Did anyone remember that Friday was J-6? I know I didn’t, until I turned on C-Span and saw wannabe-Speaker, NY Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, making some grand speech on the Capitol steps and talking about how Democrats govern without violence (puh-lease), and that we must never forget what Republican extremism leads to.
Just to show how desperate they are to put the Fauxsurrection back into the purview of Americans, someone actually took the time to pen this nonsense, connecting J-6 with the 20 Republican House Caucus members wrangling over the concessions to get them to vote for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
Of the 20 Republicans who have repeatedly voted against Kevin McCarthy, most are democracy deniers who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election and nearly all the incumbents in this herd refused to certify the election on January 6th, 2021, after their fellow Trump supporters beat hundreds of cops, sacked the Capitol building and demanded the neck of Mike Pence.
Press coverage of the 20’s demands and the load of concessions McCarthy has already offered them generally misses the larger insurrectionist point here: These Republicans genuinely seem to hate Kevin McCarthy. They don’t fear him. They have him by the teeth.
They’re not trying to break him.
He’s already broken.
The rest-a screed about why McCarthy is so horrible and why Republicans having any pulse on governance-is equally bad.
Miss me.
No matter how much Democrats and the true believers want to deny it, all eyes are on the Speaker vote, and all eyes are on the Republicans, whether it’s to mock, agree, disagree, prognosticate, or deem democracy in peril–no one has been able to look away. Our attention has been moved from the Capitol steps and is now riveted to the Capitol chambers.
As it should be.
Who is getting the oxygen on all of the major news outlets? Republicans. Whose Twitter feeds are winning the day? Republicans. The Democrats who have attempted to negatively chime in on the process and call it a sham, like AOC and the truly stupid Cori Bush, have been roundly ratioed and ultimately had to crawl back under their rock. One hopes that they will stay there.
No matter how much Democrats try to resurrect that dead horse that is the January 6 “insurrection,” consider it dead and gone. Not even worthy to be placed on the ash heap of history, it has, thankfully, been superseded by actual history happening before our very eyes.
Four days. Fifteen House ballots. Actual negotiations and hashing out. No coronations. Representatives actually representing their constituents.
This is what the founders intended. What has transpired over the past few decades has been a bastardization. What has transpired over the past few days has been a restoration. January 6, 2023, will forever be the day, after debate, deliberation, and negotiation, that a Speaker of the House was duly elected by the 118th Congress. From this day forward, that is how it will be recorded. More importantly, that is how it will be remembered.
I am of the mindset that Tucker Carlson outlined in his monologue on Thursday.
If you want to be the guy who’s second in line from the presidency in America, you’ve got to work for it. And Kevin McCarthy certainly has worked for it this week, whatever you think of him. You get the feeling McCarthy would crawl naked through a sewer to get this gig. And that’s not necessarily an insult, by the way. It’s what it takes, obviously. Maybe it’s what it should take.
So if you take a deep breath and you think about it for a second, nothing we have seen in Washington recently, the supposedly apocalyptic world-ending drama of politicians arguing with each other, none of it qualifies as especially unusual or even bad. This is what democracy looks like when you get up close. I want one thing. You want another thing. We schedule a vote to see who gets it, or in this case, 11 votes.
But whatever. How is that a disaster? Well, it’s not a disaster. It’s how the system is supposed to work. But don’t tell the moron community that. They’re too overwrought to hear you.
I disagree with Tucker on this point: this is not “what democracy looks like,” this is what a Constitutional republic looks like. It took 100 years and 15 votes to get back to that standard, but as far as I am concerned, it was well worth it–and history has been made.
Congratulations, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, our 55th Speaker of the House of Representatives.