Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) said Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) hold on power in the House will be imperiled if he does not grant the demands of hard-right Republicans in the chamber ahead of a potential government shutdown.
Totally agree, and yet once Trump is finally dead and gone, roughly 1/2 of the voters in this country will shockingly be willing to give the next leader of the GOP another shot at driving us into the ground. Even many of those who admit to hating Trump, somehow are willing to clean the slate with some other future Republican candidate.
That's one of the most infuriating things that I have seen over the years.
It doesn't matter how badly one Republican politician screws up. It doesn't matter how many times it happens or how many others are involved and helped along the way, the party as a whole never gets tainted by their corruption and incompetence. This is the single biggest failure of the Democratic party that they can't taint the corruption of Trump onto ALL other Republicans. They couldn't do that with George W a generation ago. They couldn't do that with Reagan some 40 years ago, and they couldn't do that with Nixon some 60 years ago.
On the flip side, if Pelosi did one stupid gaffe, every Democrat since the beginning of time would be painted with the same wide brush. Most elected Dems are fairly moderate, and yet you have one left-wing Democrat saying some rather extreme stuff and somehow the entire DNC is labeled as being socialist or communist or some other extreme position that is simply not true. A long time ago, Republicans poisoned the well that is the term "liberal" so these days all a Republican needs to do is say that one word and his Democratic opponent will lose votes no matter how moderate that person might be.
It's not against the GOPs rules, quite a bit of bi-partisan legislation has passed since Biden took office, but it is against the "Freedom Caucus" rules.
In July 2023, Jackson was briefly detained by law enforcement in White Deer, Texas during a rodeo. Video of the incident showed that Jackson was attempting to assist a teenager suffering from a seizure. After being asked by a trooper to step back to allow paramedics to take over, Jackson shouted profanities at him. Jackson lunged at the trooper and was physically held back by bystanders. After Jackson pushed past officers who positioned themselves between him and the trooper, he was taken down and handcuffed. Jackson was soon uncuffed and said that he would call the governor. Jackson later spoke to Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry, with Terry reporting that Jackson demanded consequences for the deputies who handcuffed him and threatened to go after Terry politically.
This is a bunch of hot air at best I think. They floated the idea of removing him after the deal he made earlier this year around the debt ceiling. And keep floating it every time they get upset he isnt following the most insane part of the party. The thing is, if they had the votes for a different speaker they would have removed McCarthy already. They dont, they probably dont have enough votes to even remove him, i believe you need a majority to actually remove him. So this just seems like more talk with no ability to do anything.
I agree. McCarthy knows that his own election to the post was such a shitshow that the GOP does not want to go through that drama publicly again. Going through with their threat is lose/lose and McCarthy knows it.
These people. Seriously. They agreed to the deal months ago, only to go back on the deal a month before the deal is to go into effect. It's almost as if working with Republicans on anything is useless... Biden didn't have to agree with them on anything. He could have instructed the treasurery department to ignore congress and continue to pay bills. But no, fool me 40 times shame on you I guess.
The thing is, the threat doesn't actually work against moderate actions. If the Democrats get a deal done, they can promise to vote to keep McCarthy as part of the deal.
With all Democrats and McCarthy they would only need his 5 most loyal allies to vote to keep him, and obviously in reality at least 100 House members agree with McCarthy more than the Freedom Caucus fringe.
Remember last January? If there's no Speaker, the only thing the House can do is vote for a Speaker. If the vote fails to gain a majority, they do it again.
Business in the House of Reps cannot take place without a speaker. Their one and only function would be to hold votes until they get a new speaker. Whether that takes hours or months doesn't matter. The only thing they can do is hold votes until a speaker is elected.