My moderately popular liveblog of the McCarthy removal vote

[solarbird]

I liveblogged the Republican vote to remove McCarthy as Speaker of the House. TLDR: Republican Plan “Crash the Economy and Blame it on Biden 2024” is on, the House has no Speaker, and can do no business until it elects a new one.

You don’t need a Mastodon account to read this thread. Enjoy?

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[librarygeek]

Thank you for posting this.

[solarbird]

Glad to be of service ^_^

[gwydion]

"the clowns are calling from inside the car"
*snerk*

[solarbird]

It's hilarious... and it's not.

But it kinda is. xD

[gwydion]

It's laugh or cry, really.

They are now floating bring Trump in to be speaker.

[solarbird]

Honestly surprised he wasn't the first candidate floated after the vote.

[gwydion]

sigh.

I think it didn't occur to a lot of people watching who didn't have FOX news brain worms, because it's so not a thing any one with sense would do. Most people don't even know they can literally pick any body they like, but sensibly pick one of their own every time for obvious reasons.

You can pick anyone at all for the supreme court, but there's a reason it's nearly always judges, and the exceptions tend to be lawyers or lawmakers if you go back far enough to find exceptions.

I just... I'm trying to get my head around it in case the Republicans decide to screw this pouch instead of any of the other shitty for them but understandable options. Gaming this one out is going to be... something. Suddenly keeping a speaker Pro Tem until early 2025, seems way better by comparison and also so much less likely for example.

[solarbird]

Since this he's said no, and I actually believe him, because there's literally too much actual in-person must-be-done-by-him work involved.

[gwydion]

That's what I suspected would happen once I got over the WTF. Too much work. He'd rather be wandering around tacky golf resorts and doing hate rallies.

[l33tminion]

"The House has no Speaker" isn't quite accurate. They're not in the situation they were in at the beginning of the term, where there was no Speaker and no rules adopted and they need to elect a Speaker before they can get anything done. Instead, the rules provide for a Speaker pro tempore. And the way that's selected is that the Speaker provides a secret list to the House clerk, and when the Speaker is out, they go down the list, picking the first one who isn't unavailable and hasn't been kicked out of being Speaker yet. So Patrick McHenry (R-NC) now has McCarthy's job, until he doesn't. As far as I can tell, that doesn't prevent them from proceeding with business as normal (such as it were), except to the extent that they're distracted by the whole "elect a new Speaker" thing.

According to "House Practice" ch. 34 section 2 (PDF here), this rule was adopted by the 108th Congress, so recent but not Trump-era new.

[solarbird]

Yeah I found out about that later as a continuity measure but didn't amend the thread.