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Thursday, October 8, 2015

Boehner as Hostage in GOP House Civil War

It''s not clear what's next. McCarthy didn't make the cut yet he had much more support than anyone else who has been mentioned-Daniel Webster, Jason Chaffetz."

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said during a press conference on Fox News that McCarthy will continue to stay on as majority leader. He added that neither of the other two candidates -- Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) -- had close to McCarthy's support, so House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has opened the election up for more candidates."

"Kevin McCarthy will be the most important endorsement for whoever ultimately becomes the speaker," Issa said.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/gop-dysfunction-hits-new-nadi-as-kevin.html

Meanwhile Paul Ryan is not interested which shows that he's not stupid. 

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has abandoned his bid for House speaker Thursday afternoon, just minutes before the election was about to begin.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who resigned the post last month, announced in the meeting that elections were being postponed.

"The House Republican Conference, which has lurched from one legislative disaster to another, is now in a serious crisis. McCarthy was one of the only lawmakers in the chamber who was seen as able to garner the 218 requisite votes to become speaker."

"Now, Republicans will likely have to look for another candidate — and quickly. Boehner is planning to step down at the end of October."

"Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) repeated after the announcement that he won't run for speaker. "While I am grateful for the encouragement I’ve received, I will not be a candidate.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/mccarthy-withdraws-from-speaker-race-election-postponed-214560#ixzz3nzskJ68T

This is why talk of a Republican majority in this country in the near future is just such a joke. This party can't agree with itself. Even the House GOP can't agree with itself. 

Steve Schmidt the former campaign manager for McCain says that his party is now the part of hunting heretics not expanding the tent. 

But if Ryan won't do it, who will? Boehner famously said he needed the job like a hole in the head. It's because the GOP is opposed to all government and all leaders even in its own party. 

But now Boehner can't leave until they find the replacement. But this is the party that can never take yes for an answer. So when does Boehner get out? 

As Schmidt says whoever the next Speaker is will be weak indeed as he'll be subject to being brought down by a minority at any moment. 




6 comments:

  1. The GOP needs to split. It might make more sense than you think: the purity caucus could focus on ideological purity and fantasy induced emotionalism. The neoliberals could focus on maximizing profits for their donors. Both could form issue specific alliances with other parties.

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  2. Don't get me wrong. You don't need to convince me: preaching to the choir. I t believe it's going to split indeed, it is currently splitting.

    Just look at how they can't elect their own Speaker and how Trump and Carson are winning primary.

    Any actual leader is poison with GOP base

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    1. The sooner it splits the better. BTW, I probably should have written this above instead:

      "The neoliberals could focus on maximizing profits (and more importantly rents) for their donors."

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  3. The neo-liberal branch at least has a prayer of learning from feedback from reality. They try to keep aware enough about real threats to their control of resources. In contrast, the emotionalism/purity branch appear to be doxastically closed to belief revision (and thus any reality-based learning). I'm not sure precisely why. Perhaps because they believe that learning is a sign of weakness, unmanliness or homosexuality. Or perhaps they think learning is an existential threat to faith and Yahweh.

    It's the difference between a cynical self-interested soviet dictatorship, and Islamic fundamentalist fanatics. I for one would much rather negotiate and deal with the former rather than the latter, simply because we may be able to at least agree to a large extent on what reality is like with the former (at least behind closed doors). I hold out little hope of even that with the latter.

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  4. Here's an argument against a split though: the purity wing has more to lose than to gain. They'll be able to have greater purity amongst their members, but on the other hand they'll lose their ability to be paid attention to. The purity game is only fun if you have a prayer of anybody actually caring about it.

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  5. I don't know. That's the problem with the purists. They don't seem to ever really think logically about the cause and effect of their own interests.

    Take their sandbagging McCarthy: this means they will now be stuck with Boehner when their desire was to drum him out.

    Purists don't think logically otherwise they wouldn't be purists.

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