(Heck, a small group of Democrats could still join McCarthy to survive a re-vote and change the rules back.)
My guess is that the Democrats like it when the Republicans look bad even if they eventual outcome is a loss for the country as a whole.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Speaker_of_the_United_Sta...
A small group of Republicans could have voted for Hakeem Jeffries and locked the crazies out completely. Did you have a cognizant point to make?
The problem with that is, there would be no way to hold McCarthy accountable to those promises. Republicans do not negotiate in good faith, and any promises about the debt ceiling, committee assignments, and the like wouldn't be worth the air they were spoken with.
Several aspects made this difficult to do though:
1) Given our political climate, no one wants to vote for the other party to be speaker. It would be political suicide in a primary
2) For as long as it felt like the vote took, the Democrats did not have enough time to whip support for anyone other than McCarthy.
3) McCarthy would be taking a very big risk in forming an agreement with Democrats here
4) An individual politician crossing party lines without support of their party leadership would be political suicide. Not just due to voter perception, but because of how important institutional support is.
5) As you say, the appearance of Republican dusruption is goid for the Democrats.
With all of that, I'm not convinced that the concessions are that big of a deal. The core dynamic is that bipartisan agreement on high profile issues is a non starter, and the Republicans have a razor thin majority and several members willing to play hardball.
In a reasonable political system, the various factions would be separate parties, and coalition building would be between whole parties, not between factions within a party. The US has an electoral system which does not produce a reasonable political system.
(“Bipartisanship” was a side effect of partisan incoherence during the long 1930s-1990s realignment, but it's not really something one would expect except on tangential issues with parties that are strongly aligned along the main salient ideological divide.)
Well, I'm not positive of that since the primary would be a long ways away. Remember how bad of a look for Biden leaving Afghanistan was and how little anybody talks about it now?
And also sometimes politicians switch parties [1] so voting for the party you switched to sounds like a great way to drum up support.
> With all of that, I'm not convinced that the concessions are that big of a deal.
Afaik, the concessions are mostly just setting up ground-work so that the recipients can further their political career faster. Which technically is also good for the constituents as they should get more pork.
It's not like the Republican party was trying to correct itself by going with a staunchly anti-Trump country-over-party moderate.
One party is clearly taken over by lunatics, while the other maintains a much more moderate posture, yet you blame the one attempting to stay sane over the one that is making conspiracy theories part of its core platform.
Both parties have representatives who focus on policies that sound good with no useful thought or understanding of their actual effects. Both parties represent their opposites as lunatics, horrible people, other otherwise as people to be detested, with little allowance for the fact that the actual function of Congress is to pass hopefully beneficial bills — the mindsets or moral qualities of those who vote for the bills is ultimately not as important.
Left-leaning people do plenty of things that are easy for right-leaning people to point at as examples of lunacy. For example, look at almost any article about “DEI” or inclusive terminology or anything involving words like “Latinx”. Regardless of the actual merits of these things or the intentions of those who encourage them, they sound bad to many people with right-leaning hats on, and they’re very, very easy to make fun of.
That being stated, there's an objective difference between one party promoting inclusive terminology while the other promotes forcing a 10-year-old girl to give birth after being impregnated by rape. I know that latter issue wasn't mentioned, nor is it a universally held policy for all Republicans, but neither is support for inclusive terminology, and I bring it up to demonstrate the contrast of some views. Take even the most far-left view of a Democrat in Congress and it's to, what, provide universal healthcare? UBI? For this reason, I agree with the previous poster that one side seems like they're at least thinking about making life better, while the other seems hell bent on making it miserable, and sometimes in the craziest ways.
To be honest, I find the inclusive terminology more annoying than helpful, and I was born, grew up, and live in the Bay Area, a few blocks from where the Black Panthers were founded, to give an idea of where I'm coming from. But I feel like -- and this is going to sound a little strange -- Republicans harping on that topic is like sushi in the 80s. Remember movies/media from back then where eating/enjoying sushi was a sign that one was an effeminate cosmopolitan, bourgeois, and all-around weird person? Now it's in supermarkets in rural Virginia (yes, I've seen it there). At some point it will stop being a punchline; it will melt into the background and nobody will think much about it anymore.
There is no sense of morality in what you're saying. I have traditional values and would vote for a center right party over Dems, if we had one. But what we have are two parties very unequal in terms of morality and intellectual credentials.
As it is the Democrats got nothing but optics out of the fiasco. Had they played their hand differently they might have gotten something more.
For what it is worth, I suspect there was some backroom dealling they were trying to do, but nothing came of it.
Not enough to offset the support he would lose in his own party for making any concessions to Democrats. The Republican factions are Trump-backed ultra-MAGA extremists and the-Trump-backed-group-is-too-moderate ultra-extremists; neither is open to concessions to the “woke mob” of Democrats.
I’m actually really happy that they extracted terms from McCarthy. Everyone who spent time slamming these 20 Republicans should publicly apologize and write them a thank you card because they got more victories for their constituents than most politicians ever do. Here’s what they got:
- Jeffersonian Motion to vacate the chair. This allows a single person to make the motion to remove the speaker if he goes back on his word or policy agenda.
- A "Church" style committee: this allows us to look into the weaponization of orgs like the FBI against the American people.
- Term Limit Vote
- Single Subject Bills(that can't be loaded with irrelevant nonsense
- Texas Border Plan
- A budget that stops an increase in the debt ceiling and holds senate accountable.
- Ending emergency funding and all COVID mandates and funding.
- 72 Hours to read a bill.
These all sound like objectively good things regardless of your political orientation.
The purpose of that committee is to be a factory for clips to show on Fox News and Newsmax. I appreciate your optimism but it's unwarranted.
The democrats got their clips for CNN, MSNBC, WP, etc with their sham of an investigation complete with a Hollywood director.
Now that there's over 14,000 hours of footage being released we'll have even more clips.
Now that the pendulum has swing the other way the other side will get their chance to blow through millions and create their own circus for their supporters.
It's kinda amazing how they don't realize that the power they seize can and will be wielded by their enemy with absolutely no remorse.
This thing?
https://arrington.house.gov/uploadedfiles/1.pdf
This is an “objectively good thing” the way the War on Drugs was an “objectively good thing”. I think most people can agree that drug use and illegal border crossing ought to be reduced. But this plan is all about enforcement and ignores the demand side.
Where’s the portion of the policy making it possible for would-be employers of migrant labor to economically and legally match up with those who want to provide that labor? Where’s the portion recognizing that migrants and their children are human beings and deserve to be treated with a degree of dignity even if the US doesn’t want them right now?
> Ending … COVID … funding
I would love to see funding for a better COVID vaccine (and flu vaccine and RSV vaccine, etc).