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McCarthy drops out the House Speaker race

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Any long time US political observers can explain why Republicans veered hard right?

The demographics and national opinions don't support it, yet it's worked out for them in State legislatures, Congress and governorships.

I remember more moderate Republicans in the 80s and 90s.
 
entrement said:
Any long time US political observers can explain why Republicans veered hard right?

The demographics and national opinions don't support it, yet it's worked out for them in State and National legislature and governorships.

I remember more moderate Republicans in the 80s and 90s.
Click to expand...

In very, very short:

Obama was elected and was able to pass Obamacare.

It galvanized a segment of the American public much more than any other democratic president had in the past.

Because he was black.
 
I also wonder if McCarthy is just saying he's dropping out when in reality, the votes aren't there, and he's trying to save face for the conference as best he can.
 
Veritigo_X said:
How could he not see the path to get enough votes? I figured he was a sure thing.
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The 30ish Freedom Caucus members (teaparty) dug in their heels and refused to vote with the other 210ish Republicans for McCarthy. Therefore they can't get to the 218 they need to elect the leader.

I just don't know who the "compromise" candidate can be. Can those 30 pull the other 200+ Republicans so far to the right that they elect a tea party member as leader?
 
marrec said:
In very, very short:

Obama was elected and was able to pass Obamacare.

It galvanized a segment of the American public much more than any other democratic president had in the past.

Because he was black.
Click to expand...

But this was happening before Obama.
 
I think what we might end up seeing is a series of entirely nonconclusive votes, until 1 of 2 things happens: the establishment republicans get scared/bored/tired enough to bow to the tea party guys, or they end up cutting a deal with the democrats to get their guy in for concessions.

I'm really not sure what would be crazier, but at the moment, those are the two possibilities.
 
Grym said:
The 30ish Freedom Caucus members (teaparty) dug in their heels and refused to vote with the other 210ish Republicans for McCarthy. Therefore they can't get to the 218 they need to elect the leader.

I just don't know who the "compromise" candidate can be. Can those 30 pull the other 200+ Republicans so far to the right that they elect a tea party member as leader?
Click to expand...

Thanks. The divide among the party is getting crazy.

ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
These sane GOP members have the proper level of fear for Chaffetz.
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Channelling their inner Boehner.
 
Ryan absolutely doesn't want the speaker position. He just reiterated his stance. You guys have nothing to worry about,
 
Poodlestrike said:
I think what we might end up seeing is a series of entirely nonconclusive votes, until 1 of 2 things happens: the establishment republicans get scared/bored/tired enough to bow to the tea party guys, or they end up cutting a deal with the democrats to get their guy in for concessions.

I'm really not sure what would be crazier, but at the moment, those are the two possibilities.
Click to expand...

And that 2nd deal would effectively create a 3rd party, would it not?
 
davepoobond said:
I don't think anyone knows that's a possibility. Also, unless its Dick Cheney or something its gonna be a neutered position. Also I would feel uneasy that a solely appointed person is 3rd in line for the presidency
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Yeah, I was just geeking out for a minute because this basically throws a huge cog into congress, especially the GOP. I enjoy watching them squirm, but at the same time I'm mostly just excited because this is going to be really entertaining.
 
entrement said:
But this was happening before Obama.
Click to expand...

I don't think it was. You had the normal pendulum swing you see in American politics but the real hard right veer was in 2008-10.

The left and right fought bitterly during the Bush years but it was nothing like we see now. 9/11 may have delayed the inevitable though, I dunno.
 
if the representatives can't settle on a speaker.

What If the House Can't Elect a New Speaker? (posted yesterday, before shit went down today)
[Chaffetz] is making no claims that he—or anyone else—can defeat Kevin McCarthy when the 247-member House Republican conference gathers behind closed doors on Thursday to elect their next leader. But Chaffetz’s theory of the case is that no matter what happens in that meeting, McCarthy can’t get the 218 votes he’ll need to formally win election by the full House as speaker. At least 30 arch-conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus will oppose McCarthy during the floor vote on October 29, and then the House will be deadlocked.

That scenario is precisely what frightens rank-and-file Republicans.

The House could become institutionally paralyzed until it found a candidate that a majority of its voting members supported as speaker. And if the Republican leader fell short on the first ballot, there’s no guarantee the party would quickly settle on someone else. “We’ve got to figure out how to get to 218 before we get to the floor. Because otherwise we could be literally doing this through the fall,” said Representative Tom Rooney, a McCarthy ally from Florida.

The last time it took multiple ballots to elect a speaker was 1923, when it took nine, and in the 19th century it took as long as two months for the House to agree on a leader. This year, the House just doesn’t have that kind of time. Congress must lift the debt limit to avoid a first-ever default within a week of the scheduled election for speaker, according to the Treasury Department, and it must pass another spending bill by December 11 to prevent a government shutdown.
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Notably, if this chaos doesn't resolve by then, Boehner said he would stay on as speaker (lol):
When he announced his resignation last month, Boehner said it would become effective on October 30. On Monday, he set the floor vote for the day before, allowing for a last-minute change if the House failed to replace him. (A senior member of the Rules Committee, Representative Tom Cole, told reporters on Tuesday that if no one received enough votes on the 29th, Boehner would stay on until someone did.) Boehner also announced that he was pushing back the date of elections for the House’s other top leadership positions to November, meaning that Republicans would only vote to replace McCarthy as majority leader if he wins the floor election as speaker.
Click to expand...
 
So it's basically:

1. Get next to nothing done under Boehner or pass inane bills that won't pass (and one more repeal Obamacare session)
2. Get absolutely nothing done under fringe speaker or pass MORE inane bills that won't pass (and one more repeal Obamacare session)

Man Congress is so screwed for dems
 
He may be the smart one here.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/08/so-um-congratulations-mr-speaker-elect/
This article was from an hour ago before the announcement but either way
So what’s the deal with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who has an actual risk of contracting the speaker-itis ailment? The others running today can do so content in the knowledge that they are all but certain to fail, making a candidacy an appealing way to either make oneself more famous or make an ideological point.

McCarthy, though, is actually likely to end up with the job after an election ordeal that is only the amuse-bouche before the feast of degradation and frustration that lies ahead.

The election this afternoon will go like this: McCarthy is all but certain to win a majority of the 247 Republican House members, but not get the 218 votes he needs at the end of the month to be elected speaker by the whole House. With enough GOP members having vowed to not vote with their party’s pick, they can deny McCarthy a win on the first ballot, and, they hope, force the vote into chaos and allow other options – ranging from intriguing to absolutely batty – to come to the fore.

To prevent this from happening, McCarthy will spend the rest of the month making impossible promises to mistrusting adversaries. Those promises will make his eventual job so much more miserable.

Unable to deliver in office the unicorns of conservative excellence and purity promised by his foes, McCarthy will be called a traitor and a failure and the same folks who have reviled Boehner will threaten and thunder over McCarthy.

And the same Washington elites who deplored Boehner for not being able to simultaneously ignore and lead his own members will still be tweeting away in their just-so Capitol Hill mews or their paneled study in Great Falls.

So, um, congratulations, Mr. Speaker-elect?
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I wouldn't want to be the one that has to herd all the cats either.

Tinfoil hat time, he purposely said the Benghazi remarks so he would lose support and use that as a excuse to drop out of the race so he won't have to deal with the hell the speaker gets exposed to.
 
Poodlestrike said:
I think what we might end up seeing is a series of entirely nonconclusive votes, until 1 of 2 things happens: the establishment republicans get scared/bored/tired enough to bow to the tea party guys, or they end up cutting a deal with the democrats to get their guy in for concessions.

I'm really not sure what would be crazier, but at the moment, those are the two possibilities.
Click to expand...

Yep. And a series of votes has happened a few times in the past. But this time it could end very badly since we have to raise the debt limit within a week of the first vote to avoid default.
 
CQzxqstWIAEGjzo.jpg
 
This is just absolutely crazy to me. A party is basically being held hostage by about 40 members.

At this point they find a needle in aa haystack to bring everyone together.
Or a party split could happen, which would be really interesting.
 
entrement said:
Any long time US political observers can explain why Republicans veered hard right?

The demographics and national opinions don't support it, yet it's worked out for them in State legislatures, Congress and governorships.

I remember more moderate Republicans in the 80s and 90s.
Click to expand...

Short version?

Gingrich figured out that hardline politics gets votes. It's just more effective at energizing your base. This results in a feedback loop.

There's other factors, but that's the primary one.
 
entrement said:
Any long time US political observers can explain why Republicans veered hard right?

The demographics and national opinions don't support it, yet it's worked out for them in State legislatures, Congress and governorships.

I remember more moderate Republicans in the 80s and 90s.
Click to expand...

The country as a whole doesn't support the demographic swings the Republicans have been having but part of it is a lot of those so called moderate republicans are now independents and in a lot of states you can't vote in a republican primary unless you identify as republican, in the end these 'independents' still see themselves more affiliated with republicans and end up voting republican anyways but now they have a candidate they would not normally have voted for but just couldn't vote for the otherside, so these partisan hacks end up getting through as a consequence. On top of all this the establishment elected an idiot with neocon advisers for president and with the advent of Fox news began 'conditioning' a lot of the more hard right into an extreme partisan force which they subsequently lost control of during the 2010 elections in a pursuit to completely undermine our current president at all cost. Judging from what I have seen those establishment candidates and voters are regretting this path because they can't control the group they galvanized anymore but yet still refuse to vote for the otherside. Until they can show that uncompromising stance on hard right side cannot work for them, they will continue to be a festering wound on our policy making.
 
bodyofanamerican said:
And that 2nd deal would effectively create a 3rd party, would it not?
Click to expand...

Heh, no.

Probably not, anyway. Freedom Caucus is crazy, but I don't think they're that crazy, not yet. More to the point, even if they left the other Republicans, the establishment wouldn't suddenly move left enough to really differentiate them.
 
They should elect the Koch Brothers as the Twin Emperors.
 
Poodlestrike said:
Heh, no.

Probably not, anyway. Freedom Caucus is crazy, but I don't think they're that crazy, not yet. More to the point, even if they left the other Republicans, the establishment wouldn't suddenly move left enough to really differentiate them.
Click to expand...

Yeah you're right. It would definitely turn every congressional primary into a Roman gladiatorial contest at least.
 
ohhh damn.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mccarthy-drops-out-of-race-for-house-speaker/
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), interviewed live on CNN, said McCarthy withdrew because although he could have won a majority of the Republican Conference, he would not have had 218 votes on the House floor.

Dent said it might be necessary to form a “bipartisan coalition” with Democrats to elect the next speaker and avoid having to appease the “rejectionist wing” of his own party, which he said has made the House ungovernable by insisting on “unreasonable demands.”
Click to expand...
Bipartisan coalition in american politics?
 
Hey America, democrats especially, this is what happens when you don't vote during midterm elections.

People don't realize how important mid term elections are.
 
entrement said:
Any long time US political observers can explain why Republicans veered hard right?

The demographics and national opinions don't support it, yet it's worked out for them in State legislatures, Congress and governorships.

I remember more moderate Republicans in the 80s and 90s.
Click to expand...

Honestly this is all -- Obama, the Tea Party, this moment, etc -- ALL a continued reaction and shock and shudder in response to the disaster that George W Bush was for the country and conservative thought.

We'll be seeing the aftershocks of this for a long time to come. This is what happens when an entire political philosophy is discredited with such dire consequences. It'll get worse before it gets better.
 
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