2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

lol I can't see that flying except in the heart of the right-wing echo chamber. I mean the US was pretty clearly able to suss out who was obstructing what when it came to things as dramatic as the Gingrich/Clinton budget shutdown. I think "the Republicans have a majority but can't manage to agree on a speaker so nothing is getting done in Congress" is bite-sized enough to carry the day.

Important to keep in mind: GOP voters don't want their congressmen to govern – they want congressmen to obstruct.

^^^

probably won't be satisfied until they burn down the capitol building tbh

Yeah I think they believe Washington is total waste of time. They also unabashedly like having their biases confirmed, so.

would be the establishment GOP and Dems agreeing on some kind of "compromise" Republican candidate, who would have to be a really fucking convincing moderate for the Dems to be remotely interested

no way would Pelosi go for this, she would extract real, concrete concessions (probably in the form of legislation being passed ahead of the speaker election, but I'm just guessin/spitballin), otherwise its in her and the Dems interest to let them twist in the wind

judging by their past behavior the Freedom Caucus would like to vote for a conservative who will lose, brag about that for a while, then get mad at the speaker in 6-9 mos, force him to quit, and do it all over again.

i don't know why they can't work out which dozen or so of the FC will vote for the "moderate establishment" candidate so they can get on with it. but a lot of these people seem too fanatical to be calculating

that's what i'm saying, afaik there has been very very little cross-party voting shenanigans when it comes to speakership, and i doubt it would start now. i don't know exactly why but i'm sure the logic is pretty airtight

It's this guy, writ large:
http://www.criminalelement.com/images/stories/-2015-Jul-Sep/show-me-a-hero-alfred-molina.jpg

seems that Ryan would walk away from presidential viability (whatever he has) if he were to take the speakership. don't know the historical record, but given the membership he'd front for. assume that's part (most?) of what's driving his no.

funny details:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/blindsided-by-mccarthy-divided-gop-struggles-to-find-boehners-successor/2015/10/08/5078a374-6de8-11e5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html

There had been reasons to doubt that. Last month, McCarthy had embarrassed Republicans by suggesting that the House committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, was designed to score political points. Two days before, a back-bencher who opposed McCarthy circulated a vague letter asking whether any top Republicans had committed “misdeeds.” One day before, McCarthy had been formally rejected by the House’s hard-right caucus.

McCarthy walked into a third-floor ballroom at the Capitol Hill Club, a bastion of the Republican establishment just south of the Capitol. Waiting for him were dozens of conservatives, including the crucial House Freedom Caucus — a group which says it has about 40 members (the exact number, and the full caucus membership list, are both secret). The Freedom Caucus had pledged to vote as a bloc if 80 percent of them could agree on one candidate.

omg how does the party, or congress at all, permit this. lmao

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2FX78pw3BP8/VP3Aj_7hu3I/AAAAAAAAYK4/qdf9hPNZcPk/s1600/Sideshow%2BBob%2BRoberts%2B-%2BRepublicans.JPG

huh the "backbencher" who sent the vague letter about hanky-panky was this dude:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/three-conversions-walter-b-jones

"We are The Freedom Caucus! We believe in freedom! ps no one is allowed to know who we are"

why are they even part of the GOP, they're functionally a different outfit at this point xxps

how does the party, or congress at all, permit this.

by being a bunch of weak-minded, short-sighted feebs?

the first rule of fight club

why are they even part of the GOP, they're functionally a different outfit at this point

^^^ this. they can't be counted on for votes, at all, which would be the only reason to keep them in the party. But if the GOP cuts them loose, then they have revealed how weak a hand they actually have.

sorry i keep doing this but it's so much fun

In interviews on Thursday, Jones said he didn’t have any hard proof of misconduct by McCarthy or any of the other candidates. Given a chance to confront McCarthy about possible misdeeds at the forum Tuesday night, Jones instead confronted him about an occasion where one of McCarthy’s staffers had been rude to one of his own staffers about the renaming of a post office.

tbh i agree, the rudeness over a post office is more important than mccarthy dicking down another rep

Meat Loaf for Speaker

xxp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmX5z59xeuI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmX5z59xeuI

The U.S. has repeatedly attacked civilian facilities in the past but the targets have generally not been affiliated with a European, Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organization such as MSF.

Below is a sampling of such incidents since the 1991 Gulf War.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/07/a-short-history-of-u-s-bombing-of-civilian-facilities/

"We are The Freedom Caucus! We believe in freedom! ps no one is allowed to know who we are"

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP)

lolll

If the GOP was to take steps to 'cut loose' the Freedom Caucus, what might those steps be?

I am going to refer to them as the Klan Kaukus

i thought these turds were all supposed to be super proud and strident about american freedom just like they are about being 'christians'

If the GOP was to take steps to 'cut loose' the Freedom Caucus, what might those steps be?

court Dem votes instead

If the GOP was to take steps to 'cut loose' the Freedom Caucus, what might those steps be?

https://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/orkinman.png

If the GOP was to take steps to 'cut loose' the Freedom Caucus, what might those steps be?

Since you asked. Theoretically, the Republican leadership, commanding a majority of the Republican caucus in the House or Senate, could expel Freedom Caucus members from their caucus. This would be powerfully symbolic, but would not solve anything, unless there was some kind of ironclad power-sharing arrangement with Democrats in view. So, unless the Freedom Caucus were seen as some kind of existential threat to the Republican party, instead of just a huge headache, the chances of this happening are beyond negligible.

there is no Republican Party though

that's the thing. It's 1793.

There is a Republican party central committee and 50 states, each with a Republican party steering committee, that supposedly run the whole shebang, but of course, they don't.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/us/politics/clinton-emails-became-the-new-focus-of-benghazi-inquiry.html?_r=0

for months, documents and interviews show, the work of the Benghazi committee has been affected by delays and dysfunction.

The process of setting up an electronic system to manage more than 50,000 pages of documents that the committee has assembled is still not complete, meaning that staff members sometimes have to search through boxes to find critical pieces of paper — an almost comical task, staff members said.

They have spent months sparring with Obama administration agencies trying to get documents, eating up time the committee had planned to use investigating the attacks.

With the slow progress, members have engaged in social activities like a wine club nicknamed “Wine Wednesdays,” drinking from glasses imprinted with the words “Glacial Pace,” a dig at Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the committee’s ranking member, Major Podliska said. Mr. Cummings used the term to question the speed of the committee’s work.

At one point, several Republican staff members formed a gun-buying club and discussed in the committee’s conference room the 9-millimeter Glock handguns they intended to buy and what type of monograms they would inscribe on them, Major Podliska said.

would join that wine club

more like whine club, amirite.

Select committee of wine sipping and glock buying

frankly i'd recommend a nice chablis with a safe-action pistol

your tax dollars at work everybody!

Btw this literally takes a couple hours if this was a civil litigation

The process of setting up an electronic system to manage more than 50,000 pages of documents that the committee has assembled is still not complete, meaning that staff members sometimes have to search through boxes to find critical pieces of paper — an almost comical task, staff members said.

No I would argue it's extremely comical.

They should get a wineglass that just says "screw you taxpayers".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/us/politics/latest-unease-on-right-ryan-is-too-far-left.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

"His critics are not true conservatives. They are radical populists who neither understand nor accept the institutions, procedures and traditions that are the basis of constitutional governance."

Surprisingly lucid.

great quote. Cole is a favorite of the so bad and hated why-can't-we-compromise-and-govern variety of MOR mainstream media "hack".

http://i.imgur.com/DVHrURO.jpg

oh, that explains paul ryan's reluctance to run

I feel like the current House of Representatives is one of the few things in modern American society that could be accurately described as a tar baby with no briar patch in sight.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-entitlement-changes-fiscal-talks/

Here they go again...

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart declined to comment on the GOP leader's proposal in the talks with Democrats, citing the private nature of the fiscal discussions. White House officials also refused to discuss any specific proposals being traded in the talks.

But even though the White House has backed some entitlement changes in the past, notably overhauling how Social Security cost-of-living payments are calculated, a spokeswoman said that the President would not accept them in the current round of negotiations if they were offered.

"Proposals such as raising the eligibility age for Medicare and changing the way Social Security retirement benefits are indexed to inflation are non-starters for the administration and Democrats in Congress," said Jennifer Friedman, a White House spokeswoman.

Everyone but the rich and military get ready to tighten your belts.

pfft I can't afford a belt