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the 2023 speaker of the house voting thread of implosion


henrygandorf

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4 hours ago, immamac said:

the lions share of the board is now registered independent, with a slight conservative lean, which surprise surprise is just like Texans generally. 

1. Texas is an open primary state so there's no such thing as a registered Republican, Democrat or independent in this state.

2. If your statement is true, why are statewide offices overwhelmingly occupied by conservative extremists?

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6 minutes ago, royiv said:

1. Texas is an open primary state so there's no such thing as a registered Republican, Democrat or independent in this state.

2. If your statement is true, why are statewide offices overwhelmingly occupied by conservative extremists?

Gerrymandering is a thing. Representation is skewed heavily in rural low pop areas and you know what I meant because we just did a windsock poll in the CR. 

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1 minute ago, immamac said:

Gerrymandering is a thing. Representation is skewed heavily in rural low pop areas and you know what I meant because we just did a windsock poll in the CR. 

The windsock poll had a 26% response rate for independent and 55% democrat or liberal response. I don't call that a lion's share independent with a slight conservative lean. In addition, gerrymandering has no effect on statewide races so, no, I don't know what you mean. If your thesis on how the voters of Texas identify is true, why is our Governor, Lt. Governor, AG, etc all conservative extremists?

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5 minutes ago, royiv said:

The windsock poll had a 26% response rate for independent and 55% democrat or liberal response. I don't call that a lion's share independent with a slight conservative lean. In addition, gerrymandering has no effect on statewide races so, no, I don't know what you mean. If your thesis on how the voters of Texas identify is true, why is our Governor, Lt. Governor, AG, etc all conservative extremists?

Just kinda done talking to you about it tbh. 

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Thank you, GQP. The world finally respects us again.

 

To the World, McCarthy’s Exit Is Just Another Example of U.S. Disarray
Amid upheaval on Capitol Hill and the undermining of democratic norms, the country’s institutions are under profound stress.

There was a time, not that long ago, when the United States presumed to teach the world how it was done. When it held itself up as a model of a stable, predictable democracy. When it sent idealistic young avatars to distant parts of the globe to impart the American way.

These days, to many watching at home and abroad, the American way no longer seems to offer a case study in effective representative democracy. Instead, it has become an example of disarray and discord, one that rewards extremism, challenges norms and threatens to divide a polarized country even further.

The Republican uprising that led to the ouster of a House speaker for the first time in American history would be enough of a disruption. But the upheaval on Capitol Hill comes as a former president sits in a New York courtroom, already judged to be a fraud, while using increasingly violent language and pushing the limits of a gag order. At the same time, military aid to stop Russian invaders in Ukraine has been held up by a vocal G.O.P. minority in Congress, and another government shutdown looms next month.

The institutions that were already strained during Donald J. Trump’s presidency now face a series of profound stress tests. Can the courts maintain public faith and deal credibly with a former president running for his old job who has been accused of so many crimes it is hard to keep track? Can Congress get its act together enough to simply pick a leader, much less address vexing issues like immigration, spending, climate change and gun violence? Can the presidency in the hands of an aging traditional politician like President Biden be a tool to heal the wounds of society?

Mr. Biden, for his part, emphasized on Wednesday his commitment to trying as he vowed to work with whoever emerges as the replacement for the deposed Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy. “More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” Mr. Biden said. “I know we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies. We need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another. And we can do that.”

Not many others in Washington shared his optimism. And that certainly was not the message of his putative rival, Mr. Trump. Outside the courtroom in New York on Wednesday, the former president proved undaunted by the gag order as he attacked the judge who imposed it. “He’s run by the Democrats,” Mr. Trump claimed. “Our whole system is corrupt. This is corrupt. Atlanta is corrupt. And what’s coming out of D.C. is corrupt.”

The former president has long chosen provocation over peacemaking. But in recent weeks, he has escalated the violence of his rhetoric. He threatened to investigate NBC News for “treason” if he gets back in office, mocked the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was attacked in their home, called for shoplifters to be shot on sight and implied that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed as a traitor. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” he wrote on social media in August.

Mr. Trump’s brand of burn-the-house-down politics played a role in this week’s meltdown among House Republicans, inspiring the far-right rebels who took down Mr. McCarthy. But the Republicans have been building to this moment since before Mr. Trump won the presidency. The ultraconservatives in their conference effectively pressured two previous Republican speakers to leave, albeit without the spectacle of the vote that formally toppled Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday.

Political parties, of course, sometimes devolve into internal struggles. The Democrats have their differences as well, although not nearly as drastic as those of the Republicans, and they have their scandals, including a senator indicted on corruption charges. Moreover, America has gone through other periods of deep divisions, as during the eras of McCarthyism, civil rights, Vietnam and Watergate, to say nothing of the Civil War.

What is different now, according to some scholars, is that Republicans under Mr. Trump have directly attacked the foundation of the democratic system by refusing to accept an election that they lost and by tolerating if not encouraging political violence, most notably the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

“A democracy on the verge of veering out of control is the consequence when one of the major political players in the democratic process won’t accept the basic rules of the game,” said Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor who recently published “Tyranny of the Minority” with his colleague Steven Levitsky, a sequel to their seminal book, “How Democracies Die.”

The American public has been sour on the country for a remarkably long stretch. The last time a majority of Americans reported being satisfied “with the way things are going in the United States” in Gallup surveys was January 2004, nearly two decades ago.

That has taken a toll on American institutions. Fewer than half of Americans express confidence in the police, the medical system, organized religion, the Supreme Court, banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, organized labor, the media, the criminal justice system, big business or Congress, according to Gallup, which last year recorded significant declines in 11 of the 16 institutions it tracks. Only small business and the military drew more than 50 percent support.

A separate survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in June found that 49 percent of Americans believe democracy is not working well in the United States, compared with 40 percent who say it is working only somewhat well and just 10 percent who believe it is working very or extremely well.

Among those presumably watching the tumult of recent days with some satisfaction is President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The state-run Channel 1 on Wednesday night reported with no shortage of schadenfreude that “Washington is on the verge of chaos” and the situation is “as scandalous as it is unpredictable.”

One of the goals of Mr. Putin’s election interference operation in 2016 was to sow dissension in the American system, according to intelligence agencies, and Washington has now managed to do that all by itself. “If Putin is following the chaos,” said Maria Lipman, a longtime Russian political analyst now at George Washington University, “he has every reason to gloat and to feel superior.”

Given the congressional spending fight of recent days that has jeopardized security aid for Ukraine, she added, “what he should truly care about is whether or not the U.S. support for Ukraine might wane in the conceivable future and weaken Ukraine’s military capacity.” There is no guarantee that Congress will approve billions more for Ukraine, and Mr. Putin is clearly waiting to see if Mr. Trump, who criticizes aid to defend the country, will beat Mr. Biden in next year’s election.

Robert M. Gates, the longtime Republican national security official who served as defense secretary for both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, warned in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine last week titled “The Dysfunctional Superpower” that both Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China were interpreting America’s troubles in perilous ways.

Both leaders, he wrote, are convinced that democracies like the United States “are past their prime and have entered an irreversible decline,” evident in their growing isolationism, political polarization and domestic conflict. “Dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable,” Mr. Gates wrote, “practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets — with potentially catastrophic effects.”

And that was before the meltdown in the House of the past few days. In an email on Wednesday, Mr. Gates wrote, “The events of the last couple of days have only underscored how real is the dysfunction.”

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Gerrymandering can absolutely have an affect on statewide races. Convincing someone that’s been in the minority for 20 years to get up again and that this year is different and we have the demographics on our side falls flat on people who have learned to live with losing.

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2 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Gerrymandering can absolutely have an affect on statewide races. Convincing someone that’s been in the minority for 20 years to get up again and that this year is different and we have the demographics on our side falls flat on people who have learned to live with losing.

I'll agree with you on that point from a GOTV standpoint, but it doesn't seem to stop the large urban areas from solidly voting D. It still doesn't explain why our statewide offices are occupied by extremists if the thesis is that the majority of Texans are independent with a slight conservative lean.

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Just now, royiv said:

I'll agree with you on that point from a GOTV standpoint, but it doesn't seem to stop the large urban areas from solidly voting D. It still doesn't explain why our statewide offices are occupied by extremists if the thesis is that the majority of Texans are independent with a slight conservative lean.

Because voter turnout is absolute dogshit garbage and not representative of the population in the slightest. 

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Just now, immamac said:

Because voter turnout is absolute dogshit garbage and not representative of the population in the slightest. 

Totally agree that voter turnout is pathetic in this state, but if people were really pissed about the state of affairs, wouldn't they vote? I know you and Stassney likely feel like it's the streak of losing that suppresses the vote, and there's probably a not insignificant amount of that, but I also think enough people are okay with the status quo and know that they don't need to make the effort to vote because they like the way things are. 

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So they're definitely shutting the government down.

What's the end game for Republicans? They're going to get the blame for it, so ostensibly they think whatever they are going to get out of it will outweigh the beating they're going to take in the polls.

What are they going to get out of it?

Edited by DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt
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2 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

So they're definitely shutting the government down.

What's the end game for Republicans? They're going to get the blame for it, so ostensibly they think whatever they are going to get out of it will outweigh the beating they're going to take in the polls.

What are they going to get out of it?


trump only wants jack smith shutdown, and all ny courts 

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6 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:


trump only wants jack smith shutdown, and all ny courts 

According to this: 'Critically, all criminal proceedings are exempt, meaning prosecutions will continue uninterrupted.'

Even if Trump knows his trials will proceed, he's going to demand that they shut down the government. And they're going to have to do whatever he wants because they've sold their soul to the devil...but what are they actually going to get out of all this?

Edit: further in the article is says this:

Quote

The federal courts have said they will be able to continue operations for at least two weeks in the event of a shutdown, relying on court fees and other available funds to continue hearing cases. But if the shutdown goes longer than that, the courts will be impacted—the judiciary’s operations will be curtailed and only those staff members essential to the court’s most critical responsibilities would continue to work.

Should a prospective shutdown last more than two weeks, organizations with pending business before a federal court can expect their proceedings to slow or be postponed until appropriate funding is allocated to resume the courts’ functions at full capacity. In the short term, however, criminal and civil proceedings in federal court should continue as normal.

so yeah, government is shutting down for a long time.

Fuck it all.

Edited by DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt
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5 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

18 house R’s come from districts that Biden won 

And that's why putting Trump up for a vote ends their careers and the GOP majority.

1. Vote against Trump and they get primaried by a MAGA nutjob who loses in the general;

2. Vote for Trump and lose the general to the same Democrat;

3. Worst for them - the Biden Rs switch parties to save their jobs.

In short, there are no good outcomes for the GOP if Trump runs for Speaker whether he wins or not.

 

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4 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

so yeah, government is shutting down for a long time.

Fuck it all.

Well why did the Democrats do that? 

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1 hour ago, Dbeasy said:

When I look back on my own political awakening, it pisses me off it took me so long to become aware of all of the Republican bullshit. 

Always an independent, I tended to be slightly conservative due to fiscal concerns, and beliefs around individual responsibility.

2015 was a major year for me. Despite it being obvious for years, I finally realized how the Fox News propaganda train was destroying the country.  I caught on to Trump early during the primary and didn’t vote for him, but amazingly kept thinking he might govern differently once in office, until a few weeks after he took office it was obvious that his moronic behavior would continue. In retrospect that was ridiculous to think he would not be a total embarrassment. 

I do think there’s hope for the future. I connected with two Trumpers last week that I hadn’t talked to in awhile and they are done with him and other radicals.  Unfortunately, one them operates in the rarified air of the super rich, and he said a bunch of those folks are not only still on the Trump bandwagon, they still believe all the QAAnon conspiracy bill shit.  

 

 

Can you introduce us to the super rich conspiracy nuts?

I have a moral problem with grifting the stupid poor, but no qualms at all about grifting the stupid rich.

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32 minutes ago, royiv said:

 It still doesn't explain why our statewide offices are occupied by extremists 

Our primaries are the first week in March. That’s the answer. You can hope for larger turnout in presidential years, but it’s mostly very online Dems or Reps or people who fill their cars with bumper stickers

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1 hour ago, royiv said:

The windsock poll had a 26% response rate for independent and 55% democrat or liberal response. I don't call that a lion's share independent with a slight conservative lean. In addition, gerrymandering has no effect on statewide races so, no, I don't know what you mean. If your thesis on how the voters of Texas identify is true, why is our Governor, Lt. Governor, AG, etc all conservative extremists?

 

1 hour ago, immamac said:

Just kinda done talking to you about it tbh. 

 

1 hour ago, royiv said:

Great talk. 

 

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

that was awesome

what_the.jpg.28721f1f4acf4c6fd0b9fff4f9779b1b.jpg

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Thank you, GQP. The world finally respects us again.

 

To the World, McCarthy’s Exit Is Just Another Example of U.S. Disarray
Amid upheaval on Capitol Hill and the undermining of democratic norms, the country’s institutions are under profound stress.

There was a time, not that long ago, when the United States presumed to teach the world how it was done. When it held itself up as a model of a stable, predictable democracy. When it sent idealistic young avatars to distant parts of the globe to impart the American way.

These days, to many watching at home and abroad, the American way no longer seems to offer a case study in effective representative democracy. Instead, it has become an example of disarray and discord, one that rewards extremism, challenges norms and threatens to divide a polarized country even further.

The Republican uprising that led to the ouster of a House speaker for the first time in American history would be enough of a disruption. But the upheaval on Capitol Hill comes as a former president sits in a New York courtroom, already judged to be a fraud, while using increasingly violent language and pushing the limits of a gag order. At the same time, military aid to stop Russian invaders in Ukraine has been held up by a vocal G.O.P. minority in Congress, and another government shutdown looms next month.

The institutions that were already strained during Donald J. Trump’s presidency now face a series of profound stress tests. Can the courts maintain public faith and deal credibly with a former president running for his old job who has been accused of so many crimes it is hard to keep track? Can Congress get its act together enough to simply pick a leader, much less address vexing issues like immigration, spending, climate change and gun violence? Can the presidency in the hands of an aging traditional politician like President Biden be a tool to heal the wounds of society?

Mr. Biden, for his part, emphasized on Wednesday his commitment to trying as he vowed to work with whoever emerges as the replacement for the deposed Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy. “More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington,” Mr. Biden said. “I know we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies. We need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another. And we can do that.”

Not many others in Washington shared his optimism. And that certainly was not the message of his putative rival, Mr. Trump. Outside the courtroom in New York on Wednesday, the former president proved undaunted by the gag order as he attacked the judge who imposed it. “He’s run by the Democrats,” Mr. Trump claimed. “Our whole system is corrupt. This is corrupt. Atlanta is corrupt. And what’s coming out of D.C. is corrupt.”

The former president has long chosen provocation over peacemaking. But in recent weeks, he has escalated the violence of his rhetoric. He threatened to investigate NBC News for “treason” if he gets back in office, mocked the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was attacked in their home, called for shoplifters to be shot on sight and implied that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed as a traitor. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” he wrote on social media in August.

Mr. Trump’s brand of burn-the-house-down politics played a role in this week’s meltdown among House Republicans, inspiring the far-right rebels who took down Mr. McCarthy. But the Republicans have been building to this moment since before Mr. Trump won the presidency. The ultraconservatives in their conference effectively pressured two previous Republican speakers to leave, albeit without the spectacle of the vote that formally toppled Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday.

Political parties, of course, sometimes devolve into internal struggles. The Democrats have their differences as well, although not nearly as drastic as those of the Republicans, and they have their scandals, including a senator indicted on corruption charges. Moreover, America has gone through other periods of deep divisions, as during the eras of McCarthyism, civil rights, Vietnam and Watergate, to say nothing of the Civil War.

What is different now, according to some scholars, is that Republicans under Mr. Trump have directly attacked the foundation of the democratic system by refusing to accept an election that they lost and by tolerating if not encouraging political violence, most notably the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

“A democracy on the verge of veering out of control is the consequence when one of the major political players in the democratic process won’t accept the basic rules of the game,” said Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard professor who recently published “Tyranny of the Minority” with his colleague Steven Levitsky, a sequel to their seminal book, “How Democracies Die.”

The American public has been sour on the country for a remarkably long stretch. The last time a majority of Americans reported being satisfied “with the way things are going in the United States” in Gallup surveys was January 2004, nearly two decades ago.

That has taken a toll on American institutions. Fewer than half of Americans express confidence in the police, the medical system, organized religion, the Supreme Court, banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, organized labor, the media, the criminal justice system, big business or Congress, according to Gallup, which last year recorded significant declines in 11 of the 16 institutions it tracks. Only small business and the military drew more than 50 percent support.

A separate survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in June found that 49 percent of Americans believe democracy is not working well in the United States, compared with 40 percent who say it is working only somewhat well and just 10 percent who believe it is working very or extremely well.

Among those presumably watching the tumult of recent days with some satisfaction is President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The state-run Channel 1 on Wednesday night reported with no shortage of schadenfreude that “Washington is on the verge of chaos” and the situation is “as scandalous as it is unpredictable.”

One of the goals of Mr. Putin’s election interference operation in 2016 was to sow dissension in the American system, according to intelligence agencies, and Washington has now managed to do that all by itself. “If Putin is following the chaos,” said Maria Lipman, a longtime Russian political analyst now at George Washington University, “he has every reason to gloat and to feel superior.”

Given the congressional spending fight of recent days that has jeopardized security aid for Ukraine, she added, “what he should truly care about is whether or not the U.S. support for Ukraine might wane in the conceivable future and weaken Ukraine’s military capacity.” There is no guarantee that Congress will approve billions more for Ukraine, and Mr. Putin is clearly waiting to see if Mr. Trump, who criticizes aid to defend the country, will beat Mr. Biden in next year’s election.

Robert M. Gates, the longtime Republican national security official who served as defense secretary for both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, warned in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine last week titled “The Dysfunctional Superpower” that both Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China were interpreting America’s troubles in perilous ways.

Both leaders, he wrote, are convinced that democracies like the United States “are past their prime and have entered an irreversible decline,” evident in their growing isolationism, political polarization and domestic conflict. “Dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable,” Mr. Gates wrote, “practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets — with potentially catastrophic effects.”

And that was before the meltdown in the House of the past few days. In an email on Wednesday, Mr. Gates wrote, “The events of the last couple of days have only underscored how real is the dysfunction.”

picard too long didnt read GIF

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6 hours ago, 27-25 said:

Reagan gets credit for the economic recovery that followed Paul Volcker's steps to curb inflation.  Who nominated Volcker as chairman of the Fed?  Jimmy Carter.  Life isn't fair and politics even less so.

I wonder how much different America would look today if Operation Eagle Claw had worked. 

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1 hour ago, royiv said:

I'll agree with you on that point from a GOTV standpoint, but it doesn't seem to stop the large urban areas from solidly voting D. It still doesn't explain why our statewide offices are occupied by extremists if the thesis is that the majority of Texans are independent with a slight conservative lean.

The primaries determine the candidates for the general.  The primaries are mainly voted on by the extremes.

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2 hours ago, Js1 said:

Preview:

Trump: I will be your Speaker if it gets me out of my legal troubles

GOP Caucus: I mean, that doesn't protect you from any of your indictments

Trump:

Nileseyy Niles Peace Out GIF - Nileseyy Niles Peace Out ...

 

 

Yeah, until they pitch him on how much money he will be able to fundraise while he swings the gavel around and mugs for the camera. 

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16 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I hadn't opened a thread there in years. I saw familiar names. You're right about it being TexAgs for Longhorn Regards:

image.png.6f5d3afc2a56d78a5581e46e1bf02bf3.png

Why how interesting. A lot of names I hadn’t thought of in 15+ years.
It‘s like the card game in Sunset Boulevard over there, except the bridge players want to kill William Holden because he’s cool and good looking. 
I wonder how old yellow shirt Sua Sponte’s protest is going…

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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