Gridlock & Chaos In The House Of Representatives. I Blame The Democrats
In Jan. 2023 the Democrats could have elected a reasonable person as Speaker, but instead they chose a futile, partisan, suicide-pact vote
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
In January, 2023 the only reason the ultra-right-wing Republicans had any power in choosing the Speaker of the House is because the Democrats chose, CHOSE, to give that power to them.
In January 2023, the Democrats had 213 votes in the House. Only a minority of the 222 GOP members were hard right-wing MAGA people.
For example, Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) were known as more traditional, centrist, Republican members.
In January 2023 it was absolutely certain that Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had ZERO chance of being elected Speaker of the House. In spite of that fact, the Democratic Representatives still chose to throw away their votes on him, thereby gifting the dozen or so ultra-conservative GOP members with the leverage they needed to gain concessions from McCarthy in exchange for their support.
If, instead of voting for Jeffries, the Democrats had placed their 213 votes behind Tom McClintock or Mike Lawler, that person certainly would have been able to pick up more than the five GOP votes that would have been needed to elect McClintock or Lawler as Speaker instead of McCarthy.
But no, the Democrats chose loyalty to “their side”, to their “tribe,” and futilely cast their votes for Hakeem Jeffries, thus ensuring McCarthy’s election as a captive of the GOP’s hard right wing.
Now it appears that history is about to repeat itself, except that this time McCarthy’s replacement will be even worse than KM was.
Some Democrats say, “Well, picking a Speaker is a Republican problem. It’s up to them to elect one. And if he’s terrible and he shuts down the government, then we can blame the Republicans and maybe more people will vote for us when everything turns to crap. It’s not our problem.”
Bull****! You Democrats were elected to Congress to work for the American people as a whole and run the government for the benefit of the majority of the citizens, not to let a few Republicans take the government hostage to their extremist political philosophy.
Saying picking the Speaker is not your job is like a cop seeing a person bleeding on the street and driving on by, saying, “That’s not my job. That’s a paramedic’s problem.”
Hey, you Democrats, it IS your job to vote in ways that keep the government running, not sit idly by and say, “This is great. When the Republicans screw the country up then we’ll get a lot more votes in the next election.”
You House Democrats who refuse to do everything possible to elect a moderate Republican Speaker should be deeply, deeply ashamed.
For me, the Democrats again futilely voting for Hakeem Jeffries is like watching a political rerun of the idiots at Jonestown grabbing their cups of poisoned Kook Aid in a mass suicide pact.
Instead of thinking about serving the bulk of the American people who are neither liberals, progressives, conservatives or libertarians, the Democrats again appear to be ready to lemming-like jump off the partisanship cliff and abandon the House of Representative to the likes of Jim Jordan.
In my view, at best, that’s criminal stupidity.
At worst, well, I can’t get the phrase “shameful suicide pact” out of my mind.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
