GOP Dysfunction On Display-- Let The New Speaker Votes Commence; Patrick McHenry, Acting Speaker!

MAGAt Extremists Dump McCarthy For Not Being Extreme Enough

Aside from posting "Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves, why aren't they fighting the Radical Left Democrats who are destroying our Country?," Trump didn't try to save #MyKevin

For a week or two before the vote, McCarthy had been saying he would keep running for speaker until Gaetz and his pals give in, but he changed his mind— after the shortest anyone served as Speaker since Michael Kerr (D-IN) had just just before he died-- from December 6, 1875 until August 19, 1876. Imagine Gym Jordan as speaker!

Today, during the vote, Democrats from the Problem Solvers Caucus were getting frantic calls from their GOP buddies pleading with them to save McCarthy. Not one did; not one. With Hakeem Jeffries telling the Republicans to solve their own Civil War, the Democrats showed a degree of unity the Republicans could only weep about. The GOP members were all over the place, nothing apparent but their disunity, with 2 Carolina neo-fascist psychopaths Dan Bishop (R-NC) and Ralph Norman (SC) voting with McCarthy (as did Jordan) and Victoria Spatz, a pissed off Ukrainian-American, and Nancy Mace (R-SC), a supposed moderate— albeit a certifiably insane person— voting with Gaetz.

A vote to table Gaetz’s motion kicked off the festivities, with Gaetz being forced speak from the Democrats’ side of the aisle, all the GOP microphones closed to him and Good. And the motion to table failed 208-218, McCarthy losing 11 of his conference members, and pretty much dooming his chance to win today:

• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

• Bob Good (R-VA)

• Matt Rosendale (R-MT)

• Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

• Eli Crane (R-AZ)

• Tim Burchett (R-TN)

• Ken Buck (R-CO)

• Cory Mills (R-FL)

• Warren Davidson (R-OH)

• Nancy Mace (R-SC)

• Victoria Sparz (R-IN)— but said she won’t vote to vacate the chair.

I think New Jersey Democrat Jim Pascrell was speaking for all Democrats when he released this statement:

Let me feature some random Republican Reps’ comments they tweeted before the vote on Gaetz’s resolution:

Andy Biggs (R-AZ)- “I support Motion to Vacate. Speaker McCarthy has failed to demonstrate himself as an effective leader who will change the status quo. He has gone against many of the promises he made in January and can no longer be trusted at the helm.”

Mike Lawler (R-NY)- “If this motion to vacate is successful, it will be because Matt Gaetz worked with socialist Democrats like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries to remove a REPUBLICAN speaker.”

Derrick Van Orden (R-WI)- “I work for 750,000 everyday Wisconsinites, not a showboat from Florida born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The motion to vacate the Speaker is a fool’s errand and I can think of no better person to lead that effort than Matt Gaetz.”

Nancy Mace (R-SC)- “Today I voted for the Motion to Vacate and remove the Speaker. This isn’t about left vs right. This isn’t about ideology. This is about trust and keeping your word. This is about making Congress do it’s job. I promised the Lowcountry I would be an independent voice in Congress. That I would call the balls and strikes and do the right thing regardless of party. The Speaker has not lived up to his word on how the House would operate. No budget, no separate spending bills until it was too late, a CR which takes spending power out of the hands of the people and puts all the power into the hands of a select few. There has also been no action on many issues we care about and were promised. We were promised we would move on women’s issues and legislation to keep our communities safe. Those things never happened. I came here to take difficult votes and do the right thing, regardless of the pressure and regardless of the threats (bc there’s been plenty of both). Today I’m voting against 95 percent of my party in the hopes of fixing how Congress operates. With the current Speaker, this chaos will continue. We need a fresh start so we can get back to the people’s business free of these distractions. I’ll work with anyone willing to do that and look forward to voting for a Speaker who shares this vision for changing Congress and getting us back on a path to delivering results for the people.”

Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY)- “This motion to vacate vote will separate those who are here to govern from those who are here to play charades.”

Kevin Buck (R-CO)- “Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly broken his word both to the American people and to members of Congress.”

Bob Good (R-VA)- “The American people need a Speaker who will fight to keep the promises Republicans made to get the majority, not someone who cuts fiscally irresponsible deals that get more Democrat votes than Republican votes.”

In the end, the 8 votes to vacate the chair were:

• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

• Bob Good (R-VA)

• Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

• Tim Burchett (R-TN)

• Eli Crain (R-AZ)

• Ken Buck (R-CO)

• Matt Rosendale (R-MT)

• Crazy Nancy Mace (R-SC)

McCarthy, the first Speaker to ever be humiliated in this fashion-- Boehner retired before they could do it to him-- named crooked closet case Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who once vowed no member of Congress would ever get to his right, acting speaker. No one tales him very seriously. McCarthy knows that McHenry was the one who invited Madison Cawthorn to an orgy and, at the time, told him he couldn't serve as GOP Whip because of that. I guess they made up.

This is from January 12, 2012:

McHenry, who obsessively fingers the wedding ring symbolizing the fake marriage to a woman he doesn't live with, styles himself the biggest, baddest right-wing fanatic in the whole wide world. "I'll be the example for everyone else in Congress to follow," he has bragged. He was the attack dog against Elizabeth Warren the Republicans unleashed lamely at the House Financial Services Committee-- you know, the committee where little McHenry is trying to prevent a bill to prohibit Members of Congress from engaging in insider trading. But how much of a conservative is McHenry really, to have been one of the first right-wing congressmen to kick Newt, Perry, Bachmann, Cain et al. to the curb and jump aboard the Romney Express? Must be the animal magnetism... or McHenry's uncanny ability to always go where the cash is.

Today was an interesting day for Lil' Patrick McHenry. At noon he had a faux-townhall meeting at the Stanley Town Hall in Gaston County-- having invited no one but town employees and his own staffers. His Republican primary opponent, the intrepid Ken Fortenberry, showed up as well. McHenry wasn't prepared for that, especially not when Fortenberry started peppering him with questions about his shady record on the House Financial Services Committee and when he challenged him to debate in every county in North Carolina's sprawling 10th District so that Republican voters there could get to know each of them. McHenry dodged and demurred. But then it got really interesting.

I hate to do this to you, but it would really help if you could surf over to this 2007 post about McHenry's involvement in a triple gay homocide-suicide. Short version: The murdered gay Republicans include Ralph Reed's purported ex-lover, Ralph Gonzalez (former head of the rabidly homophobic Georgia Republican Party), GOP lobbyist David Abrami and McHenry guy-pal Robert Drake, allegedly the shooter. All three were victims in a murder-suicide in an Orlando apartment. According to right-wing website the North Carolina Conservative, "All three men were active in Republican politics." They mention that Drake is "an associate" of McHenry's but don't define that. He is alleged to be an associate of quite a few younger men, some of whom are gay and some of whom are just gay-for-pay.

Drake was associated with the owner of a gay escort service in the Virginia Beach area. The owners of that escort service-- there have been unconfirmed rumors that McHenry was both a client and a silent partner-- are facing charges that they murdered Bryan Kocis, the owner of a rival gay escort service. When I called McHenry's congressional office, the guy who answered the phone confirmed that Drake "worked" there but said he didn't know what his duties were. When I asked to speak to the congressman or someone who would know, he put me on hold, then came back, audibly upset, and said he was mistaken and that he didn't know anything and no one else was in the office and then quickly hung up on me. The murder was completely covered up by the Orlando police department and everything about it pretty much disappeared.

Now, back to today's confrontation. After Fortenberry couldn't get any answers from the smug, self-entitled McHenry to any of his questions, he whipped out a large photo of Drake-- the one above-- and asked a startled McHenry if he could deny any knowledge of the murdered ex-Marine. McHenry, looking like a rainbow flag, stammered and stuttered, said nothing intelligible and the meeting came to a screeching halt. At some point, Republicans in North Carolina are going to want to know who closet case McHenry really is and what he knows about these murders and the gay escort services in northern Virginia.

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The last time this kind of GOP dysfunction took them down this road, they wound up with another self-loathing, mentally deranged closet case as speaker, school wrestling coach and child-molester Denny Hastert, who eventually went to prison.