I know, I know. You’re asking yourself, Murf, come on dude, what for could you possibly have in mind to grace the current GOP klown kar demolition derby trying to pick a new Speaker?
Oh, I don’t know. How about the food fight scene from Animal House? Or better yet, the scene where Jim Carrey runs screaming down at airport jetway waving a briefcase, turns the corner, and plunges to the now aircraft tarmac in Dumb and Dumber? These are both pretty good, but they’re both slapstick, and I have something more serious in mind.
The scene I have in mind is the opening scene in that Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The garrison commander of Port Royal is trying to drive away all the pirates from the cove. So they basically arrest anybody who ever dared to say Arrgh, Matey! so they can string them up. And you’ve got this long line of scraggly losers working their way up to a six noose gallows.
That fits these refugees of the workbench of misfit toys perfectly. First House quisling Squeaker Cave-In McCarthy had his turn on the docket. Next it was closet Klansman Steve Scalise’s turn. And now we’re in a holding pattern, waiting to see who is the next in line to climb the political gallows and get it over with once and for all.
Scalise officially sleeps with the fishes. He came out of a closed door caucus meeting today and officially announced that he had pulled his name from consideration for Speaker. And now the dumb money, since there’s no such thing as smart money when you’re talking about the GOP, is betting that Jim Jordan will climb the steps next.
Which is moronic, since in the secret ballot a couple of days ago, Scalise beat Jordan, Trump’s handmaiden handily, 113-99. With Jordon offering to nominate Scalise from the floor, and urge his supporters to vote for Scalise, Scalise only needed another 7-10 votes. And in a day and a half he couldn’t do it. In fact reporting is that he was losing ground. How is Jordan going to succeed where Scalise failed, especially when he’s starting out with fewer votes?
Which begs the question, Who’s next? Simple answer, NOBODY! These morons have created a Rubik’s Cube with one colored tile missing. Gaetz, Scalise, Jordan, Buck, they all have one thing in common. They all belong to the Freedom caucus, which unceremoniously bounced McCarthy, and they have 200 pissed off McCarthy supporters to deal with.
But the real problem is even simpler. As I pointed out previously, when McCarthy ran in January, he had one person to run to for votes, Bratty Matty Gaetz, it was all his inquisition. Here, no matter who the MAGA friendly candidate the Freedom caucus comes up with, he’s going to have to run to 8-12v free agents, and most of them don’t even want the same thing, making deal cutting almost impossible.
Sticking with the Pirates of the Caribbean analogy for a moment, if there’s one man stranded on a sandy deserted island, with no ship, but a shitload of crabs, it’s Bratty Matty Gaetz. He engineered this out of personal pique when McCarthy wouldn’t try to interfere with the House Ethics committees investigation into Gaetz, and now He let Beetlejuice out and he can’t put him back. In truth I wouldn’t be surprised if the next kamikaze GOP pilot that gives this a try doesn’t agree to allow a floor vote to boot Gaetz from the House GOP caucus. What’s he gonna do, vote with Democrats?
If I’m House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, right now I’m just sitting patiently at my desk waiting for the phone to ring. There are too many moderate GOP members from critical swing districts who have neither the time nor the appetite for this. I’m betting that they give these ballot mice until the middle of next week to get their sh*t together, and then very quietly start sniffing around for a power sharing agreement. This is more fun that the original barrel all of those GOP monkeys came in.
I’ve said it for over a week now: they don’t want anyone. They’re perfectly happy shutting down the govt without having it called a govt shutdown. It’s all performance BS, even the shouting behind closed doors – The Apprentice on steroids.
You may be right-wing about the entire GOP, but definitely the Freedom.Caucus. They absolutely thrive on chaos and small.government, and you can’t get much smaller than not having a, driver for the clown car–er, Speaker.