You know, at this point I can only wonder how much longer it will take for those 30 brainless toads that make up the Freedom Caucus to realize that the gig is up. The adults in the room just don’t find those spit bubbles and finger pull farts all that amusing anymore. They want to go back to having an adult conversation.
It was announced earlier today on MSNBC that the four adults in the room, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had reached am agreement to extend the current budget agreement into early and mid February to give the two sides more time. The agreement makes it clear that is going to be a clean continuing resolution, with no kiddie game bullsh*t.
The critical thing to take note of here is why they’re passing a clean continuing resolution and extending the budget for those extra few weeks in the legislative equivalent of a payday advance loan. They’re doing it in order to create sufficient time for crafting the wording of the legislation on a new budget. And with that simple statement, the Freedom caucus is totally boned. Sideways.
Here’s how we got here. We got here because former Squeaker Cave0In McCarthy committed two cardinal sins. First he cut a deal with the Democrats and the White House that took the debt ceiling issue off of the table until after the November election. This cut deep since the Rockettes of the legislature wanted to do a Thelma and Louise on the debt if they didn’t get deep social spending cuts.
Second, while he was at torpedoing his tenure as Squeaker anyway, McCarthy cut a deal for the framework for a new budget agreement. And the top line spending number that all sides agreed on was $1.59 trillion. This was political heresy for the Freedom caucus, and McCarthy had to go, and in the most embarrassing way possible.
And if that $1.59 trillion spending limit number sounds familiar to you, it should. It’s the exact same number that current House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson just agreed to as the framework for a new budget last week. Once McCarthy was ousted, the Freedom caucus swore a pinkie-oath that they would negotiate significant cuts to that number in any budget negotiations.
And you know what? Nobody cares! The last few months, the Freedom caucus has gotten their collective asses kicked more than that 98 lb. weakling on Muscle beach. And they’re not taking to it kindly. After the agreement was announced, the feckless wonder of the Freedom caucus, Machine Gun Marjie darkly proclaimed that Speaker Johnson just put one foot in the grave of vacating the Chair. As Mel Brooks said in the Roman Senate in History of the World Part I, Ah, bullsh*t, bullsh*t bullsh*t. Bullsh*t, bullsh*t, bullsh*t.
Johnson is Matt Gaet’z’s worst nightmare because he’s a Speaker who doesn’t give a sh*t. He didn’t ask for this job, but now that he has it, he’s going to do it. And if he made this move publicly, now, he already knows that he has at least 50% of his moderate caucus ready to vote for whatever budget comes out of the Ways and Means committee, thereby ensuring that Jefferies will deliver the Democratic caucus. We’ll have a new budget agreement, and the Freedom caucus will finally start to feel like the useless outsiders that they are.
The Freedom caucus was always doomed to be useless failures with a six seat majority, simply because there were too many moderate members who wanted to show their constituents they were working for them. And now they’ve settled for a Speaker who doesn’t give a sh*t what they think. Let’s just update the old 3 Dog Night classic, shall we? 30 is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
I’ve read elsewhere that the Democrats (not sure if that meant individual members talking as individuals or if it meant this was the Caucus’s policy/plan) are willing to vote to keep Johnson *if* the motion to vacate is put forward. What *I* would do, especially if I were Hakeem Jeffries, is instruct all Democrats to wait to see how the vote is proceeding with just the GOP (or, at the very least, get a sense of whether at least half the GOP is going to support Johnson) before committing the Democrats to play the role of “savior.” Make sure at least 2/3 of the GOPers are willing to stick with Johnson before a single Democrat is put in the position of saving the GOP from themselves. (But, I’d also get ready to use the vote as part of the Democrats’ general election attack ads against the GOP. Especially in districts currently held by a GOPer who voted to dump Johnson.)
How do you do that during the vote when they vote by roll call alphabetically?
Nancy Pelosi could explain this to you. An effective speaker knows the outcome of a vote before it is even brought up. Jefferies would make a very capable speaker and he knows how to play this. The rank and file Dems are going to follow his lead.
I don’t know for sure, but I believe you can abstain in a way that they have to come back around to you after they’ve finished the roll. Not sure what its called (obviously not “abstain”) but I believe there IS such a thing in American congressional voting.
Where Jeffries goes, the House Dems follow. Johnson will have the numbers if they see enough GOP votes. “If” means the GOP has to play by the Democrat “minority”, not the Freedumb Caucus minority. But doing this now every two months is beyond absurd. 50 more weeks and bye bye House MAGA. You won’t be missed.
They need to use that leverage to get funding for Ukraine before these Magats piss around and tee up Poland for Putin.
When you label Johnson, a ‘bat shit crazy’, delusional, religious hypocrite, as an ‘adult’…our definition of ‘adult’ varies greatly. I get you are using it narrowly pertaining to the budget, however, I trust him as much as I would sleeping with a rattlesnake in my sleeping bag. It’s a sad sad statement on our culture and our voting public.
He’s part of the insurrection party that didn’t vote for Biden