Jim Jordan Co-Founded The Freedom Caucus. Matt Gaetz Is Co-Founding Burning It Down

It’s called a “movement” for a reason, it moves a certain distance then stops. A “revolution” has a way of always coming back around, in your face   Tommy Lee Jones   Under Siege

Another day, another GOP House exercise in futility, too stupid to even make the cutting room floor of an Animaniacs episode. Yesterday he made a winner out of Cave-In McCarthy by scoring one less vote than McCarthy did in his first round. Today he claimed the heavyweight title for receiving the fewest Speaker votes in a single ballot by the majority party in modern history. And oh yeah, he lost two more votes from yesterday.

There was supposed to be another round of voting at noon tomorrow, but the Speaker Pro Tem says that’s now on hold. Apparently Jordan has run out of rubber hoses for his negotiations, which aren’t going well. MSNBC’s Ali Vitale graphically showed what a political imbecile Jordan is. He keeps holding one vote, then breaking to lock people up and scream at them. McCarthy forced vote after vote, keeping the members locked in their seats, bored to death until he finally wore them down.

But there was some news today on the Speaker debacle. Conservative The Bulwark editor and MSNBC political analyst Charlie Sykes was on today. He said that based on his sources, as more moderate conservatives start to warm to the proposition of granting Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry temporary authority to perform floor functions and call bills to the floor for votes, Jordan and the rest of the Freedom caucus are running around with their hair on fire, trying to stamp it out. In fact Jordan himself was asked about the idea today, and said he would never support it.

Jim Jordan helped build the Freedom Caucus out of the ashes of the Tea Party, which fell apart when the members themselves couldn’t even agree on anything, including strategy. I have been writing about the Freedom caucus for several years now, and always mentally shaking my head at their mischief, for the simple reason that they kept defying the laws of political math gravity.

You tell me. In what caucus, either minority or majority is 20 = 200? But that’s what those 20 sh*theads have been doing for more than a decade, long before Trump arrived on the scene. In fact Traitor Tot was a natural evolution of the Freeter, extortion, and thug tactics.om caucus strategy of threats, bluster, extortion and constant daily procedural interruption.

In the minority, the Freedom caucus used tactics such as endless speeches, useless motions, and direct threats to moderates willing to work with Democrats with primary challenges to force Democrats to pass everything by themselves. And in the majority, they threatened to tank everything the GOP majority tried to pass by blockading it, unless their terrorist demands were met. They literally forces former House Speaker into an early, midterm retirement, and helped to keep then Speaker Paul Ryan from even running for his own seat again, much less trying to retain the Speaker’s gavel.

And in his reporting today, Sykes said something I’ve been saying more times than I can count. If the moderate Republicans actually work with Democrats to create a Speaker Pro Tem with temporary authority to pass legislation, then the Freedom caucus washed up forever from having any kind of hold on the GOP House caucus. Sing it Brother Charlie! Amen!

Because a bully is only a bully until the skinny kid with the glasses and pocket protector, and also karate lessons, punches him in the mouth and knocks him on his ass. And if in their frustration the GOP House moderates come to realize that 200 is actually 20, especially if you throw in a few Democrats, then the Freedom caucus becomes nothing more than 20 bigmouth *ssholes that nobody wants to sit at the House cafeteria lunch tables with. And no amount of screaming, yelling or threats will make a lick of difference. Because nothing emboldens like success.

And if Jordan wants someone to crucify, he need look no further than his sometimes wingnut wingman, Bratty Matty Gaetz. With his brashness and arrogance,
Gaetz overpowered what should have been Jordan’s dominance almost from day one. And if Gaetz has one burning passion, it’s an almost psychotic hatred for Kevin McCarthy, because McCarthy refused to interfere in the House Ethics Committee’s investigation of Gaetz.

Gaetz actually had no choice but to elect McCarthy as Speaker, but he put th==him through 15 rounds of humiliation and torture to ensure compliance, and also to gain concessions he would need later. Which was just fine with Jordan, as it served as a graphic reminder to every non MAGA member of the GOP of the same tortures of the damned that would await them if they stepped out of line. It all worked out according to plan.

But then Gaetz stepped on his crank. With golf cleats. In a pique of fury over McCarthy taking away his greatest negotiating leverage by cutting a deal with President Biden on the debt ceiling, Gaetz decided that McCarthy had to go. And after quietly assuring himself that he had the necessary seven other mental defectives to do the job, he filed a Motion to vacate the Chair, McCarthy was out. And Pandora’s Box was opened for the Freedom Caucus.

American military history then repeated itself as American political history. Like when the military got itself entangled in Afghanistan, once Gaetz jettisoned McCarthy, neither one left themselves with a viable exit strategy. And now they’re in a position where we’re two weeks without a Speaker, and a government shutdown is looming in three weeks, and at this point, pretty much everybody who isn’t named Jordan or Gaetz has realized that there’s only one viable exit strategy, and that’s total withdrawal with compromise with the Democrats in order to avoid both a political governmental debacle as well as an electoral debacle in 2024.

Jordan has said that he’ll try again tomorrow, and my money says will bleed even more votes, and then I’m betting he taking one more Sado-Mas beating on Friday. And when the House reconvenes on Monday, less than three weeks from a government shutdown, quiet negotiations will begin between moderate GOP members and Democrats on a consensus bipartisan caretaker Speaker, or simply giving Speaker Pro Tem McHenry temporary authority to dig the GOP out of this snake pit. Which will mean compromise, which the Freedom caucus will resist to the death. And in so doing, pound the last nail into their own coffin.

Because you can’t un-ring a bell. Remember about 20 or so years ago, there was a series of books that were all the rage. They were called Seeing Eye 3-D books. They were computer generated, and the pages looked like a bunch of multi colored dots or random multi colored lines all over the page. But when you learned how to relax your eyes to a blur, a 3-D image appeared in the middle of the page. That’s where the moderate GOP House members are right now. They’re starting to see that hidden image, and goddamn! if it doesn’t look like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. And once you first see them, you can never not see them again. Nice work Bratty Matty, and I hope you guys rot in political hell.