Get Ready For House GOP “Resistance By Stealth”

The Squeaky wheel gets the oil   Who wants to get doused with oil? You ever try to get that shit out of your hair and clothes?

You know, when the United States was island hopping from Hawaii to Japan in WWII, it wasn’t the mobs of desperate Japanese soldiers charging US lines with bayonets fixed on useless empty rifles. It wasn’t even the sandbag nests with machine guns atop hills and plateaus. The standard rule is that if you can see it, you can fight it. The worst were the Japanese soldiers in camouflage nested in trees, waiting until US troops walked by below before opening fire to their backs, or popping out of cave entrances and specially built trap door tunnels. One guy with an automatic weapon can mow down half a line before somebody caps him.

If you watched any appreciable portion of the four day McCarthy debacle in trying to become the US House’s first Pinocchio Speaker, you saw the first half of my previous example in all of its stupid and useless glory. For four long neverending days McCarthy and his whips ran back and forth between the MAGA and Freedom Caucus kamikaze waves trying to put out each and every fire. But you know what you almost never saw? McCarthy or one of his minions running over to any of the moderate GOP swing district members. Why? Because they weren’t asking for anything. In McCarthy’s calculating mode, they were the bird in the hand, the spring lambs following the Judas Ewe.

But you’re about to see them tomorrow, and that’s the second part of my previous example. Some time, probably late tomorrow morning, McCarthy is going to bring the vaunted rules package to the floor. This golden nugget contains all of the cowardly concessions McCarthy made to the Freedom caucus, basically giving Laborious MTG his cojones to put in a glass on her bedside table. And from what I can see, there’s no way that the moderates sign off on a rules package that turns the US House into the Roman Coliseum for the next two years, complete with gladiators and clowns.

Which begs the question, Why didn’t they scream and jump around like a bunch of howler monkeys like the MAGA Morons and Teabaggers did? And that can be answered in two parts. First, because they’re serious legislators, not circus clowns. Their constituents sent them there to get shit done, not to take part in 3 stooges pie fights. And second, if they had parroted the MAGA Morons and Teahadists, we’d now be entering somewhere around round 21 of voting for a Speaker. Outnumbered, they were not going to get what they wanted.

Better to keep their heads down, and their powder dry. And tomorrow, when Kreepy Kevin cals for the vote, they aren’t going to screech and pound their chests, they’ll simply vote NO. And then tell their constituents why. And you can bet your ass then that they’ll be seeing all they want of McCarthy and more, because it only takes 5 of them to vote no to sink his little blue boat. Which will launch an encore presentation of what I called recently the AVI Awards winner for the best extended BDSM self flagellation scene. And the only ones not dressed in Latex will be the moderate GOP caucus members. They don’t have to do a thing but keep voting NO.

And if/when that happens, it isn’t just going to be a rude awakening for McCarthy. It’s also going to be a 5-alarm-fire-wake-up-call to the MAGA Morons and the Teabaggers. because ever since the Housse was officially called for the GOP, mental midgets like Sugar Daddy Matt Gaetz, Laborious MTG, Gym Bag Jordan and Andy Biggs have bragged about how they’re going to squeeze McCarthy dry before they give him a Speaker’s gavel in the shape of a rattle. And They did it with such gusto that McCarthy now no longer has any moisture content in his body.

But you know what? When it comes to this, the MAGAt’s and Freedom Loonies have no more power than McCarthy does. And that’s because they hold no power over these people. You can’t threaten them, because these people answer to a higher power, their constituents. And worse yet, they’re not a cohesive bloc, they all have their own agendas, and McCarthy and the Teabaggers will have to pick them off one at a time.

And there’s no reason for them to stop, or horse trade away any of their own strength. Because they have 2 different secret weapons. First, their individuality. McCarthy is going to have to deal with them, even if it means pissing off the MAGAt’s and Freedom caucus. And the second secret weapon is the Democrats. Nothing moves without the moderates. And if the moderates want a piece of legislation to move, either House based and dying in committee, or Senate produced and not being called, bring on the Democrats. Any Democrat can create and propose a discharge petition. And if just 5 GOP moderates sign on, then it goes to the floor for a vote, regardless of what Gaetz and McCarthy want.

Normally it totally sucks to be the minority party, because by most of the rules you have almost no power. Not in 2023, and not for Jeffries and the Democrats. They have two options. First, as I’ve explained they have the GOP moderates and the discharge petition. But they also have a second pressure point, and that’s Kreepy Kevin McCarthy himself. Whatever his personal and political faults, McCarthy is not a political nihilist. If the MAGAT’s and Tea Party provide a united front to stop him from raising the debt limit or shutting down the government, McCarthy can always go hat-in-hand to Jeffries to get it passed. This will, of course lead to an immediate Call to vacate the Chair by Gaetz, but the Democrats have the muscle to keep McCarthy in place. Irony Alert?

This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But it is what it is, and you might as well get used to it, because I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a repeat of the Speakers debacle on at least a monthly, if not bi-weekly basis. Simply because when it comes to the GOP, There are too many cooks in the kitchen. And there aren’t enough of them to get anything done. Don’t touch that dial.