The Republican Party's latest nominee for the House Speaker position, Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer, dropped out of the race following opposition from the hard-line faction close to former President Donald Trump, CNN reported on Oct. 24.
The extremist maga wing will never, ever cave. So it's up to the not-so-extreme Republican members to decide between A) cave to the extreme magas and elect one of them as Speaker, or B) negotiate with Democrats to form a coalition that can pass bipartisan legislation, leaving the extremists powerless, and elect a more mainstream (if you can still call them that) republican as Speaker. But working with Democrats in any way is poison to Republicans, who are terrified of getting on the wrong side of their "base" and the right-wing media, which would make them subject to death threats and violence to them or their families (yes this is a real thing).
Picture the "sweaty guy trying to decide between two buttons" meme and you see their dilemma.
Update: The republicans, as would be expected, chose option A and caved to the extremists, electing an ultra maga election-denier, Mike Johnson, as Speaker. This is bad news for Ukraine. He was previously supportive of Ukraine but then he switched and voted against more aid last time. In his acceptance speech he mentioned supporting Israel but made no mention of Ukraine. The extremists have won the Speaker fight and are emboldened.
But the American people, the White House, and the majority of the Congress and Senators support Ukraine and will do their best to get more aid bills passed. But things will be more difficult now because of this.
I think at this point they're just not going to be able to elect anyone as House Speaker. All the most "popular" choices have been tried at this point, they're just cycling through the dregs now.
What happens next for the US government is a big shrug and a "who knows?" Their system of government was structured on the assumption that there would be at least some intention by the majority of its members to actually govern in a functional manner.
All that has to happen is for the Rs to offer something to the democrats so that enough of them vote present in order to neuter the Freedumb Caucus. Yknow, the thing that used to happen as a matter of course…
Add comment