War in Israel. War in Ukraine. The federal government shutting down in 35 days. These are uncertain times.
But there is one eternal truth, one unwavering constant to steady us when all else is in flux: Every time the House Republican majority tries to govern, it’s guaranteed to turn into a goat rodeo.
Make sense of the news fast with Opinions' daily newsletter
And so it happened again this week, as Republicans tried to elect a new speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy, whom they deposed in a coup the previous week. As the conference gathered on Tuesday night to hear from speaker candidates Steve Scalise (La.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio), Rep. Harriet Hageman (Wyo.), the Trump-backed slayer of Liz Cheney, walked into the caucus meeting wearing a big smile and carrying a lasso. Was she planning to rope some goats? She didn’t say.
A moment later, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), one of the eight Republicans who voted out McCarthy (Calif.), strolled into the caucus meeting with a big red “A” decal on her T-shirt. “I’m wearing the scarlet letter,” she later explained to a group of us, “after the week that I just had last week, being a woman up here and being demonized for my vote.” In her telling, wearing the 17th-century mark of the adulteress showed that “I’m going to do the right thing every single time.”
There was little time to dwell on Mace’s bold reinterpretation of Hawthorne, however, because the defrocked McCarthy himself soon emerged from the caucus meeting, which he quit after leading the opening prayer. Recognizing that he had a captive audience in the 140 or so journalists crowding the hallway, he gave a 13-minute news conference repeating the same thoughts about Israel he had offered in a news conference the day before.
Sadly, the former speaker’s oration was interrupted by the arrival of Patrick McHenry (N.C.), the interim speaker. “Mr. Speaker!” some journalists shouted, trying to ask McCarthy questions. “Mr. Speaker!” other journalists shouted a moment later, trying to ask McHenry questions. The confusion was all the greater because neither man was, actually, the speaker. Republicans didn’t have one of those.
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No sooner had that commotion quieted than a new one erupted while the Republican members were meeting: Authorities had just unsealed additional charges against Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), alleging that he stole the identities of his campaign donors, used their credit cards and swindled the Republican Party. The famous fabricator was besieged by shouting reporters when he exited the caucus meeting: “Did you steal people’s identities? Will you resign?”
“I did not have access to my phone,” Santos pleaded. “I have no clue of what you are talking about.” (This was plausible, for intraparty distrust has grown so intense that members had to check their phones at the door.) Reporters and TV crews chased Santos back to his office, crashing into furniture in the hallway. “How can you vote in the speaker election,” asked CNN’s Manu Raju, “when you’ve been charged with all these crimes?”
Santos slammed his office door in Raju’s face.
This was going well.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-cartoons_inline_collection_20
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Scalise, the House majority leader, emerged from the caucus meeting full of confidence that he would win the speakership the next day. “We need a Congress that’s working tomorrow,” he said.
His colleagues were not so sure. “What are the chances we have a speaker tomorrow?” a reporter asked Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
Massie, in his 11th year in Congress, responded with a long pause, as if calculating the odds in his head.
“Two percent,” he answered.
“Why two percent?”
Another long pause. “Uh, you know, it’s just the way things are going for us,” Massie replied.
Massie’s handicapping was spot on. Republicans narrowly tapped Scalise to be speaker at another meeting on Wednesday; he got 113 votes on a secret ballot, while Jordan and other candidates got 107. Applause sounded in the conference room at 1:03 p.m. when the tally was announced, and Scalise, rushing to build momentum, called for a speaker vote on the House floor at 3 p.m.
“We’re going to have to go upstairs on the House floor and resolve this and then get the House open again,” said the ebullient majority leader, referring to himself in the third person as “Speaker Scalise.”
“Is it true you don’t have the votes?” a reporter asked. Scalise walked away without answering.
Then, in rapid succession, a dozen House Republicans announced that they would oppose Scalise on the floor — and a dozen more threatened to do the same. Some were the same zealots who stymied McCarthy back in January, when holdouts forced 15 rounds of balloting on the House floor. Others were first-time participants in the GOP dysfunction game. But there were well more than the five needed to deny Scalise the speakership.
Texas Republicans Chip Roy and Michael Cloud said they would oppose Scalise because of the “unacceptable” and “underhanded” rush to vote on the floor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) said she would oppose him because he’s battling blood cancer. Massie announced his opposition because Scalise had not “articulated a viable plan” on government spending.
Mace, no longer wearing her scarlet “A,” tried to plant a KKK on Scalise. “I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she said on CNN of Scalise’s past comment that, as a Louisiana Republican, he was “David Duke without the baggage.” (This apparently didn’t bother Mace when she accepted Scalise’s campaign help in 2020.)
Rep. Greg Murphy (N.C.) responded to Mace on social media: “#GetADamnLife.”
“The House GOP conference is broken,” Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) accurately observed, announcing his opposition to Scalise.
Michael McCaul (Tex.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pleaded with his colleagues for sanity, saying the speakership is “going to have to be worked out in the next several hours. We can’t afford this dysfunction.”
But when it came time for the 3 p.m. vote, McHenry instead sent the chamber into an indefinite recess. A few hours later, House GOP leaders called off all votes for the night.
Finally, the day of disarray ended in farce: Santos, facing renewed calls for his expulsion from the House, delivered one more blow to Scalise. Because Scalise hadn’t reached out to the indicted liar, “I’m now declaring I’m an ANYONE but Scalise and come hell or high water I won’t change my mind,” he wrote. “We need a speaker that leads by including every single member of the team.”
Even the aspiring felons.
But there is one eternal truth, one unwavering constant to steady us when all else is in flux: Every time the House Republican majority tries to govern, it’s guaranteed to turn into a goat rodeo.
Make sense of the news fast with Opinions' daily newsletterAnd so it happened again this week, as Republicans tried to elect a new speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy, whom they deposed in a coup the previous week. As the conference gathered on Tuesday night to hear from speaker candidates Steve Scalise (La.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio), Rep. Harriet Hageman (Wyo.), the Trump-backed slayer of Liz Cheney, walked into the caucus meeting wearing a big smile and carrying a lasso. Was she planning to rope some goats? She didn’t say.
A moment later, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), one of the eight Republicans who voted out McCarthy (Calif.), strolled into the caucus meeting with a big red “A” decal on her T-shirt. “I’m wearing the scarlet letter,” she later explained to a group of us, “after the week that I just had last week, being a woman up here and being demonized for my vote.” In her telling, wearing the 17th-century mark of the adulteress showed that “I’m going to do the right thing every single time.”
There was little time to dwell on Mace’s bold reinterpretation of Hawthorne, however, because the defrocked McCarthy himself soon emerged from the caucus meeting, which he quit after leading the opening prayer. Recognizing that he had a captive audience in the 140 or so journalists crowding the hallway, he gave a 13-minute news conference repeating the same thoughts about Israel he had offered in a news conference the day before.
Sadly, the former speaker’s oration was interrupted by the arrival of Patrick McHenry (N.C.), the interim speaker. “Mr. Speaker!” some journalists shouted, trying to ask McCarthy questions. “Mr. Speaker!” other journalists shouted a moment later, trying to ask McHenry questions. The confusion was all the greater because neither man was, actually, the speaker. Republicans didn’t have one of those.
ADVERTISING
No sooner had that commotion quieted than a new one erupted while the Republican members were meeting: Authorities had just unsealed additional charges against Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), alleging that he stole the identities of his campaign donors, used their credit cards and swindled the Republican Party. The famous fabricator was besieged by shouting reporters when he exited the caucus meeting: “Did you steal people’s identities? Will you resign?”
“I did not have access to my phone,” Santos pleaded. “I have no clue of what you are talking about.” (This was plausible, for intraparty distrust has grown so intense that members had to check their phones at the door.) Reporters and TV crews chased Santos back to his office, crashing into furniture in the hallway. “How can you vote in the speaker election,” asked CNN’s Manu Raju, “when you’ve been charged with all these crimes?”
Santos slammed his office door in Raju’s face.
This was going well.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-cartoons_inline_collection_20
End of carousel
Scalise, the House majority leader, emerged from the caucus meeting full of confidence that he would win the speakership the next day. “We need a Congress that’s working tomorrow,” he said.
His colleagues were not so sure. “What are the chances we have a speaker tomorrow?” a reporter asked Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
Massie, in his 11th year in Congress, responded with a long pause, as if calculating the odds in his head.
“Two percent,” he answered.
“Why two percent?”
Another long pause. “Uh, you know, it’s just the way things are going for us,” Massie replied.
Massie’s handicapping was spot on. Republicans narrowly tapped Scalise to be speaker at another meeting on Wednesday; he got 113 votes on a secret ballot, while Jordan and other candidates got 107. Applause sounded in the conference room at 1:03 p.m. when the tally was announced, and Scalise, rushing to build momentum, called for a speaker vote on the House floor at 3 p.m.
“We’re going to have to go upstairs on the House floor and resolve this and then get the House open again,” said the ebullient majority leader, referring to himself in the third person as “Speaker Scalise.”
“Is it true you don’t have the votes?” a reporter asked. Scalise walked away without answering.
Then, in rapid succession, a dozen House Republicans announced that they would oppose Scalise on the floor — and a dozen more threatened to do the same. Some were the same zealots who stymied McCarthy back in January, when holdouts forced 15 rounds of balloting on the House floor. Others were first-time participants in the GOP dysfunction game. But there were well more than the five needed to deny Scalise the speakership.
Texas Republicans Chip Roy and Michael Cloud said they would oppose Scalise because of the “unacceptable” and “underhanded” rush to vote on the floor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) said she would oppose him because he’s battling blood cancer. Massie announced his opposition because Scalise had not “articulated a viable plan” on government spending.
Mace, no longer wearing her scarlet “A,” tried to plant a KKK on Scalise. “I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” she said on CNN of Scalise’s past comment that, as a Louisiana Republican, he was “David Duke without the baggage.” (This apparently didn’t bother Mace when she accepted Scalise’s campaign help in 2020.)
Rep. Greg Murphy (N.C.) responded to Mace on social media: “#GetADamnLife.”
“The House GOP conference is broken,” Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) accurately observed, announcing his opposition to Scalise.
Michael McCaul (Tex.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pleaded with his colleagues for sanity, saying the speakership is “going to have to be worked out in the next several hours. We can’t afford this dysfunction.”
But when it came time for the 3 p.m. vote, McHenry instead sent the chamber into an indefinite recess. A few hours later, House GOP leaders called off all votes for the night.
Finally, the day of disarray ended in farce: Santos, facing renewed calls for his expulsion from the House, delivered one more blow to Scalise. Because Scalise hadn’t reached out to the indicted liar, “I’m now declaring I’m an ANYONE but Scalise and come hell or high water I won’t change my mind,” he wrote. “We need a speaker that leads by including every single member of the team.”
Even the aspiring felons.
