Chaos in Congress

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think this is an appropriate title for what is going on right now, and what is likely to happen in the next two years. I might move the posts about George Santos into this thread at some point, or maybe we can continue the discussion about him here, depending on how things go.

But meanwhile, the big story is that as expected, Kevin McCarthy has failed to get sufficient votes to win the speakership on the first vote. The path forward is uncertain. It is the first time in a hundred years that the House has failed to elect a Speaker on the first vote.

Kevin McCarthy loses first ballot for House speaker, with 19 hardline Republicans voting against him to show the would-be leader who's boss

Meanwhile, as for Santos:

Embattled Rep.-elect George Santos sits alone as others socialize on House floor

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hakeem Jeffries actually got more votes that McCarthy did in the first ballot, 212-203. Andy Biggs got 10 and others got a total of 9. One of the others, Jim Jordan, nominated McCarthy for the second vote and encouraged the GOP caucus to unify around McCarthy, but it is unclear how much more support he currently has.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

NOW: McCarthy appears to suffer defeat in historic second ballot for House speaker

[N.E. Brigand]

Hakeem Jeffries actually got more votes that McCarthy did in the first ballot, 212-203. Andy Biggs got 10 and others got a total of 9. One of the others, Jim Jordan, nominated McCarthy for the second vote and encouraged the GOP caucus to unify around McCarthy, but it is unclear how much more support he currently has.

As I type this, despite Jim Jordan having voted for Kevin McCarthy in the first round and having nominated McCarthy for the second round, the second-round ballot is McCarthy 159, Jeffries 156, Jordan 17, with no votes for anyone else and about 100 votes still to go.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's crazy, isn't it? Why are the insurgents voting for Jordan rather than Biggs? Apparently, no one nominated Biggs on the second round. What happens next?

It is now 202 for Jeffreys, 188 for McCarthy, and 19 for Jordan, so apparently all the 19 who voted for either Biggs or others have now voted for Jordan. Crazy!

[Frelga]

Just going to leave this here.

Screenshot_20230103-123406.jpg (66.44 KiB) Viewed 8788 times

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Second ballot final vote: 212 - 203 - 19.

Conservatives will vote for Rep. Jim Jordan on the third ballot too, according to GOP Rep. Bob Good.

Good told CNN that he expects Jordan’s support to grow.

He said the fact that Jordan doesn’t want the gavel is “exactly” why they want him.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... 1a691013ab

[N.E. Brigand]

This chaos means that right now the number two person in line to succeed the President is a woman, as was the case until Nancy Pelosi's tenure as Speaker of the House ended earlier today, because at about the same time, Senator Patty Murray of Washington was sworn in as the President pro tempore of the Senate (succeeding Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who retired today). Murray is the first woman to hold that title.

I didn't check the timing, but I think it's likely that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was briefly second in line, between the time that Pelosi's speakership ended and Murray's pro tempore presidency began. Once the House chooses a Speaker, Murray will be third in the line of succession, as Leahy was.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The final vote in the second round was 212 - 202 - 20, so McCarthy actually lost a vote from the first round to the second round. That does not bode well for his chances moving forward. But there still is not viable alternative.

[N.E. Brigand]

Second ballot final vote: 212 - 203 - 19.

Conservatives will vote for Rep. Jim Jordan on the third ballot too, according to GOP Rep. Bob Good.

Good told CNN that he expects Jordan’s support to grow.

He said the fact that Jordan doesn’t want the gavel is “exactly” why they want him.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... 1a691013ab

I seem to remember Tolkien discussing the principle of "nolo espiscopari" in a letter.

(OMG, while I was typing this Jordan got *20* votes in the third round -- as I belatedly have noticed V also reported.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Was that the second round or the third round? I don't think voting for the third round has happened yet, though I may be wrong.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I seem to remember Tolkien discussing the principle of "nolo espiscopari" in a letter.

That would be Letter 52, to Christopher (the same letter in which he famously stated that his political opinions lean more and more towards anarchy. He wrote:

Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. And at least it is done only to a small group of men who know who their master is. The mediævals were only too right in taking nolo efiscopari1 as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers. And so on down the line. But, of course, the fatal weakness of all that – after all only the fatal weakness of all good natural things in a bad corrupt unnatural world – is that it works and has worked only when all the world is messing along in the same good old inefficient human way.

1 Latin, 'I do not wish to be made a bishop.'

Meanwhile, the House has now been adjourned after three votes with no resolution in sight. You were right, that was the third round vote. The one GOP member who abandoned McCarthy after the first two rounds was Rep. Byron Donalds, who said he changed his vote because Mccarthy had failed to seal the deal.

[Frelga]

Meanwhile, Democrats are posting photos with buckets of popcorn.

There was a rumor posted that some of them are "tired" and may not show up for vote, giving McCarthy the votes he needs. According to AOC, the source of the rumor was McCarthy himself who apparently asked if the Dems would do that.



The popcorn posts are threaded with the tweet above.

[N.E. Brigand]

At this time, because none of them have yet taken their oaths of office, there are no members of the House of Representatives.

(That means that George Santos is not yet a Congressman.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile in the Pennsylvania state house:

--November's election gave 102 seats to Democrats and 101 seats to Republicans.
--One of those Democrats had actually died shortly before the election.
--Two other Democrats subsequently resigned because they'd won other offices.
--Special elections in those three (Democratic-leaning) seats won't happen for months.
--That leaves Republicans with a 101-99 advantage for a while.
--The two parties had not been able to reach a power-sharing agreement.
--Today Republicans tried to move to adjourn the session until February 23 to give everyone time to work something out.
--A moderate Republican joined Democrats so that the motion to adjourn tied 100-100, meaning the members couldn't leave.
--The house moved on to the vote for speaker.
--Surprise! Another moderate Republican nominated a moderate Democrat to be speaker. That person was not on anyone's earlier list of possible candidates.
--After yet another Republican seconded that nomination, the leader of the state house Democrats endorsed him.
--Other Republicans nominated their preferred (and expected) candidate.
--The moderate Democrat, Mark Rozzi, defeated the Republican by a 115-85 vote. Rozzi was sworn in as speaker.
--And then he announced that he is becoming an Independent.

[N.E. Brigand]

Whoa. Here in Ohio, the man who had been the unanimous choice of statehouse Republicans for the speakership just six weeks ago, Rep. Derek Merrin, unexpectedly lost the speaker's election today to a slightly more moderate Republican, Jason Stephens, who got the vote of the chamber's 32 Democrats plus 22 of the 65 Republicans (apparently there are currently two vacancies in the Republican-dominated 99-seat house).

Unfortunately, there may be a darker reason for this turn of events. I've seen suggestions that some Republicans got nervous about Merrin after a 2017 photo surfaced last week indicating that he had closer ties than previously realized with former Ohio state representative Wesley Goodman, a Republican who resigned that year (after only a year in office) due to "inappropriate behavior," which turned out to mean having sex in his statehouse office. With a man. (It's also been alleged that Goodman sexually harassed statehouse pages.)

- - - - - - - -
Back to the U.S. House. Political columnist Matt Yglesias makes a dark point: "The most effective House GOP leader of our times was the one who was also a child molester. Not sure if Jim Jordan should make this part of his official message, but the fact is it’s true."

In fact, since there's no requirement that the Speaker be a member, and since Denny Hastert is still alive (he turned 81 yesterday), Republicans could reinstall him.

- - - - - - - - - -
Edited to add...

1. Fox News did very little reporting on this story today, so many Republicans who get their news from Fox may have no idea how dysfunctional their party seems right now. Scrolling through about 20 conservative Twitter accounts, I find that only about half of them mention today's news, and of those, most are passing references. That said, this evening on Fox, Tucker Carlson defended what happened today by saying what normally happens is "Soviet style conventions . . . where votes are merely a formality".

2. Rep. Matt Gaetz says that it's good the House "didn't organize" today because (for reasons I don't follow) that will mean less funding for Ukraine.

[Frelga]

I assume it's some obscure title and Matt Gaetz isn't really appealing to the person who designed the Capitol, but after today's performance, who knows.

The Speaker of the House Office in the Capitol is currently being occupied by Kevin McCarthy.

Kevin McCarthy is not the Speaker of the House. He lost 3 consecutive votes today.

I’m demanding answers from the Architect of the Capitol.

[Eldy]

"Architect of the Capitol" is the name of the agency (and the title of the head of said agency) in charge of maintaining the physical Capitol Building and the larger complex of which it is the centerpiece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_of_the_Capitol

I don't really like agreeing with Matt Gaetz on anything, and I get that this is political theatre, but he does kind of have a point about McCarthy getting ahead of himself (his use of the Speaker's office has also been reported by NBC News, so I'm rolling with the assumption that this isn't something Gaetz made up). But I'm biased in that I'm happy to see McCarthy's bad karma coming back to bite him in the form of humiliation by his own party.

[Dave_LF]

2. Rep. Matt Gaetz says that it's good the House "didn't organize" today because (for reasons I don't follow) that will mean less funding for Ukraine.

I took it to be him admitting out loud that MAGA's goal is to hamstring the US government to help their Russian bros win the war

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is perhaps the most bizarre image of the day. Apparently Gosar was trying to find out if the Democrats were going to bail out McCarthy and AOC told him that she was unaware of any plan to do so.