The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves (House Speaker Edition)

We've ended the third full day of the new Congressional Session and the House has yet to elect a Speaker. Kevin McCarthy has lost 11 votes in a row. To put into context, that means that this is the first time since before the Civil War that it has taken more than nine votes for the House of Representatives to elect a Speaker. Then again, the majority party is the GOP, the guy wanting the Speaker's gavel is Kevin McCarthy, and so it's no great loss at least for now.

My impression from catching coverage after my wife and I came home from our favorite diner was that McCarthy and his team will continue to hold votes for as long as it takes. Like Thanos, he claims to be "inevitable." And he may well be. He's made a ton of concessions to the 20 or so hold-outs, and so far that has not led to a breakthrough. So we go through another potential Groundhog Day scenario tomorrow, and perhaps the next day (and the next day, etc.). Any of us who have ever sought a leadership position have probably been rejected. Usually it doesn't take much to take the hint. Not McCarthy, though. No sirree. 

If he does get the necessary votes in the near future (and I still think that is a remote possibility, although I do give myself the right to be wrong), he's not starting from a strong position, and the moment he actually does have to work with the minority party to get muss-pass legislation over the finish line, I suspect he'll have to survive what amounts to a vote of no confidence each time. I'm sure that doesn't give his counterpart in the Senate (Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) much confidence that he can close the deal when major legislation must be passed. And yet here we are. 

We live in interesting times. Let's see what Friday brings us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:     I met a traveller from an antique land,     Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone     Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,     Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,     The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;     And on the pedestal, these words appear:     My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;     Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay     Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare     The lone and level sands stretch far away.” His poem was a stark warning. Follow these men (they are almost always men) to your ruin and grave, or perhaps a ditch or nearby river. For y
Read more

Could a Russian Revolution End the Ukraine War?

Image
A Russian revolution ending the Russo-Ukraine war? Oh, that would be so wonderful. As Zeihan explains in a short video, it's complicated. Any sort of palace coup is a non-starter, apparently. The people Putin has surrounded himself with generally view the world no differently from him, and they come from the same KGB/FSB background. So, don't expect the elites to necessarily change stripes and turn on Putin. A mass uprising that becomes a revolution? Zeihan doesn't see that as a prospect in the short term. I don't either. Yes, the sanctions are causing some discomfort, but not to the extent that a critical mass would very violently demand a change. Will the regime crumble? Eventually. In the meantime, Ukrainians must continue to fight for their existence, and anyone living in the nations that successfully declared their independence when the USSR crumbled at the start of the 1990s need to keep a watchful eye for what might be lurking on their borders. Regrettably, we li
Read more

Leap Day 2020 retrospective

It is difficult to believe that four years have passed since the last Leap Day. That particular day in 2020 was a strange day. By that point in late winter 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was well-underway. I probably was not the only one doom-scrolling the developments in China, the EU, and NYC by that point. Although I lived and still live in a somewhat more isolated portion of the US, we do sit at a crossroads when it comes to the Interstate and US highway systems, and we do have our own airport which at the time had flights to and from Atlanta (if you flew Delta) and Dallas (if you flew American Airlines). There was certainly some business tourism into my city at the time, even as the proverbial storm clouds drew near. I was still a couple weeks away from passing by a fraught meeting administrators would be holding, and was already getting a lot of advice from my parents (more directly from my mom) about what to stock up on.  Although there was already plenty of reason to want to avoid
Read more