Marjorie Taylor Greene Is About To Embarrass Herself

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) thinks she is a leader in the current Congress. And she is the self-appointed voice of the radical right in it. 

She was in the tiny group of GOP radicals that ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That resulted in a period of time when Congress was in chaos because the Republicans couldn't agree on a new Speaker. The radical fringe finally convinced other Republicans to agree to accept one of their own, and Mike Johnson became Speaker.

Greene evidently thought with a radical in the Speaker's chair, she and other radicals could force Congress to go along with their own crazy ideas Like shutting down the government and cutting off aid to Ukraine).

Greene was wrong. While Johnson is on the far right, he was not willing to shut down the government or cut off aid to Ukraine. To keep the government open and send needed aid to Ukraine, he reached out to Democrats - and Democrats, combined with many Republicans, passed both bills.

Greene blew her top, and filed a motion to kick Johnson out of the speakership. But she didn't ask for a vote, wanting to hold that possibility over his head to force him to meet her demands.She thought she was in control. She was wrong again.

Most Republicans are unhappy with her action, and don't want another vote on the Speaker. They know it would just create more chaos for Congress and their party.

Last week, I said Democrats should stay out of this GOP fight, and should just vote "present" on a vote to oust the Speaker. While Johnson is not a good Speaker, we don't need more chaos in Congress.

But Hakeem Jeffries (Democratic Minority Leader) had a better idea. He said if Marjorie Taylor Green ask for a vote to oust the Speaker, Democrats would move to table her request. If the motion to table won a majority vote, Greene's motion would not even get a vote.

The motion to table would win by a landslide (with most Republicans and all Democrats voting for it. I doubt if Greene can expect more than a dozen votes in her favor. She is about to be embarrassed, and shown just how little power she has in this Congress.

Most Republicans (and all Democrats) are sick of her insane kind of political theater! 

Voters Want A Speaker To Compromise - Say Johnson Won't

These charts reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 28th and 31st of a nationwide sample of 1,333 registered voters, with a 2.9 point margin of error.

McCarthy Is Weak & Lets Extremists Run The House

The following is by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

The speaker of the House is the only congressional officer mentioned in the Constitution, other than a temporary Senate officer to preside when the vice president can’t. The speaker’s job isn’t defined, but surely it includes passing legislation that keeps the federal government running.

But Kevin McCarthy, the current speaker, isn’t doing that job. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to see how he can pass any bill maintaining federal funding, let alone one the Senate, controlled by Democrats, will agree to. So we seem to be headed for a federal shutdown at the end of this month, with many important government activities suspended until further notice.

Why? McCarthy is a weak leader, especially compared with Nancy Pelosi, his formidable predecessor. But even a superb leader would probably be unable to transcend the dynamics of a party that has been extremist for a generation but has now gone beyond extremism to nihilism.

And yes, this is a Republican problem. Any talk about dysfunction in “Congress,” or “partisanship,” simply misinforms the public. Crises like the one McCarthy now faces didn’t happen under Pelosi, even though she also had a very narrow majority. I’ll come back to that contrast. First, let me make a different comparison — between the looming shutdown of 2023 and the shutdowns of 1995-96, when Newt Gingrich was speaker.

If you had told me back then that I’d someday hold up Gingrich as a model of rationality, I wouldn’t have believed you. But hear me out.

Back in 1995, while Gingrich’s tactics — his willingness to employ blackmail as a political strategy — were new and dangerous, he had an actual policy goal: He wanted to force major cuts in federal spending.

Furthermore, Gingrich tried to go where the money was. The federal government is an insurance company with an army: The great bulk of nonmilitary spending is on the big safety-net programs, that is, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And Gingrich in fact sought deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

He didn’t get them, and the government’s role in promoting health insurance coverage eventually expanded greatly — although Medicare has been surprisingly successful at containing costs. Still, Gingrich’s goals were at least coherent.

McCarthy, in his desperate efforts to appease his party’s hard-liners, has acted as if their refusal to approve federal funding is a Gingrich-like demand for reduced federal spending. He tried to pass a continuing resolution — a bill that would temporarily keep the money flowing — that involved deep cuts to certain parts of the federal government.

But there are three notable aspects to this attempt. First, even if he had managed to pass that resolution, it would have been dead on arrival in the Senate.

Second, unlike Gingrich back then, McCarthy tried to go where the money isn’t, slashing nonmilitary discretionary spending. That’s a fairly small part of the federal budget. It’s also a spending category that has already been subject to more than a decade of austerity, ever since President Barack Obama made concessions to Republicans during the debt ceiling confrontation of 2011. There just isn’t any significant blood to be gotten out of this stone.

Finally, even this extreme proposal wasn’t extreme enough for Republican hard-liners. I liked what one representative told Politico: “Some of these folks would vote against the Bible because there’s not enough Jesus in it.” The point is that the party’s right wing isn’t actually interested in governing; it’s all about posturing, and the budget fight is a temper tantrum rather than a policy dispute.

If the G.O.P. were anything like a normal party, McCarthy would give up on the right-wingers, gather up the saner Republican representatives — it would be misleading to call them “moderates” — and make a deal with Democrats. But that would almost surely cost him the speakership, and in general more or less the whole G.O.P. is terrified of the hard-liners, so the party’s positions end up being dictated by its most extreme faction.

As I said, all of this is very different from what happens on the other side of the aisle. You still sometimes see analyses that treat Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right as equivalent, but they’re nothing alike. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is, in fact, interested in policy; it tries to push the party’s leadership in its direction, but it’s willing to take what it can get. That’s why Pelosi, with only a narrow majority during Biden’s first two years, was nonetheless able to get enacted landmark bills on infrastructure, climate and technology, while McCarthy can’t even keep the government running.

Now, a protracted shutdown would be highly disruptive, and if past confrontations are a guide, the public would blame Republicans — which is what led Gingrich to back down in the 1990s. But it’s not clear that McCarthy, or whoever replaces him if he’s overthrown, would be willing or even able to make a deal that reopens the government. How does this end? 

Why Does Speaker Election Bother GOP Voters? (Satire)

Another delicious bit of satire from Alexandra Petri in The Washington Post: 

Wow, this is embarrassing!

No, not the once-in-a-century mess around electing a speaker of the House! Not the fact that, on Tuesday, after three ballots, none of which succeeded in putting Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in charge, the House had to adjourn speakerlessly. Not the fact that, again, failing to elect a speaker on the first vote has not happened since 1923! Not the fact that, if anything, the votes were trending further from McCarthy rather than closer to him when the House adjourned, and not the fact that a fourth and fifth and sixth vote failed Wednesday!

None of that is embarrassing at all! What’s embarrassing is that you were expecting anything else.

Honestly, we are a little confused you are taking this so poorly. This is like electing a bunch of clowns to office and being disappointed when they put on a magnificent clown show for you. Here is precisely the clown show you ordered! You shouldn’t be ashamed. You should be applauding. It is like ordering a decorative salad made entirely from Legos and being mad that you can’t eat it. It is like voting for Lauren Boebert and then becoming upset that a legislature that contains her is not productively working for the American people.

I’m sorry, what did you think you were getting? Did you really say to yourself, when you voted for Matt Gaetz, “Here is a man who is going to build coalitions and pass sensible, bipartisan legislation that will improve our lives?” No! You said, “I’m voting for Gaetz!”

Do you realize that this party contains Marjorie Taylor Greene? Actually, in this particular speaker scenario, Greene is the middle-of-the-road institutionalist, a sentence that is as surprising to us as it is to you! When you are counting on Greene as one of the founding blocks of your coalition, the writing is on the wall.

We thought you were serious about just electing people to be squeaky wheels, and specifically squeaky wheels that keep setting off the House metal detector because they are armed with guns for no clear reason. We said to ourselves, “If they wanted to move legislative priorities through Congress in a functional way, they knew whom they ought to have voted for: not us! We came here to make pointless noise and pass nothing, and we are never going to be out of noise!”

Get pumped for the debt-ceiling debate, when we are excited to maybe cause the country to default, which will be very bad for the economy but will allow us to showcase the distinctive brand of shouting to no purpose for which you’ve come to rely on us! We are not here to make the government better. We are here to investigate every member of the Biden administration six times.

To those few of you who voted for a Republican in a swing district who made some wild claim about governing or enacting any piece of legislation, we say, “Whoops! Next time, look at the whole party you’re putting into power when you cast your vote! Because we have a QAnon caucus now!”

Our party is always yelling that Washington is a broken, dysfunctional mess. What is embarrassing is that you thought we meant we were going to govern to change that. What is embarrassing is that you thought we were going to govern at all.

Trump tries To Bully Pelosi And Fails Miserably (Again)

Donald Trump simply doesn't know how to deal with a strong and smart woman. Throughout his business career, he has had money and an army of lawyers, and he's been able to bully and intimidate any woman who dared to question him. He thought he could repeat that same misogynistic behavior into the political world, and he is now learning that is just not going to happen. He has come up against a strong woman in Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- and she is smarter than him and understands politics better.

Yesterday, He thought he could intimidate Speaker Pelosi. He sent her a letter saying, despite her wishes, he was going to give his State of the Union speech in the House of Representatives on January 29th. How could she disagree, since he was a man (and president of the most powerful nation on Earth).

But Speaker Pelosi wasn't having any of his bullying. About an hour later, she responded with her own letter. She made it clear that, until the government was opened, he was not welcome in the House of Representatives.

Only members of Congress can enter the House of Representatives without permission. And for a president to give a speech in the House, he must be invited to do so by a majority vote of the House. Pelosi made it clear in her letter that no such vote would take place until the government has been fully reopened.

Trump can give his SOTU in writing, or televised from the Oval Office, or at one of his rallies, but he is NOT going to give it from the House of Representatives until the government is opened. Speaker Pelosi has spoken, and that's just the way it is.

Democrats Need To Stop Trying To Demonize Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi has always been a good Democrat. She supports the liberal agenda. She is intelligent, knows the House rules better than anyone, and is not afraid to stand up to Donald Trump. She played a critical role in getting Obamacare passed. She is also the only woman in House Democratic leadership.

Those are facts.

I understand why the Republicans tried to demonize her in the 2018 election campaign. They didn't have Hillary Clinton to attack anymore, and they needed a Democratic woman to attack to please their misogynistic base. Pelosi was the obvious choice.

But I do not understand why some Democrats (mostly my fellow progressives) want to also demonize her. Do you not realize that you are playing into the Republicans' hands? Don't you realize that with the White House and the Senate in GOP control, the House Democrats need to be unified? Don't you understand that the women of America (who are largely responsible for the new Democratic control of the House) will not be happy with an all-male House leadership?

I understand the call for younger Democrats to take more leadership positions in the party. That will come. Nancy Pelosi is 78 years old (and will turn 79 in March). She is not going to be Speaker for very long. But we need her experience and leadership for the next couple of years -- while younger women and minorities get the experience needed to assume leadership. Their time will come, but this is not that time.

The whole thing smells of misogyny to me. Stop it! Don't play the Republicans' game and do their dirty work for them.

Chisum Would Rob Dems Of A Vote For Speaker

The continuing political embarrassment to the Texas Panhandle, State Rep. Warren Chisum (pictured Above), has declared his candidacy for the speakership of the Texas House of Representatives.   It seems he doesn't like the current Speaker, Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio.   He doesn't like Straus for two reasons -- Straus is fair-minded and will let even Democrats have their say in the House, and Straus is Jewish.

Chisum can't abide a Jew being Speaker of the House because Chisum is a right-wing fundamentalist christian who believes all Texans should be forced to believe as he does.   He's even gone so far as to try and mandate all Texas school children be required to take a Bible course (which he would have allowed to be taught by christian fundamentalist ministers).   Fortunately, he didn't get that approved -- the course is now an elective which no one is required to take, and must be taught by a qualified teacher.

But it still irks Chisum that the Speaker is Jewish, and it irks him even more that the Speaker would treat Democrats fairly.   In Chisum's opinion only right-wing speeches and bills should be allowed on the floor of the Texas House.   To accomplish this, he is running for election as Speaker.

But evidently he has learned how to count (or someone on his staff figured this out for him), because he has realized that if a vote is taken on the House floor for speaker when the new legislative session starts, and Straus is a candidate, then Chisum is sure to lose.   This is because every Democrat will vote for Straus, and although there are only about 49 of them, that would give Straus a good head start.   He would then need only 27 Republicans to vote for him (out of 101 total Republicans).

So Chisum has decided to deny Democrats a voice in who the new Speaker is, and have the choice of the new Speaker made in a Republican caucus.   He is hoping there are enough fringe right-wingers in the caucus to give him (or fellow right-winger Rep. Paxton) the nod over Straus.   Then the Republicans would put forward only one candidate on the floor of the House (instead of the current three candidates) and the Democrats would have to accept whoever the Republican caucus chose.

It is a sneaky, unfair and undemocratic move (since it immediately removes 49 Straus votes), but a legal one.   Chisum just needed 10 signatures to call for a caucus of Republicans, and he has gotten 9 of his cohorts to sign on to the request.   So now it looks like the Speaker of the Texas House will now be chosen in a Republican caucus rather than in a meeting of the entire House.   This should make it obvious to everyone that Chisum would not be a fair and impartial Speaker.

Will Chisum be successful in replacing the current Speaker?   Speaker Straus doesn't think so.   He says,   "Generally, I'm not opposed to the caucus meeting.   In fact, I can tell you as I stand here today, I have a supermajority of the Republican caucus who supports me so I have no fear about that."

I hope Speaker Straus is right, because he is by far the best choice of the three speaker candidates.   But I've lived in Texas too long to trust the word of Republican politicians.   We'll just have to wait and see candidate the Republican caucus sends to the House floor.

Straus Or Chisum For Tx House Speaker ?

Back in January of 2009, the Texas House of Representatives removed Speaker Craddick from his long-time role as House tyrant.   They were able to do this because the Democrats controlled nearly half of the Texas House.   They didn't have the votes to put a Democrat in the Speaker position, but with only a few Republican votes they had enough power to replace  Craddick with a moderate and much fairer Republican -- Joe Straus (R-San Antonio).

The House in 2011 looks a lot different.   A passel of House Democrats were defeated last Tuesday, and now the House division stands at 99 Republicans and 51 Democrats -- instead of the previous 77 Republicans and 73 Democrats.   The question that immediately comes to mind is whether moderate Republican Joe Straus can retain his position as House Speaker.

The choice won't be made until the first day of the legislative session in January of 2011 (the Texas Legislature only meets once every two years in an odd-numbered year).   And Straus does have some competition.   A few weeks before the election, Panhandle representative Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) announced he is seeking the Speaker position.

After the election was over and it was known there will be 22 new right-wing Republicans in the Texas House, Chisum was quick to remind everyone that he still wants the position.   He seems to think that many new Republicans gives him a chance to oust Speaker Straus.   Chisum is a Bible-thumping far right-winger who is angry with Straus because of his fairness -- even with Democrats.

Speaker Straus has already released a list of 122 House members who say they will vote for his re-election as Speaker (and he only needs 76 votes).   At least one Republican has changed his mind so far -- Rep. Bill Zedler (R-Arlington) says his name shouldn't be on that list.   Will Straus lose enough more votes to cost him the speakership?

I doubt it.   He already has 51 Democratic votes he can count on (since no Democrat would dare vote for extremist Warren Chisum).   That means Straus only needs 25 Republican votes and he will keep the job.   He should be able to do that easily.

Another thing that makes me think he probably won't have a problem keep the speakership is  the view of some Panhandle and West Texas representatives.   Walter Price of Amarillo, John Smithee of Amarillo and John Frullo of Lubbock have all said they will honor their promise to support Straus.   If Chisum can't even get the support of reps in the districts closest to him, how is he going to get enough support to win?

I think Straus will be able to win and retain his position as Texas House Speaker.   But Texas is a weird state and strange things have happened in the past, so we'll have to wait until January to see what happens.

Smithee Enters Race (Too Late)

It looks like the far right-wing underestimated the depth of opposition to their candidate for Speaker, Bob Craddick. Craddick had served three terms and seemed to have an uncanny ability to overcome any opposition to his election. The far-right element in the party evidently thought he could overcome any opposition again, but it's just not going to happen this time.

Sunday night, Craddick met with his supporters and it became obvious that there just weren't enough of them this time. He bowed to the inevitable and told his supporters he will withdraw his name from consideration. His dictatorial reign is finally over.

But what was the right-wing to do. They couldn't accept Rep. Joe Straus. After all, he's a moderate who listens to both sides of a question. The right-wingers can't have that because they are convinced that every question only has one side -- theirs.

So many of them talked Amarillo Rep. John Smithee (pictured) into tossing his hat into the ring. They thought maybe a nicer version of Craddick could save the day, and they could keep their stranglehold on the House. And it might have worked if they had done it a couple of weeks ago.

But right now it looks like too little too late. I'm sure they be trying to twist arms for the next week or so, but I think most of them really believe it's futile. Even the Panhandle's looniest legislator, Warren Chisum, admitted as much, when he told an Austin news crew "It's over.".

The fact is that Rep. Joe Straus already has as many as 94 public commitments, and he only needs 76 to win the speakership. I don't think there's any way the right-wing can peel off enough votes to elect Smithee.

This race is all over except for the shouting, and the shouting starts in a few days.

UPDATE -- Capitol Annex is reporting that Smithee has withdrawn from the speaker's race.

Burnam Will Support Straus For Speaker

There are now 74 Democrats in the 150 seat Texas House of Representatives, and I'm sure most of them are reps that all Democrats can be proud of. But there is one who has long been my favorite -- Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth. Rep. Burnam, who has been in the Texas House since 1997, is not just a Democrat, but a true progressive who has never been afraid to speak the truth about our corporate Republican power structure.

To his credit, Rep. Burnam has never voted for current Speaker Bob Craddick. In fact, he has never supported any Republican for the speaker's position. But it looks like that is fixing to change. Burnam has just announced that he is supporting, and will be voting for, San Antonio Republican Rep. Joe Straus (pictured) to be the next Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Rep. Burnam said Rep. Straus "is a really nice guy", and that he has worked closely with him on energy conservation and alternative energy. He said, "He understands that issue better than any other Republican in the House. He's one of the nicest Republicans I've ever met."

Tarrant County Democratic Representatives Marc Veasey and Paula Pierson are also throwing their support behind Rep. Straus. They say he is a conservative, but is always willing to listen to the other side. Pierson believes Straus now has the support of 64 of the 74 Democrats in the House, and possibly more.

Personally, I would like to see a Democrat as speaker. But until they are the majority, that isn't going to happen. So the next best thing is to get Craddick replaced with a Republican who will be fair.

If Lon Burnam says that person is Rep. Straus, that's good enough for me. The important thing is to defeat Craddick.

Is The Texas House Speaker's Race Still Open ?

Right after the election, most people thought Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick [R-Midland] was a shoo-in for re-election to his post in the House. Speaker Craddick bragged of having over 100 signed pledge cards of support from members of the Texas House. Only one House member, Rep. Sefronia Thompson [D-Houston], has made it known publicly that she is running against Craddick, and most people think she has no chance to unseat him.

But now the dynamic of the Speaker's race seems to be changing a bit. Many members are not saying who they will vote for, and those pledge cards are not binding on the House members. It looks like many members want to wait and see if enough support comes together for a candidate that could unseat Craddick.

It's understandable that members would not want to make their opposition public yet. Craddick is known for punishing House members who oppose him. A member who votes against him could lose a choice committee seat, or find that a bill he introduced has no chance of coming up for a vote. That is how he got the signed pledge cards in the first place.

But there are now murmurs of opposition, and some names of other possible contenders are coming out -- names such as Rep. Robert Talton [R-Pasadena] or Rep. Brian McCall [R-Plano].

Perhaps most interesting is a proposal by Rep. Tommy Merritt [R-Longview]. Merritt wants to change the rules, and allow House members to choose a Speaker by secret ballot. This is an excellent idea and should be done.

If the Speaker was chosen by secret ballot, then members could vote for the best candidate instead of the one they fear. But Craddick will fight the secret ballot -- he knows he would be defeated in a heartbeat if he could no longer threaten the other House members.

I still think Craddick is the probable winner, especially with the system that is in place. But I hope for a better outcome.