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- Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) professing his bona fides as a man of the swamp
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2023 is coming out swinging with the kind of Republicans-humiliating-themselves news items we usually have to wait on for months.
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The 118th Congress convened today and Republicans celebrated their razor-thin House majority by having a complete internal breakdown before they’d even been sworn in. Coming into the contentious race for speaker, we knew Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would have an uphill battle, but nothing could prepare us for how euphoric it would be to watch him flail through it. McCarthy began the day seemingly confident that he had the votes to win the gavel, and delivered a 90-minute closed-door speech to the House GOP Conference about why he believed he had earned the right to replace outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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But he wasn’t persuasive enough. McCarthy failed to win the speakership on the first ballot, when 19 House Republicans defecting to support Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) or Jim Jordan (R-OH). Then McCarthy lost the second ballot by the same numbers, despite Jordan urging his colleagues to support McCarthy right before the vote. Honestly? I couldn’t write a joke funnier than this. The last time a speakership election required multiple ballots, it was the Roaring 1920s, and the very public GOP chaos is casting a long shadow over the incoming House majority. Things looked decidedly different on the other side of the aisle, where Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) got the full support of the Democratic caucus with 212 votes (10 more than McCarthy, who like all speakers needs to clear the threshold of 218).
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McCarthy vowed to fight/continue suffering the humiliation of more votes, and his supporters similarly pledged to endure “as many votes as it takes,” but…yikes. McCathyites warned detractors that they might look to Dems to find a compromise speaker who could garner votes from their opposing caucus, but so far it doesn’t look like Dems are interested in playing ball. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) were even seen separately approaching Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), which she later said was to ask whether House Dems leaving the floor after their leadership was elected was a ploy to clear the way for McCarthy. Gosar, you may recall, was stripped of his committee seats in 2021 after he posted an animated video depicting him murdering AOC.
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And things just keep getting weirder.
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In an unprecedented sequence of events, the House adjourned(!) until noon Eastern Time tomorrow after McCarthy lost on the third ballot. By then, the group of 19 Republican defectors had grown to 20 and disgraced former president Donald Trump declined to stand by his endorsement of McCarthy for speaker. In a fit of frustration, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said that any of his colleagues who oppose McCarthy should be stripped of their committee assignments. Now we’re cookin’ with gas! Look, Republicans, we get it: It’s really hard to find a Republican qualified to lead the House when all of them are unhinged psychos. We don’t envy your predicament, but we are thoroughly enjoying the view.
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Where the House GOP goes from here is unclear, but one thing is certain: the party fumbling the ball so spectacularly during the midterms was not a fluke, it was emblematic of much larger problems brewing in the party. McCarthy has already debased himself by giving many concessions to the ultra right-wing mob in his caucus that now refuses to elect him speaker, including a rules change that would make it easier to depose him. But that still wasn’t enough for his blood-thirsty colleagues. Whether they figure this out or not, House Republicans have presented a microcosm of dysfunction and hostage taking that will define the coming two years, in both hilarious and dangerous ways.
Notwithstanding pesky things like a global superpower having a stable government, a Republican House Majority blown asunder by factionalism is a political gift to Democrats, and they should exploit it at every opportunity.
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Between Christmas Eve and January 2, one of the busiest travel periods of every calendar year, Southwest Airlines canceled about 16,000 flights in one of the biggest debacles in aviation history. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were impacted, and Southwest is still working through a massive backlog of misplaced luggage. The company’s CEO Bob Jordan has promised to reimburse passengers, but there is no telling how long that process will take. According to estimates from financial analysts, the disaster could cost Southwest between $600 and $700 million. A class action lawsuit was filed on Friday accusing Southwest of breach of contract. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has vowed to hold the airline accountable, but the widespread system failure may be a harbinger of similar catastrophes for other airlines, as reliance on archaic technology plagues the entire industry, which is controlled by corporate monopolies. Maybe someone should do something about that!
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As the largest economy in the European Union, Germany’s support for Ukraine to defend itself from Russian invasion has remained consistent with its neighbor nations since the conflict began, but a Reuters investigation uncovered a coordinated effort from pro-Putin operatives working to turn Berlin against Ukraine. This message—usually relayed by members of Germany’s far-right political factions—taps into deep connections between Germany and Russia as a legacy of Soviet ties to Communist East Germany, and, like the rest of Europe, decades of dependence on Russian gas. Key figures have been pushing a pro-Moscow stance since the war began, and some of the loudest agitators use aliases, and have undisclosed ties to Russia and Russian entities under international sanctions, or to far-right organizations. Some such proponents were accused in December by German officials of plotting to overthrow the state. Sounds like a fun group!
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