Republicans Realized They Literally Weren’t Ready For Prime Time

It’s well past nine pm on the east coast (where I live) and instead of me sitting through another humiliation of Kevin McCarthy as in him losing a seventh vote for Speaker I’m instead watching pundits talk about some weird stuff that’s probably illegal but will never wind up in court.  But that’s not why I’m writing this.

The House is in recess.

If you’ve been following the action since the convening of the 118th Congress you know the Senate is starting to go about its business, including a bipartisan appearance of Senators and Governors with President Biden to mark the beginning of a major and badly needed upgrade to a crucial bridge over the Ohio River.  Committees are being organized and preparing to get to work.  Normal, boring stuff but it’s what is supposed to be happening.

Alas, on the other side of the Capitol it’s a different story.  After two days, and for the first time in a hundred years the House has done nothing except hold vote after vote to pick a Speaker.  Six of them.  Three yesterday and three today.  Kevin McCarthy is no closer to getting his hands on that coveted Speaker’s Gavel than he was heading into the first vote.  In fact, he’s actually lost a bit of ground!   Mental images of the Hindenburg and “Oh, the humanity!” come to mind.  My inner jarhead thinks in cruder terms.  As in the GOP has put forth a full-blown Cluster F*@k.  Pick your own metaphor.

Yesterday, having lost ground McCarthy engineered a recess until today.  It didn’t do him a bit of good.  After three failed votes today he tried a different tack – at a little after 4:30pm and the sixth vote/humiliation (lest we forget Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ was the leading vote getter in every vote!) instead of adjourning until Thursday the GOP went for a recess until 8pm.  In my mind I started singing a bit of the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.  The part about a “three hour tour” which anyone who knows the show led to being shipwrecked on an uncharted island!  That’s how it seemed then, and still seems now things are for the GOP.  To paraphrase from that theme song, the weather’s gotten mighty rough, the tiny (GOP) ship was tossed and for the “courage”…strike that lack of seamanship the SS GOP has gotten lost.

Here’s the point though.  Those first six votes, three yesterday and three today were carried live on C-SPAN of course, but also on cable news networks.  But it all happened in the afternoon!  Sure, people might take a peek on their cell phones or computers while at work but most people didn’t watch the agonizing process.  If there was any silver lining for the GOP it was that their “Charlie Fox” (what we say when we don’t want to use the term I mentioned earlier because we’re in polite company) wasn’t seen by nearly as many people as it could have been.

I didn’t think of it at the time, but once I got my computer going again (ran into a problem for a while) and got back to watching TV and cursing about tuning in late to the seventh vote I saw instead a recorded vote being taken to adjourn until tomorrow!  Democrats voted to keep proceedings going.  I can understand why!  But the questionably legal deal McCarthy cut with a couple of significant GOP PACs to mollify the “Never Kevins” wasn’t enough to get him anywhere near close to the 218 votes he needs.

It’s one thing to have failure after failure televised live (and not just on C-SPAN) in the afternoon, and another entirely to see the whole mess play out in Prime Time!

McCarthy was already the Black Knight from Monty Python & The Holy Grail after both legs had been cut off trying to keep upright.  A seventh vote coming up way short (even if he clawed two or three Never Kevin voters to his side) would have been it.  He knew it.  His supporters knew it.  Democrats knew it.  Hell, that’s why Democrats voted as a block to stay in session!  It took McCarthy and his people begging after the vote clock expired to get enough Never Kevin types to switch their votes to get that adjournment!

It was still a mess in prime time, but not as big a one as it could have been.  What I think is the takeaway is that McCarthy and every thinking (or what passes for it with that crowd) Republican knew damn well they weren’t ready for Prime Time!  That they only thing they had to show the country was them making like monkey in the zoo flinging poop at each other.  That my friends is the House Republican Caucus.

Keep in mind that in their nominating speeches those putting up McCarthy keep referring to some mythical sweeping mandate their Party has from the voters to both rule and have McCarthy lead them.  WTF?  Leaving aside gerrymandering, institutional voter suppression they gave massive doses of steroids to aside they don’t even have enough of a majority to withstand a few (it only takes five) cranky a-holes defecting and elect a Speaker!   Even worse, in every vote the Democrats have united behind their leader.  Hakeem Jeffries has beaten McCarthy by double digits (ten votes) every ballot!   That’s NOT the image the GOP wanted people seeing tonight.

What will tomorrow bring?  I keep saying and will say again making predictions is a fool’s errand.  As pundits get legal types on TV to talk about possible violations of law it might have an effect on matters before the House convenes at noon.  Maybe Kevin ought to call up Dennis Hastert for a chat.  Hastert went to prison for other reasons but if DOJ opens an investigation of that deal with PACS he won’t be the only one spending lots of money on legal fees.  That’s a deeper topic to consider and discuss later.

For the moment, by now a seventh vote would be in the books with McCarthy losing, and Jeffries beating him by more than a handful of votes.  That’s something neither McCarthy or the GOP wanted to see play out on TV during Prime Time.

The GOP literally isn’t ready (and knows it) for Prime Time.  Just how the hell do they expect to govern?  And retain the House in two years? (and avoid costing the GOP a very real chance to retake the Senate?)