Marjorie Traitor Greene and her child sex trafficker buddy from the Florida Panhandle, Matt Gaetz, have been loudly warning for months that they will be able to control Kevin McCarthy if he becomes Speaker and that if he crosses them, they have the votes to toss him out. This morning, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan looked at the far right’s mechanisms for controlling McCarthy and for tossing him out if he tries to disobey them. They started with a couple of tweets from Juliegrace Brufke of the Washington Examiner alerting Washington to a bid in a closed party meeting by Texas far right extremist Mike Cloud to have Republicans vote on the party’s internal rules package before the conference votes on the leadership for the next Congress.
So why does that matter to the Gang Greene? She and her followers are demanding a number of key rules changes from McCarthy. “They want to formally enshrine in the rules the principle that McCarthy can’t put a bill on the floor that doesn’t have the support of the ‘majority of the majority.’” In other words, McCarthy wouldn’t be allowed to pass anything with help from the Democrats unless he has a majority of Republicans behind it. “They also want to change the rule outlining the ‘motion to vacate the chair’ – the process by which the House removes a speaker. Currently, only party leaders can trigger such a vote. The Freedom Caucus wants to revert back to the old rule, the one which helped topple Boehner. That version would allow any single member to request a vote on the speaker of the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats changed this when they took over in 2019.”
Sherman and Bresnahan reported that “Voting on these proposed changes before electing House GOP leaders would give the membership a chance to try to enact changes in return for their vote for McCarthy. The threat behind this is clear. If conservatives don’t like this outcome, they can withhold support for McCarthy during the speaker vote on the floor on Jan. 3. That’s when he will need unified Republican support. ‘We’d like to know what the enterprise is before we vote on the leadership. Seems reasonable,” Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-PA) told us in an interview Tuesday.”
McCarthy has no beliefs so he’s been happy to cave to fascist demands in the past and there’s no reason to think he won’t continue doing just that. He really is the ultimate empty suit. Sherman and Bresnahan noted that he’s “shifted to the right in recent years. He’s rewarded Jordan– once his nemesis– with prized committee assignments. Now Jordan is a McCarthy booster, a dramatic change from 2015.” But— and this is the most interesting part of their report— one key pair of demands is contradictory. The neo-fasciost segment ion the House caucus wants “to cement the ‘majority of the majority,’ yet they want to also change the motion to vacate, which would allow the removal of a GOP speaker without support from the majority of the House Republican Conference.
The new YouGov poll for The Economist was released this morning. Let’s read some tea leaves by taking a look at how registered voters are looking at prominent GOP public figures:
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- 31% favorable, 48% unfavorable
Marco Rubio (R-FL)- 40% favorable, 40% unfavorable
Greg Abbott (R-TX)- 37% favorable, 32% unfavorable
Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 43% favorable, 38% unfavorable
Dr. Oz (R-PA)- 40% favorable, 42% unfavorable
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- 25% favorable, 60% unfavorable
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 31% favorable, 44% unfavorable
Señor Trumpanzee- 43% favorable, 54% unfavorable
Among registered voters, 52% say the Trump espionage investigation is fair and 37% says it is unfair. 59% say his theft of the secret documents is serious and 33% say it isn’t serious. 48% say Trump should face criminal prosecution in the case and 39% say he shouldn’t.
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