Schadenfreude, Day 2

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Courtesy of Charles Laquidera, legendary rock DJ at WBCN and creator of Duane Ingalls Glasscock. (Hello Rangoon!)

Well, we have yet another day without a speaker, and Kevin McCarthy actually lost one vote, it’s now 20 Republicans voting against him.

An interesting pointe to note here, as Mike the Mad Biologist does, is that Republicans are fundamentally uninterested in governing, and once again are expecting the Democrats to bail them out:

That’s not to say they won’t do real damage: their primary agendas of pushing White Christian supremacy and cutting taxes and protective regulations is relatively easy to enact. But the whole McCarthy fracas does demonstrate how dependent Republicans are on Democrats to accomplish the basic functions of government.

In terms of McCarthy winning the speakership, as best as anyone can tell, McCarthy is counting on Democrats deciding not to vote (or vote present). Unfortunately for him, Democrats seem to be having a grand time watching him flounder, to the extent where they’re literally showing up with buckets of popcorn. If nothing else, every day Republicans aren’t in control is another day they can’t hurt America.

But his strategy is simply the Republican governance strategy writ small. Democrats pass bills, both aggressive and expansive bills (e.g., the IRA) along with the ‘keeping the lights on’ bills, often to their short-term political detriment, thanks to Republican propaganda. Meanwhile, Republicans return to their districts and hold ribbon-cutting ceremonies touting projects funded by the very same bills they opposed (there’s an entire subgenre of reporting dedicated to this phenomenon). To put it vulgarly (and destroying any feminist cred I might have built up over the years), Republicans get the mistress and the wife: they get political points for opposing Democratic legislation, while simultaneously getting credit for its benefits.

I’d never thought about it this way before.

While I have always maintained that a significant portion of the Republican Polity is dedicated to opposing the very concept of governance, it follows from the beliefs of child murder admirer Ayn Rand, I thought to think that they were relying on the Democrats to bail them out when they have no alternative.

I am not sure if this is true, but it is intriguing