-speakership-again-heres-my-thoughts/
All very true, but timing as they say is everything, this timing with GOVT shutdown with so many already hurting financially will be bad for Republicans. Yes, we get blamed anyway but folks have no reserves right now. Yes, they have always gotten back pay but that doesn't help current bills. We were getting some of what we needed but the Senate could still gut so bird in hand or bush? Well it is done now so unless voters can make them work together or all of them give a little to get 100% votes none will matter or care who is speaker. Ouster bad press, sending them home, bad press, not getting anything done, very bad press, voting with DEMS great press for alphabet media. We need the independent vote to win and this not a good look.
Well, look at that. These RINO squishes all voted with Democrats! Isn't that supposed to have been the unforgivable sin in this mess?
Andy Biggs, AZ
Ken Buck, CO
Tim Burchett, TN
Eli Crane, AZ
Matt Gaetz, FL
Bob Good, VA
Nancy Mace, SC
Matt Rosendale, MT
Gaetz is a disciple of Trump so all of these shenanigans will have been a huge success, and the next speaker will cut the most beautiful deal with conservatives all because Matt will simply say it is so. As you acknowledged yesterday, there are plenty of stupid people on our side (i would have used the word gullible, but am fine using your word). It will be interesting to see how conservative media portrays this though. Matt doesn't have the same magnitude of cult of personality as Trump, so they may not be willing to blow smoke about how successful this poop fest is though I do not have much faith.
Well….it’s time to stop the “ain’t it awful” discussion and look for the next best course of action. We can’t give up as we have “so much” to fight for!
Maybe we select a speaker who can pull this situation out of the ditch.
Who should it be?
But please…..let’s get some ideas on the table.
If, as Erick says, "the House moderates want to fund Ukraine", they are no longer moderates. They are extremist hacks, in league with the Democrats. They can all go to sheol, the sooner the better.
It really, really is time to burn the entire DC establishment down. The Founders, bless their hearts, crafted a Constitution that is based on a naive assumption: that the folks it governs will be moral and faithful people. I guess hanging out with the Puritans made the Founders overly optimistic.
Ukraine is a much more complicated issue than "they are no longer moderates. I don't agree we have handled it that well at all but there are valid reasons for funding/not funding on both sides including our future security. I am so tired of all one-point type arguments and stupid blanket statements even my own. Life & politics are complicated especially when we do not have full control of H & S. We HAVE to learn to work together like adults. Just tearing down w/o plans that will work gets us 2024 Dem Pres.
The "one point" argument we confront is that of the professional politicians who have turned much of government into a private club, where membership is for life, and succession is controlled by the "My Turn" principal. Advancements in the club are made by quiet offstage handshakes and cloakroom whispers. Play according to those rules, and one day it'll be "Your Turn" at the top of the ticket. Doubt me? Why else did Hillary rail so against Barack and Donald?
Paraphrasing Ray Stantz, many of us here in the electorate work in the private sector, and we expect results. The club's main interests over the past several decades have been the preservation of their own sinecures, influence networks, and financial well-being. The security of the electorate and, indeed, the nation itself, is secondary to that of the club members.
I've been politically aware for nearly 60 of my 76 years (I campaigned for JFK while in junior high school). I can remember exactly two Presidents who were not members of the "My Turn" society: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Those two men brought this nation's people greater economic progress and security than all the others combined, and it's because they aimed for the Oval Office out of a sense of duty to our nation first and foremost. Ansd in the process of serving, they pulled the curtain back, and showed the electorate many of the puppet strings that control what usually goes on in DC. Once seen, that bit of education cannot easily be unlearned, and that's a large gain for our nation's future.
Perhaps the Founders were naive in writing a Constitution that assumed an electorate of morality and faith. Perhaps, had they looked harder at humankind's history, they would have put some enforceable clauses and restrictions into our documents dealing with term limits, outside funding and the like. Perhaps if Thomas Jefferson had not taked it upon himself to ignore the warning of Revelation 22:19 and not worked so hard at removing Jesus from the Bible, he and his confreres would have remembered that all mankind is fallen, and cannot be assumed to be moral and of good faith.
We really need to Pick BETTER candidates and vote them out when fail on promises that should be able to go forward. They all promise the sky, say what we want to hear. I agree completely with your final paragraph. We do need to make it easier for the less wealthy to run. Get term limits. We have been choosing by Image/looks, how exciting they are. We don't look at what they have actually done in life, do they have integrity or how they handled things in the past. Emotion, like-ability not actual skills. Take Doug Collins, he thought it should be his turn to get Senate seat, if he had stayed put, we probably would have had at least on Republican Senator now and a conservative in House. We tell ourselves it will be different this time but actually do more real research buying a car. It is hard now with all the misinformation out there. We are the ones that allowed careers for life. Make new ones take a pledge for 1 or 2 terms that's it in house and hold them to it. I would also add a math, budgeting proficency test! Is it easy NO, but need to start somewhere we can't keep making same mistakes over & over. One reason why No to Trump this time aroound his errors in judgement at end destroyed most of the good he did do and now he is worse than before though not hard to see why with what he is going through but he is not a good choice for future. Will we vote emotions or common sense in 2024.
My apologies for the dealy in responding. You describe a set of problems that will be difficult to solve, as they are rooted in our terribly UNeducated electorate.
With the agendas driving most public school curricula today, and knowing that we are in the third generation of this deliberate sabotage of critical training for our youth, I don't see how this gets turned around, short of something cataclysmic - which sort of event might have no return path whatsoever. The candidate pool seems to be filled with folks who are either agenda-pushers themselves, or elitists. Neither has the knowledge, the skillset, nor the will to right our ship.
Neal Boortz (whose program used to precede Erick's on WSB) repeatedly said that history shows that the few governments formed as republics in history lasted less than 200 years. By that standard, we are already on borrowed time.
Amen what you say about Doug Collins - he repped my district and was an honest, willing man who was also very approachable.