Where are we going? Taking care of the Arizona House House committee chairman, Rusty Bowers, as a portrait of rectitude

Cheney had sacrificed her position in Republican leadership to stand up to Donald Trump and was the obvious star of the committee. But there were many others.

Rusty Bowers, the Trump-supporting speaker of the Arizona House who refused to help the former president subvert his state’s election results, was a portrait of rectitude, reading from his journal, “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, defied attempts at intimidation to describe a president at once calculating and berserk.

“When you look back at what has come out through this committee’s work, the most striking fact is that all this evidence comes almost entirely from Republicans,” the committee’s Democratic chairman, Bennie Thompson, said on Thursday.

McCarthy will have to lose four votes to become speaker of the 116th Congress. It not only gave the hardliners the chance to hold McCarthy hostage in the race for speaker; it will mean that at any moment, the House can be shut down over just a few votes. This isn’t just a concern for the eventual speaker. The White House should be concerned as well, given the budget battles and raising the debt ceiling.

The leader of the House Freedom Caucus says that there needs to be a discussion about whether he should be the speaker. I would like to have a very frank discussion about where we are going to be going.

The Freedom Caucus: A Window into McCarthy’s 11th-hour Negotiations to Get a Speaker of the House of Representatives

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line.

The GOP sources on the call described the exchange as a window into McCarthy’s 11th-hour negotiations in his quest for speaker. This shows how much he is willing to compromise in order to get a seat in the US House of Representatives.

Electing a speaker is a responsibility given the House by the Constitution. The process of unraveling would destroy Americans’confidence in the new Congress and diminish the entire body. Mr. McCarthy has time to reach a solution with his critics and he should do everything he can on the first vote to get the speakership. Otherwise, a self-serving power play by a small group of Republicans threatens to make a mockery of the institution and further cement the notion that the party is not prepared to lead.

CNN has not yet projected which party will have control of the House of Representatives, but it is expected that the Republicans will have more seats than the Democrats.

Norman said the group hopes to make a longer list of rules changes. They are also pushing to delay next week’s internal leadership elections, though there is no indication McCarthy plans to do so.

When asked whether McCarthy should get credit for delivering the majority, Norman responded: “The taxpayers that voted the representatives in deserve the credit.”

McCarthy had a lot more votes to work with back then – 245 GOP-held seats, more than any potential first-time speaker in the past 30 years. If he couldn’t get the 218 votes then under much more favorable circumstances, one might wonder how he can get to 218 now?

Reply to The Gaetz and McConnell Letters to the Phenomenology of the 2024 Midterm Electoral Debacle

Gaetz said that with a slim majority, they should not be starting the C team. “We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.”

Mr. Trump’s policies have previously been supported through public support by some Republicans. While they long privately claimed to disdain Mr. Trump’s politics, they were fearful of crossing the party’s base.

The party is reaping consequences. Trump-backed candidates lost key Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona, as well as several House races from Alaska to North Carolina. Democrats took control of the Senate after Catherine Cortez Masto won re- election in Nevada. Even though there was a G.O.P wave, neither party had a majority in the House.

The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have called for Mr. Trump to be kicked out of office. Both Winsome Sears and Robin Vos, who were major Trump supporters after his presidency, said that Mr. Trump should not be the Republican nominee in 2024.

The GOP has fallen into conspiracy theories and divisive issues that light up the right-wing media. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called for a return to classic fiscal conservatism. Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, was quoted in an interview as saying that Mr. Trump could endanger the party’s chances in Georgia.

And Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who spoke at a Trump rally in Sioux City days before the election, said on Twitter that it was time to move on from Mr. Trump’s pet issue. He said to stop talking in 2020.

Similar recriminations are taking place across the Capitol where some House Republicans are questioning their leadership, lack of a cohesive message on abortion, and decided to spend precious resources in deep blue territory late in the game.

And in the Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling his colleagues over the last several days to shore up his support as his team plans to plow forward with leadership elections on Wednesday despite grumbling by a faction of dissenters who are trying to slam the brakes after their midterm debacle. On Tuesday they are going to have a GOP air clearing session.

How Tuesday will go remains anyone’s guess. McCarthy has one challenger in the race who is almost certain to steal enough GOP votes to deny him a majority of the House.

Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is one of many Republicans calling for a delay in the Senate leadership election.

“From a governing perspective, it’s important that Republicans don’t start January 3 by going face down and not having some clarity as to what we’re going to be able to accomplish” GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas told CNN. We have to show Americans that the trust and confidence they have given to us was a good decision and we need to start.

With the election a stunning reversal of fortune for the GOP, party leaders need to explain to their ranks why it didn’t go their way. And the disappointing results have scrambled other leadership races as well, with Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota – the head of the House GOP’s campaign arm – now facing a tougher time becoming the House GOP whip, a position that will only become available if Republicans indeed capture the majority – still not a guarantee.

They have been putting forth an agenda and measuring the draperies. They haven’t won it yet,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union.” If the election ended with a majority in our party, we would have to decide how we go forward.

Behind the scenes, the finger pointing has already begun, and those conversations are likely to accelerate as the full House and Senate return to Washington this week for the first time since the midterm elections.

But others in the party have placed the blame squarely on Trump, whose hand-picked candidates failed in key Senate races that determined control of the Senate. Plus McConnell’s super PAC spent more than any other group in Senate races – while Trump’s group spent a tiny fraction of that – a realty not lost on the Kentucky Republican’s allies.

“There’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses,” said retiring Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. “I think my party needs to face the fact that if fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, we’re probably not going to do really well.”

McConnell and Scott have also been publicly at odds all election cycle when it comes to strategy, with McConnell sounding the alarm about candidate quality while Scott opted to take a hands-off approach in the primaries.

Even though he had little chance of winning, Scott was still open to trying to challenge McConnell for the top spot.

McCarthy said they are still talking but that they have not moved. The only Republican that’s stopping the Biden administration is us. But we’re also going to be the only ones that can move forward. It would delay everything and make it difficult to do the things we need to do from the beginning.

“Basic political physics says you can’t appease the moderates and HFC all at the same time,” one senior Republican told CNN. You better hope it is not barbed wire if you straddle that fence.

The Campaign for Democratic Party Leaders: Trump’s Third White House Presidency with a Democratic Sen, Scalise’s Representative

The person said that Trump had been trying to break the conservative blockade against him by calling McCarthy, but his efforts had so far been unsuccessful.

More context: Trump has been eager to lock up public support from Republicans for his third presidential bid, with a separate GOP source saying he has been asking to see which GOP lawmakers have endorsed him in the media.

Scalise, who is in line to serve as House Majority leader, released an agenda for the first two weeks of January. The House would vote on measures to cancel the funding increase for IRS agents, as well as bills relating to border security and abortion. But until the speaker is elected, the House committees can’t form, members cannot be sworn in to start the new session , and the rest of the business is stalled out.

Nancy Pelosi has not yet made clear what her next move will be. Speculation has intensified in Washington over her political future and whether she will run again for the top leadership spot for House Democrats or if she will instead decide to step aside as a new generation of potential leaders waits in the wings.

On Monday evening, Republicans will host a candidate forum and leadership elections will follow on Tuesday, November 15, according to the schedule shared with CNN.

Speaker of the House Minority Committee, John Nance Garner, and the Democratic Whip, Dennis Hastert, for the Second Term

John Nance Garner had a small majority in 1931 which was the last time a potential first-time speaker had such a small majority. The only first-time speaker in recent times who comes close to McCarthy’s current situation is former Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert, whose Republican Party entered 1999 with 223 seats. Hastert had the advantage of being a compromise choice after Newt Gingrich stepped down after the 1998 midterms and his would-be successor Bob Livingston resigned following revelations of an extramarital affair.

The first election will be for the Speaker of the House on November 30 and whoever is elected will have to take care of the remainder of the leadership elections.

A majority of those voting and present needs to be obtained for a candidate to be elected to a position. If more than two candidates run and no one wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes after the first round of voting will be eliminated and voting will proceed to a second round. Until a majority is won by one candidate, that process continues.

Emmer said that he didn’t know if a smaller majority impacts his bid. His pitch was the same as McCarthy’s, saying “we delivered.”

Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee, officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. The deputy whip, Drew Ferguson from Georgia, is vying for the post because he thinks his experience as a whip will be more useful in a smaller majority, where the chief vote count job will be crucial for governing.

Of course. Well, you know that I’m not asking anybody – people are campaigning, and that’s a beautiful thing,” the California Democrat told Bash. “And I’m not asking anyone for anything. My members want me to consider doing that. Let’s just get through the election.

Hakeem Jeffries and Kevin Greene: A Conversation with Leader McCarthy after the Greene relaunch of the GOP 2024 Campaign

Two House Democrats are in the position of House majority leader and House majority whip. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark serves in the role of assistant Speaker and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries serves as House Democratic caucus chair.

In order to replace Jeffries who is term limited, Joe Neguse has decided to run for caucus chair.

The race to lead the party’s campaign arm, DCCC chair, is starting to take shape up after the current chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York lost his reelection.

On Friday, Tony Cardenas of California made his candidacy public and others are being mentioned as well.

But it also reflected Greene’s growing personal power, after she broke with some radical GOP members and lined up to support McCarthy’s speakership. After coming to Congress as a fringe figure, and quickly losing her committee assignments over her past retweets of violent rhetoric against Democrats, Greene now promises to be one of the most prominent faces of the new GOP majority. That she has the latitude to make what to many people are offensive and insurrectionist comments without any fear of rebuke from her party’s leader says a lot about her position. And it also shows that while Trump’s power may be waning elsewhere after a lackluster launch of his 2024 campaign, his influence over his followers in the House, like Greene, remains strong.

Several members of the Freedom Caucus met with McCarthy in his office Monday as they seek to extract concessions from him in exchange for their speaker votes.

“I think after that, they’ll talk to Leader McCarthy and hopefully close up a deal,” the Ohio Republican told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “CNN This Morning.”

McCarthy faces an uphill climb to the speakership, according to Rep. Bob Good, who said that they have asked McCarthy to make a proposal for running the House.

The Sensitivity of the House to the Problem of Rules and the Action of the Causal House. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana

While the focus of the group has been on rules changes that will empower individual members, they do not have to worry about the issues at hand.

He wants to see this place change dramatically, to reflect the will of the people and to acknowledge how broken it is. “It’s incumbent upon anybody that wants to lead to kind of lay out their vision and how they would change their portion of it.”

The Republicans used the opportunity to extract promises and apologies from their would-be leaders. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana inquired whether Mr. McCarthy would commit to investigating Speaker Nancy Pelosi if he were in charge of the House.

“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. Kevin has been having a lot of chats with the members who have raised concerns.

Two people familiar with the exchange say that Mr. Scalise apologized and told him to wait until he had more information.

The fate of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy at the end of the November midterms: The challenge to save the GOP from survival in the shadow of the 2016 midterm crisis

— One interpretation of the midterms was that voters – exhausted by the turbulence of the Trump years and a once-in-a-century pandemic – gave a cry for stability and calm and were therefore not willing to hand all the power available in November back to Republicans. The GOP failed to win back the Senate despite falling short of a red wave in the House. Farcical scenes in the House on Tuesday were hardly what those voters had in mind in November.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said that it would be a narrow one. “It makes it really critical that you’ve got somebody with superb political skills. A person that knows everything about this conference.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is hoping to pass a crucial test on Tuesday in his campaign to become House speaker despite an underwhelming midterm election performance that launched a search among conservatives for a challenger.

Simpson supported McCarthy for leader, noting the GOP gained seats in the last two elections. “He’s done a good job,” said Simpson.

The democrats may be able to recruit some of the Republicans if we don’t unify behind Kevin McCarthy.

During a closed-door leadership candidate forum on Monday, Virginia Rep. Bob Good, a McCarthy critic, complained that a Super PAC aligned with McCarthy opposed some pro-Trump candidates, and criticized McCarthy for not calling to congratulate him when he won his primary, according to a source in the room. McCarthy said he directed $2 million to Good for his race. Good had to be given a speech cut off so they could ask the next question, according to the source.

McCarthy focused on winning over Trump’s supporters in the House, voted against Trump’s second impeachment for inciting insurrection and ousted Cheney from the leadership of the Republican Party for her criticism of Trump. Cheney had the chance to question McCarthy’s fitness for public office. “When Minority Leader McCarthy has had the opportunity to do the right thing or the thing that serves his own political purpose, he always chooses to serve his own political purpose,” she recently told NBC.

Two sources with knowledge of the conversation say that McCarthy’s allies have tried to convince Henry Cuellar to switch parties in order to make up some ground. Cuellar did not approve of the idea. (McCarthy’s spokesman said the GOP leader was not involved if these conversations took place and said this is not in any way part of their strategy for the majority or for his speakership bid.)

A source at the private forum said Tom Emmer, the National Republican congressional committee chair, was pressed on his vote in favor of the same-sex marriage bill. His answer was that divisive social issues should not be discussed on the House floor.

When Kevin McCarthy was a Lottery Winner, he fought for him and his party during his first term as Speaker of the House

As he likes to tell it Kevin McCarthy’s political career started on a gamble in the California Lottery when he was a young kid living in Bakersfield. I scratched off my first three tickets. The most money you could win was $5,000. I scratched three of them and they all said $5,000. And I had never played the game before I went back up to the checker to make sure I was right, and I asked if I had won. In a 2005 conversation, McCarthy said he was one of the winners in California. He reinvested the money, used it to open up a deli called Kevin O’s, and then sold the business to help pay for college. He began working for the Republican Bill Thomas in the mid-twenties. He was elected the party leader after winning a seat in the California State Assembly. I like to refer to myself as the Republican leader, even if I am the minority leader. I’m proud of my party,” he said at the time. When Thomas announced he would retire in 2006, McCarthy succeeded his former boss in Congress. In his campaigns since, McCarthy only ever faced token opposition for the seat representing his hometown, and he’s never won a general election with less than 62% of the vote.

Boehner was ultimately rewarded with the speakership after Tea Party Republicans were victorious in the 2010 midterms. And once they were in power, the Tea Party made Gingrich’s generation look tame. They threatened to not raise the debt ceiling in order to cause a financial default, but despite being aware of the danger they posed, he did not do enough to stop them.

Trump often called him “My Kevin” in private, and publicly backed McCarthy to lead House Republicans after they lost the majority in 2018. “We have a great man, and he’s going to be hopefully a great speaker of the House,” Trump said. McCarthy and Trump’s alliance remained strong during Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The day Trump was acquitted by the Senate, McCarthy tweeted out a video of himself tearing up the articles of impeachment cheering: “Acquitted for life!”

Kevin McCarthy spoke to reporters in the Capitol. He said that he was staying until the win.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska is another Republican interested in finding some Democratic help. McCarthy may have to look across the aisle and maybe give Democrats more committee members or concessions in order to get the government running, he told JimSciutto.

“I think Steve Scalise is going to have some problems,” one GOP member told CNN on Monday, adding: “If Kevin McCarthy doesn’t become speaker, then Steve Scalise has faint fingerprints on the dagger.”

During a brief interview last month, he said he wasn’t going to talk about what he would do if McCarthy doesn’t become speaker.

At one point, Jim Jordan stood to nominate McCarthy as speaker but for 19 of his opponents to vote that he should have the job that he insists he does not want. (Jordan is more interested in lacerating Biden’s appointees as chair of the Judiciary Committee).

“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

A new group of seven Republican hardliners on Thursday laid out a list of demands, but they didn’t explicitly threaten to vote against McCarthy if their demands aren’t met.

McCarthy has already begun brokering some rules changes to empower rank-and-file members, created a new select committee on China, vowed to boot some Democratic lawmakers from their committees, and sketched out in greater detail his investigative plans – including a potential impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In a series of new concessions first reported by CNN Wednesday night, McCarthy agreed to propose a rules change that would allow just one member to call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Current conference rules require half of the GOP to call for a vote, but McCarthy originally proposed a five-member threshold.

The Tennessee Republican said that it is up to McCarthy if he wants to make a deal as long as he doesn’t compromise values. If McCarthy agrees to add the chair to the package, it will be chaos but I will be for it if he supports it.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. I know I get it wherever I go in my district, that people just need to get things done.

If there was a red wave, McCarthy would have had enough votes to become the speaker and not be in this position.

Kaeem Jeffries, Kevin Upton, and the Democrat Conference on Problem Solving in the Presidency of the House of Representatives, Jan. 3

Some Democrats said they would be interested in the idea, including one of them who said Republicans had approached him about it.

Joyce said some members contacted him about running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

The Democrats chanted as they saw their new leader, Hakeem Jeffries, earning more votes than McCarthy in the first three roll calls of the new House.

Jeffries said that Democrats were in the middle of organizing the conference. The Republican Conference is in the process of being organized. We will see on January 3.

The potential consensus picks included retiring Michigan and New York congressmen who voted to impeach Donald Trump, as well as a co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”

Westerman said it happened in his state when minority Democrats joined forces with a few Republicans to elected a GOP speaker. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.

A Conversation with Ralph Norman, Rep. Tom Moore, R-S.C.: The Problem with Rep. McCarthy and Assembly Speaker Jeff Miller

“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.

Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”

Mr. McCarthy has not shared his plan with his leadership team, which some consider to be a display of paranoia, because he did not want to distract them from the speakership race. Instead, he has been spotted in recent days around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters nearby with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is among his closest confidants.

Ralph Norman, R-S.C.: While some of the 21 may be waiting to see which way the wind blows, Norman has been an early and hard “no” on McCarthy. The core of his problem with McCarthy is how to budget.

When Nancy Pelosi was able to get enough votes to get the speaker’s gavel, she took the necessary steps to win it. Ms. Pelosi’s agreement to limit her tenure, the promise to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan Legislating, and her creation of a subcommittee chairmanship helped her win over her lone challenger.

The Republican in California has made several pledges in order to appease the right flank of his party. He went to the south border and called for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign. He promised Ms. Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.

He has threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. He has been quietly meeting with ultraconservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

The frustration of ex-President Donald J. McCarthy and his attempt to save a sitting speaker: why should he continue to run the House?

The tiny GOP House majority that takes over in January, after a disappointing midterm performance, would mean a fragile governing mandate for any party at any point in American history. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.

But his struggle to lock in the speakership and his possible futile future mission of amassing a governing majority amount to more than an inside-Washington brouhaha or internal GOP feud. If the House cannot pass spending bills, or if radical members of the Republican conference try to hold McCarthy hostage, the economic and social consequences could soon affect tens of millions of Americans. Government shutdowns, budget showdowns and an impasse over raising US borrowing limits could severely damage the US economy, the military’s readiness and the dollar’s reputation as a reserve currency.

The California Republican is fighting a rearguard battle against members who want to make it easier to eject a sitting speaker and he’s appeasing ex-President Donald Trump’s extremism and that of acolytes like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to save a narrow political power base propping up his dream of running the House.

According to two sources, McCarthy raised his voice and was animated as he made concessions to his opponents. He said he had earned the job.

This is the reason why the current year-end tussle over which to fund the government for a full year or for just a few months is very important, since it could possibly cause a fiscal crisis on the back of a weak and easily manipulated new.

McCarthy was asked if she thought she was being facetious when she said she was being facetious. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.

When McCarthy refused to criticize the ex-president for attending a dinner with a white supremacist and making antisemitic remarks, it followed the same example as he did when he declined to directly criticize Ye. The House leader made a false claim that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times in the past when he hadn’t done so before.

McCarthy was quoted as saying that he would be open to a large bill at the White House meeting. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.

But Republicans in the House are livid for another reason. The House would have had more leverage to force spending cuts if Senate Republicans had refused to do a deal.

As frustration inside the House GOP has grown over a small band of anti-Kevin McCarthy lawmakers, an idea to strike back at the rebellious group has been floated among some Republicans: kicking these members off their committees, according to multiple members involved in the conversations.

It is not certain whether moderates will be willing to follow through with the hardball tactics often used by the far right even if it will backfire on McCarthy. GOP sources think that opposing the rules package would ruin any talks between McCarthy and his detractors.

While hardliners have laid out a lengthy list of demands for GOP leadership, with a slim margin, moderate lawmakers – largely known as the party’s majority makers – know they can exert equal influence over everything from legislation to investigations. Moderates will be flexing their muscles if the speaker’s race is a success because they hope this will set the tone for their new majority, even as they struggle to find a way to counter conservatives without causing the same chaos they say McCarthy’s critics created.

Nancy Mace said people need to know we don’t need to double down on failed policies and failed candidates. The way the election was structured made people who were left of center the most successful.

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the handful of Republican lawmakers to come out in firm opposition to McCarthy as speaker, also acknowledged the reality of a narrowly divided House.

“We are in a community of common fate,” he told CNN. The ship is not going anywhere if only five people row in that direction. And that’s true on impeachment, it’s true on the speakership vote, it’s true on the budget, it’s true on policy choices.”

“Some of the questions that remain unanswered is what other deals are going to be cut, you know, what guarantees, what concessions are going to be made?” Womack asked. “We got to be careful that we don’t give a lot of that leverage away.”

Talks continued Tuesday evening, with McCarthy in his office making calls, sources said. He also has dispatched several emissaries – Brian Fitzpatrick, Garret Graves, French Hill, Patrick McHenry and Guy Reschenthaler – to help find a deal with his foes and present their demands to the rest of the House GOP conference.

Later Sunday evening, House Republicans unveiled their rules package for the 118th Congress, which formalizes some of the concessions that McCarthy has agreed to. The rules package will be adopted only after the speaker is found, and there could be additional compromises made in the next few days.

The discussion about different points of view should not be a surprise for Republicans, according to a GOP congressman.

During the negotiations, members from opposing groups have had time to have fun. Burchett hosted a Christmas party in his office this week, where all corners of Capitol Hill came together, including some anti-McCarthy lawmakers. He rode the skateboard of Gaetz’s wife and drank from the Mountain Dew fountain.

The various groups that make up the governing wing actually agree on most things, and the idea that it would be tense next year is completely false, according to Rep. Moore.

Moore told CNN, that there is not a huge amount of drama. “I’ve met with House Freedom Caucus members to chat on what we agree on. It is an enormous amount.

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is a author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work,Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest lies and Legends about Our Past. Follow him on social media. The views he expresses in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The Tea Party or the Tea Party: A Memoir of John Boehner and the U.S. Congress in the 1980s and 1990s

During the unveiling of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s official portrait on Wednesday, former Speaker John Boehner shed some tears while paying tribute to Pelosi.

Over the years, you and I have disagreed politically but we were never disagreeable to each other, Speaker, told you during the ceremony. In what has become a familiar ritual among many politicians of yore, he looked back nostalgically on the time that he was in office, when the two parties allegedly got along, and politics was more civil.

The new 1980s are known as the new 1950s because they were the mythical period when political adversaries could get together for a drink and still fight during the day.

The problem is that those ideas about the good old days belie how deep-rooted the polarization in Washington, DC, has been. Certainly, anyone who remembers the Obama years would be hard-pressed to think of the period as calm or harmonious. In his victory speech after being elected, Barack Obama made it clear that there was not a red America and a blue America but a United States of America.

He was wrong. The fault lines between the parties have been enduring. Obama soon learned that congressional Republicans would be unyielding in their opposition to his agenda and willing to deploy the most ruthless tactics necessary to achieve their goals.

It was Republican leaders like Boehner who allowed these newcomers to gain a foothold in Washington, DC, ultimately sacrificing governance and the health of our democratic institutions in the name of partisan power. In doing so, they allowed extremism to flourish until the inevitable moment when they themselves were sacrificed for being too moderate.

This is a familiar narrative. Older Republicans blame younger Republicans for what has happened to the party. The ways in which the Republican establishment has allowed younger and more aggressive members of the party have not been acknowledged by them.

Then, as now, the party with the House majority was the Republican Party. Both times, the party’s nominee for speaker was someone who had been in the job or in line for the job for several years.

He thought the tea party brought energy to the political process. Seeking to downplay talk of a civil war in the party, he said, “There’s not that big a difference between what you call the tea party and your average conservative Republican.” He helped make sure that his colleagues were included in the political coalition.

Obama understood his experience like that when he left office. He told the New Yorker’s David Remnick that Trump is a logical conclusion of the Republican Party’s rhetoric over the past ten years.

Doomsday and beyond: The Boehner-Ryan example is a dangerous game for the House GOP, and what we’re doing about it

“We’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, taking to the airwaves to argue that the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril and that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy.”

A group of five GOP members have warned that they might vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning that they will all vote.

You only have so many months to govern in a presidential year, McCarthy said. You would like to get to the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. So you don’t get new, stronger candidates. You don’t get more resources to be able to supply those candidates to get the message out.”

“I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them is very enamored with Trump and me. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. The example that I’m using is the one about the Boehner to Ryan example. You understand what I’m saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

It is a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse,” Trump told Breitbart. “Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. He’s the worst speaker in history, that’s for sure.

McCarthy posed for a photo with Trump just weeks after the insurrection, despite the fact that he wouldn’t stick to his criticism.

Why the Republicans are the only ones that can’t shoot straight except at one another – running in the silly season of a campaign –

The editorial board said, Republicans are the group that can’t shoot straight except at one another.

“Right now, the emotions are high,” he said. “We’re running up against a holiday, trying to deal with this issue of funding the government and there are different opinions about how best to do that. I agree with that. I think it will get done. It will set the stage for next year, and it seems like they’re going to benefit from it next year. They will start with a clean slate.”

“We’re enduring the silly season of a campaign. For most of us, that’s over after you get elected. He said the silliness is still apparent because he is running for Speaker of the House.

The House Appropriations Committee’s December 16 deadline: How much work are you willing to spend in the White House? (The opinion of Patrick T. Brown)

Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He was a senior policy adviser to Congress. He can be followed on the social media site of his choice. The views he expresses are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The 4,155-page omnibus spending bill negotiated by the Senate Appropriations Committee was released Monday night, and Congress hopes to have it passed by Christmas.

Devotees of good government have plenty of reason to complain about the process. Congress relies on forcing lawmakers to vote on bills that they can’t read because they’re a crutch.

Republicans won’t want to hear it, but this admittedly unsightly product will pay dividends in the long run by removing a potential stumbling block from their path in early 2023.

That group includes Representative Chip Roy of Texas, the former chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz, who has weaponized his procedural knowledge to force delays in House proceedings and call for an overhaul of the chamber rules. Dan Bishop, a Republican from North Carolina, and Representative Donalds, a second-term Republican from Florida, emerged as consensus picks for the opponents of Mr. McCarthy. (Mr. Donalds has openly said he does not want the position, but since joined negotiations.)

It’s not clear whether rank-and-file House Republicans must like the deal. But they should quietly thank cooler heads in the Senate from saving them from themselves.

The previous Republican-led shutdowns (1995), 1996 and 2013 led to poor poll numbers for GOP leaders and failed to achieve meaningful policy change. There’s very little reason to believe this go-round would be any different, and some members may be secretly breathing a sigh of relief to have that taken off the table.

While Republicans have plenty to complain about the process, they also have reason to feel a little frustrated with how some negotiations that could have provided meaningful assistance to parents and families didn’t take place.

Progressives hoped to restore the Biden-era expanded Child Tax Credit, but the lack of work requirements for Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia made it hard for them to do so. The White House’s stated position for most of the year was to not require work during the expansion phase but to reverse course at the last minute.

Democrats would have had serious talks over the past year with senators such as Romney, Lee, and Romney who have proposed different kinds of pro- family tax reform. Perhaps the upcoming era of divided governance will give Democrats time to explore areas of common ground.

Legislation that would have given legal clarity around accommodations for expectant mothers in the workplace fell victim to partisan squabbling. Conservatives and women’s organizations endorsed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, but it faced questions about whether business could be required to provide benefits to women who choose abortion.

The fact that the act was included in an amendment to the omnibus shows how many in Congress prefer culture wars to compromise, even though Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana helped lead bipartisan talks to resolve some of these concerns.

The Republicans will take no pleasure in opposing a whole bunch of pork barrel spending like the $575 million in grants for family planning/reproductive health.

There is a lot to like in the omnibus. Congress included funding for a task force and hotline on maternal health and ordered a study on the impact of tech use on teen mental health outcomes, in addition to the big-ticket items.

They also increased funding for the child care block grant, reauthorized the evidence-based maternal and early childhood home visiting program and extended funding for covering low-income mothers for up to a year after birth under Medicaid.

Why Five-Person Threshold is Too Much for the Left? The Devil in Details: A Conference Call on Speaker Corrigendum

It is possible that avoiding at least one self- inflicted wound may be the best way for Republicans to go out in an era of unified Democratic control. The fact that 21 GOP senators voted in favor of the procedural motion to advance the deal indicates many know that.

presumptive Speaker McCarthy may want to try and force budget cuts in a new spending deal or debt ceiling negotiations in order to get the support he needs from his devil-may-care group. But starting off Republican House control with a government shutdown would reward voters, who signaled a desire for normalcy in the midterms, with instability.

The five-person threshold is still too much, according to some of McCarthy’s fiercest critics, including Matt Gaetz of Florida and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.

Some moderates in the party have privately suggested they would be willing to agree on a threshold of 50 people.

A major topic of discussion on Friday will be the conference call McCarthy arranged with the various ideological caucuses in the House Republican Party just four days ahead of the speaker’s vote.

There is a devil in the details with regards to threshold and other rule concessions. In writing and sealed with social media posts, people won’t vote until they know the details.

CNN Investigates the Case of George Santos: Resume Embellished and Fake: His Case Against the Frauds of the Holocaust

Dean Obeidalla is a former attorney and the host of the daily show on the radio. Follow him @[email protected]. The opinions that are expressed in this commentary are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

On December 19th, The New York Times published a detailed article about George Santos’ false claims about his education, work experience, and more. (Santos later described these falsehoods as “resume embellishment” but admitted to misrepresenting his employment and educational background.)

Santos also claimed that his grandparents fled the horrors of the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium — only to have this version of his family background contradicted by a review of genealogy records. Santos did not respond to CNN’s request.

Recent developments include the launch of criminal investigations intoSantos over his finances and fabrications. When he was running for Congress in 2020,Santos reported that he did not have assets, yet he was able to lend his campaign $700,000.

The Santos story caused an uproar when a guest host asked if he had no shame, asking if he had fabrications.

McCarthy accused the FBI of trying to suppress news stories that hurt the Democrats and criticized the border policy of the Biden administration.

Imagine for a moment if an incoming Democratic member of Congress had been engulfed in such a scandal. McCarthy probably would be making a lot of noise about how this politician should not be in Congress and about how the Democrats needed to condemn him.

How Good is Mitch McConnell? The First Time House Speakers at the Edge of the Reionization Era after a Bad Midterm?

All potential first time House speakers in the last 90 years had at least 230 seats in their majority. Speakers whose party held fewer seats than that all had the power of incumbency (i.e., having been elected to the position at least once before).

A CNN/SSRS poll last month found that his net favorable (i.e. favorable minus unfavorable) rating was +30 points among Republicans. That’s certainly not bad. (Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has notoriously low ratings among Republicans.) A net favorability rating of + 30 points doesn’t do anyone any good.

McCarthy has the second lowest net favorability rating among his own party members of the first time potential speakers in the last 28 years. Only Gingrich’s +24 points in late 1994 was lower. Net favorability ratings for Nancy Pelosi were above +50 points among party faithful.

All of this GOP angst is a pretty decent result from the loss of the House majority. If nothing else, they’re watching a Republican Party that can’t seem to get its act together after a historically bad midterm for an opposition party.

A final rule package for the House Speakership running re-opened after a rerun by the California Rep. Carlos DiBalart

In a “Dear Colleague” letter from the California Republican, he made his case for the speakership and offered additional promises, including ensuring that the ideological groups are better represented on committees.

Not long after Sunday’s call, a group of nine hardliners – who had outlined their demands to McCarthy last month – put out a new letter saying some of the concessions he announced are insufficient and making clear they’re still not sold on him, though they did say progress is being made.

CNN obtained a letter which states that there is no way to measure if promises are kept or broken.

Some moderates – who fear the motion to vacate will be used as constant cudgel over McCarthy’s head – pushed back and expressed their frustration during the call, sources said.

Johnson said he would swallow the low threshold, if it helps McCarthy win the speakership, but he also said he was unhappy with the low threshold. The rules package will be off the table if McCarthy’s critics tank his speakership bid.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida pressed McCarthy on whether this concession on the motion to vacate will win him the 218 votes. McCarthy said on the call that people were slowly moving in the right direction, but he did not directly answer.

McCarthy was asked by Carlos Gimenez to answer the question. McCarthy’s response, according to sources, was that they have a couple days to close the deal, and they need to close.

The rules package was finalized over the weekend. On the conference-wide call on Sunday, McCarthy told Republicans that he would agree to the five person threshold on the motion to vacate, which he billed as a compromise.

The package includes giving five Republicans the power to call for a vote on deposing the sitting speaker, restoring the ability to zero out a government official’s salary, creating a new select commit to investigative, and giving lawmakers 72 hours to read a bill before it comes to the floor.

The process of filing discharge petitions does not change despite the fact that the rules package makes it easier to force a bill to the floor.

Other notable items that might be of interest: The rules package prohibits remote hearings and markups, does away with staffer unionization efforts and allows the House Ethics Committee to take ethic complaints from the public.

Four days before the House speaker vote, when his critics were still noncommittal about their support for his speakership bid, even after the California Republican had offered a number of key concessions – including making it easier to oust the sitting speaker – he attempted to give them the hard sell.

But now with just one day to go, a group of at least nine Republicans have made clear that they’re still not sold – despite McCarthy’s warning and even after he gave in to some of their most ardent demands, which he outlined during a Sunday evening conference call.

“To be honest, we are preparing for a fight. Not the way we want to start out in our new majority, but you can not really negotiate against the stance of giving us everything we ask for and not guaranteeing anything in return. The Democratic lawmaker from North Dakota is a member of the Republican Governance Group.

“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. A way to improve this place. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s in deal-making mode, working the phones with critics and supporters alike to find consensus on rules changes designed to win over holdouts.

The fight for a senator in the House is far from over: When McCarthy vowed to win the House floor before Pelosi changed the rules

He can only afford to lose four votes on the House floor, and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with nearly a dozen other GOP lawmakers publicly saying they’re still not there yet.

After Nancy Pelosi changed the rules and made it harder for a single member to oust the speaker, there are still members who would like to call for a vote to topple the speaker.

McCarthy moved to delay the race for any committee chairs that were not candidates before the vote. He said that it was to allow freshman members to have a seat at the table, but other members believed that it was part of his plan to make sure he didn’t end up losing his race.

In phone calls and text messages during the holidays, McCarthy’s defenders vowed to him and each other they wouldn’t let a handful of members control their conference.

McCarthy’s opposition has also been working in conjunction, and they have much more experience in playing hardball compared to the Freedom Caucus.

The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week outlining the practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. Without an approved House Rules package, the memo outlined that committees won’t be able to pay staff.

The same memo, which was first reported by Politico and obtained by CNN, also warned that student loan payments for committee staff wouldn’t be disbursed if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January.

It is one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could prevent the House and the Republican majority from operating smoothly in the opening days.

When boxes from McCarthy’s office were moved into the speaker’s suite last week, it was a signal he was committed to seeking the job even after the race was far from over.

“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.

The House GOP Embarrassment of Frank Gillett: 218 votes in a conference call on Sunday, Jan. 3

The House could go into recess to allow for Republicans to privately meet, but 218 votes would be needed to cause a break in the floor action on Tuesday. Or the House could continue to vote until someone gets to 218 – a scenario that hasn’t happened since 1923 when Frederick Gillet won the speakership on the ninth ballot. According to a source familiar with the matter, the chamber will keep voting even if McCarthy doesn’t win 218 votes.

Rep. Don Bacon stated that Steve is trying to be very supportive. “He has been public that he is supporting McCarthy. Someday, I think he wants to be a speaker. He needs to be tactful.

He told CNN that their focus was to get it resolved by January 3. “And there’s a lot of conversations that everybody has been having, Kevin, surely, with the members who have expressed concerns.”

In a private House GOP call on Sunday, Scalise embraced his role as the incoming majority leader by laying out the agenda and the bills that would come to the floor this week – and even referenced McCarthy as the future speaker, according to a source on the call.

The fear is that lowering the threshold for a vote to oust the speaker to one member will make governing on items like the debt limit and funding almost impossible.

“I think people will become more set against rule and operational changes if it becomes clear that no matter what, KMC won’t get their votes,” said another GOP member, referring to McCarthy.

If McCarthy can’t win 218 votes, the hard-liners have suggested a new candidate would emerge but they have steadfastly refused to name the individual – something that is infuriating many McCarthy allies in the conference.

“We shouldn’t be in a hurry to make a bad decision,” Good said, promising a new candidate would emerge on Tuesday. He declined to specify the member and also declined to comment about Scalise.

Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, said that he found it “incredible” that the same members pushing for a more “open and transparent” GOP conference are getting behind a “shadow candidate” they plan to “ambush” Republicans with at the start of the new Congress.

Johnson told CNN that members were growing frustrated with the intransigence of some of the holdouts, and that they were trying to cause trouble.

One GOP lawmaker said that the people shouldn’t think this is a noble cause. No one should associate this with self aggrandizement. They are trying to push procedures that no one cares about outside of Washington only to give themselves more power.”

The Real Show is Going to be the Empowered, Extreme MAGA Types: The Oklahoma Rep. Tom Mullin, the House Majority, Speaker Ted Cruz, and Michael Podhorzer

Mullin, who is an Oklahoma Republican, visited McCarthy in his office on Monday. Mullin, who has been helping to lobby House members to back McCarthy, said he and others have been encouraging McCarthy with a simple message: “Stay put.”

The Republicans are poised to double down on the hard-edged politics of last years election even if they choose a new speaker on Tuesday.

Whoever Republicans ultimately select as speaker “will be subject to the whims and the never-ending leveraging of a small group of members who want to wield power,” said former GOP Rep. Charlie Dent, a CNN political commentator. The group of people on the far right will push the leadership to go further right on issues.

Since then, the only selection that has required more than a single ballot came in 1923, when Republicans holding only a narrow majority comparable to their advantage this year took nine ballots to select their speaker. Some republicans were initially opposed to Speaker Frederick Gillett.

There is no other candidate who can raise as much money or have the experience to win an election, and that is what makes him the only one who can get the Republican Party to coalesce around a single leader, said former GOP lawmaker Tom Davis. The vast majority of the Conference is loyal to him.

Whether McCarthy wins the speakership, or conservatives (in a less likely scenario) succeed in installing an alternative to his right, Democrats believe all these early markers guarantee that the House GOP’s most militant members will be front and center in defining the party over the next two years.

“In some ways, win or lose [for McCarthy] it doesn’t matter,” says Leslie Dach, a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-aligned group established to respond to the coming House investigations of the Biden administration. The die is cast by giving these people the power and the podium.

Democrats think the House Majority will reinforce the GOP’s image as the party by allowing hardline Trump allies to pursue conservative grievances like the charge that the FBI has become weaponized against the right.

“The real show is going to be these empowered, extreme MAGA types,” Dach insists. Every single day they are on a committee, every day they are on television, is not good for the Republican Party.

According to Michael Podhorzer, the GOP has lost ground in many states since Trump took office.

There were only a single Democratic governor in those states, four Democratic Senators, no speaker of the state assembly, and no majority leader in the senate, according to Podhorzer, chairman of the board of the analyst institute. In the month of February, 4 of the states will have Democratic governors, 9 of the 10 Senators are Democrats, and three of the state legislative chambers are led by Democrats. Democrats have done nothing but win in those places, because they don’t think the states will vote for Republicans.

“It was two midterms happening at the same time – depending on whether you were in a place where that new bubble of Democratic voters believed they had to come out to beat MAGA again,” Podhorzer argued.

The War of the Nineteenth Congressional District: Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., in an All Out Scramble to Correct for a “Faint” Speaker

Republicans in places where they are already strong might not have too many problems because of that. Republicans consolidated their control over red-leaning America and took control of a number of states that had been in GOP hands for the past two years.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.: The outlier in the Maryland delegation was one of nine Republicans who signed a letter Sunday saying the times called for a “radical departure from the status quo” and said “McCarthy bears squarely the burden to correct the dysfunction he now explicitly admits across that long tenure.”

The Speaker of the House is usually elected on the first day of the new Congress. The majority party has the most votes, even if some of its members vote “present” or just don’t show up, as long as they are nominated by the leader.

McCarthy got weaker with each roll call, even if one senior GOP source told CNN he would never back down and they were going to war. The GOP members now call the rebels the chaos caucus or The Taliban 20.

McCarthy’s opponents coalesced in a second round of voting behind Jordan, who used to coordinate these types of rebellions but who is now a McCarthy-backer with his eye on the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee.

The razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans allowed a small group of conservatives, many of whom were distrustful of McCarthy, to make demands.

The last two months have seen an all out scramble for the speakership that has included strategy sessions with close allies on Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.

House in an absurd limbo after a daylong debacle in which McCarthy appeared to have no strategy other than a beat-the-head- against-a-brick-wall approach. Smartly dressed family members who traveled to Washington to see their new lawmakers proudly sworn in were bored and disappointed. The House adjourned and will resume on Wednesday at noon, even though there’s little sign the deadlock will break.

“People are committed to this and they’re sick and tired of the tail trying to wag the dog, which is what these 19 think they’re going to do,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, who backs McCarthy, told CNN’s Jake Tapper after the second vote.

Byron Donalds, R-Fla.: Donalds’ opposition was a particularly worrisome sign for McCarthy. Though he is a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, he was willing to initially vote for McCarthy, which he did on the first two ballots. He became the unlikely landing place for the 20 votes, himself winning those opposition votes on the last few ballots. He says he switched because McCarthy “doesn’t have the votes,” that negotiations need to happen.

By backing Jordan, Donalds joined the original 19, including people like Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who are equally committed.

McCarthy had to lose four of his colleagues to win the vote, but that 19 remained against him has dragged out a process that was normally done in a formality.

Rep. J.D. Dent: ”Republican Rebellion”, Rep. P. D. Gaetz, and the State of Kentucky

“The irony of what we’re witnessing here today is the fact that Jim Jordan was always the ringleader of these types of rebellions and he’s trained these guys well,” said the CNN analyst, moderate Republican and former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.

“Now he ostensibly is trying to get these guys to back off and they won’t. This is the strangest thing I have seen on the House floor since I have been there, because he is a rebel and he does not have the power to control them.

Republicans will ultimately figure this out and unite behind someone – McCarthy or someone else. A floor fight in 1923 took nine votes. Before the Civil War, the votes could drag on for months.

Gaetz stood in front of McCarthy and accused him of having sold himself in the quest for the speaker post after Gaetz had nominated Jordan.

This drama – or sideshow, if that’s how you view it – does presage a very difficult year for the ultimate speaker in which the debt ceiling must be raised to avert an economic meltdown.

CNN anchor John King implied that the GOP needs to figure out what they are going to do. We are not able to come to a consensus on who should lead us, since we are the governing party of the House of Representatives. We are going to do a lot of things about the border, we are going to do a lot about inflation, we are going to do a lot about immigration.

All of it is on hold until they find a leader. Meanwhile, as House Republicans grapple in a very unpredictable way with how to convince their members who have no interest in the system functioning, there will be a highly scripted photo opportunity about bipartisanship in Kentucky on Wednesday.

The Senate Republican leader, who just became the longest-serving Senate party leader in history, will be with the state’s governor, Andy Beshear, and the country’s Democratic president, Joe Biden, to announce new funding to upgrade the Brent Spence Bridge. There will be an Ohio Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, and an Ohio Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, also on hand.

CNN broadcasted a interview with Beshear on Tuesday in which he talked about the bridge project and how it will help the region’s economy.

Beshear said that the statement that there is nothing partisan about the bridge was a great one. He later added the bipartisan quintet would “announce that we’ve done the right thing for our people. It is pretty refreshing.”

He’ll have to find a way to work with whomever Republicans ultimately choose to be their speaker and to find a way around the lawmakers who have no problem grinding the government to a halt.

Two years after Donald Trump was kicked out of Washington in disgrace, Republicans have regained some power.

On a surreal day, the 118th Congress opened with Republicans fighting Republicans, while Democrats – who should have been mourning their lost majority – were joyous at the GOP circus they beheld.

What a Benghazi Special Committee can do, or not to do, when Congress is trying to make political sense of the Libyan attack on the American Embassy

“I didn’t think we were going to get any more productive by continuing on the day,” McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday. But he insisted he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said, adding, “We only need 11 more votes to win,” implying that he thinks he can get a number of members to vote present, which would lower the threshold he’d need.

“Maybe the right person for the speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares in himself for more than a decade to get it,” Gaetz said on the floor on Tuesday in a cutting jab at McCarthy, who sat a few feet away.

The rebels were in it for themselves, and when they lost a primary to a rival supported by the ex-president, they went on to lose the general election, according to a former congressman.

The attempt by Mr. McCarthy to appease them has been a failure, raising doubts about his ability to count votes and whether they can ever be appeased.

— And Democrats are already trying to make political capital out of it, seeing vindication for their claims that Republicans are still not fit for power and should be kicked out at the first opportunity in the next election. “I just watched House Republicans plunge into utter chaos on the House floor,” Jeffries told Democratic donors in a fundraising email. This changes everything for the Democrats. We now have a chance to make a difference.

The Utah Republican believes that the conference who comes together will be the one to implement the agenda if they allow a small group to keep it from happening.

After having three rounds of voting, the House is set to convene at noon on Wednesday. McCarthy failed to hit the majority threshold needed to secure the speakership each time. The House was adjourned after the vote series took hours with no resolution.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy was talking to Fox News. “But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

The investigation into the attacks on the American embassy in Libya was supposed to find out what happened, not to hurt Clinton. Clinton was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Democrats in Disarray: Replacing Corrigendum in the House of Representatives Against the Speaker’s Electiation

He tried to play the tough guy and threaten the defectors with stripping their committee assignments at the eleventh hour. His allies appeared to have a different idea of what they were going to do.

The question is if it was worth it for anyone with ambition and who had to make choices between what they believe and what they’re willing to compromise.

At the end of the day, the job of speaker isn’t supposed to be about one person’s ambition but what they can get done to fix problems in the country, and this is taking place at a time when people are already cynical about the intentions of politicians in Washington and what they are trying to accomplish.

For all the talk in Washington of “Dems in disarray,” this is again another example of the chaos that continues to surround House Republicans. How can they govern if they’re going through all this in order to pick a leader?

The House will continue to be paralyzed until this standoff is resolved. The situation has grown dire for McCarthy’s political future as Republican allies are beginning to fear that the House GOP leader may not be able to pull off his gamble for speaker if the fight goes much longer.

The reason: Voting to adjourn would require 218 votes, and Democratic sources say they would actively whip against a motion to adjourn. Some Republicans would probably vote against it as well.

While it was helpful, the fact that Donald Trump repeated his support for McCarthy and urged Republicans to back him wasn’t expected to move the needle.

There is little that McCarthy can do to turn the tide after Tuesday when it was clear that the opposition is personal.

As the votes stretched on Tuesday, the situation appeared to become even more dire for McCarthy, as the vote count in opposition to his speaker bid grew.

“I disagree with Trump. This is our fight, that is what we are fighting. This isn’t Trump’s – and I support Trump. I disagree with it. Kevin is the one who’s going to censor him,” Norman said. Boebert claimed that her favorite president called rebels opposing McCarthy and told them to get rid of him.

Republican obstructionists didn’t budge despite more than 10 votes. Even after Gaetz cast his vote for Trump in the seventh and eighth round, the result was still not a conclusive one, as it was yet another sign of the former president’s diminishing power at a time when the presidential campaign is expected to ramp up.

Nathaniel P. Banks, the Founding Father of the House Speaker’s Campaign, 1855–1959: A Long History of Speaker Elections

Editor’s Note: Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-term Fellow at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. He is the author of “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King” (Oxford University Press). He was interested in presidential history. The opinions in this piece are of his own. There is more opinion on CNN.

What does this long history of speaker elections tell us about the problems we have today? In the speaker contests of the 1850s, the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories was the crucial factor that divided the two major parties. While the Republicans didn’t get their first choice for speaker, they chose a member of the party who was against them and live to fight another day.

When selecting a new candidate for speaker or by placating the splinter group, the compromise has usually been the result. If history is any guide, we may once again be living a version of one of these two scenarios.

In 1855, the race for speaker faced its most serious challenge yet. Without sufficient Democrats or former Whigs to reach a majority, a compromise candidate was found in Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, a member of the nativist American Party (also called “Know Nothings”). Banks, who became speaker after 133 ballots held over two months, defeated Democratic challenger, William Aiken, Jr., of South Carolina, whose backers hoped that a plurality resolution would once again capture the votes of competing factions. The Banks triumphed over Aiken on February 2, 1856.

The meeting was held between the Republican majority leader Nicholas Longworth of Ohio and the radical group, represented by Rep. John Nelson of Wisconsin. Gillett became speaker after the House agreed to a number of procedural reforms.

In 1923, the progressive Republicans were unwilling to abandon their Republican affiliation. Instead, they worked within the party structure to attempt to achieve the reforms that they desired. However, they remained a vulnerable minority whose power was eventually limited. If they can only find some kind of agreement in the next few days it will be a problem for the Republican Party.

Even former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a founding father of the politics of smashmouth partisan warfare, implored the GOP to elect McCarthy: “It’s him or chaos.” The legislator is renowned for reveling in chaos and this is a symptom of how extreme parts of the GOP have become.

It’s a very small minority of a slim majority that’s kept the House from moving forward and is on the cusp of derailing Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.

They do not speak for the majority of Republicans. The 20 anti-McCarthy Republicans who so far derailed his bid to become House speaker represent less than 10% of the House GOP.

Spartz hasn’t opposed McCarthy, but she didn’t do him any favors when she voted “present” and ate away at his support. She said that the hardliners had a point and that she wants the House to function differently.

The 20/20 Debate and the Failure of the Republic: Alaska’s Reply to the Corrupt Referendum on the Trade Corruptcy

On CNN on Wednesday, Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, said that the 20 should be broken down. Buck had been viewed as a possible defector before this week, and he made clear that patience with these votes is waning.

He said that it was a good idea for the speaker to speak to three kinds of the anti-McCarthy Republicans.

Others want specific changes. “There are some of the others … who want changes in the rules and there are some others who care about policy,” Buck said. “So I think if Steve (Scalise) meets those three needs, he will be able to move forward and take the speakership.”

These lawmakers want painful cuts now to end deficit spending. If the US was to default on its debt, it could send the US economy into a tailspin, according to most economists. A government shutdown would be less severe, but they have been unpopular when lawmakers forced them in recent years.

Dan Bishop said that this is democracy in action. You cannot be satisfied just doing the same thing if you aren’t happy with Washington.

Bishop said that a specific agenda that Kevin McCarthy is going to go to the mat for is indicative of the problem. “And it’s been that way for all 14 years he’s been in leadership, with all due respect to him.”

Boebert said on the House floor that he was tired of the campaign tactics to get people to turn their backs on him. “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”

You can hear the argument that Republicans and Democrats aren’t that different, if you watch enough Tucker Carlson on Fox or listen to Steve Bannon on his show. Carlson often uses the term “uni-party” to blast the funding bills that are signed into law. There’s some of that in the opposition to McCarthy, who has been part of the GOP leadership for years.

I am holding the line because I think we need this place to function in a different way. On Tuesday, Roy said it was just something that he believed.

Roy said he and others are among the fiscal conservatives who want to stop the train of the swamp, which he said is made up of Republicans and Democrats. He said that the special interests were pushing government funding bills like the one that was passed last month to fund the government through most of the next ten years.

Roy and Perry also talked about the need for open amendments on the House floor, and Donalds has joined the others who want a single member to be able to force a vote on whether to remove a sitting speaker.

“We have uncontrolled spending, and we can do nothing about it,” Spartz complained, noting the appropriations process does not allow for open amendments. “I think that needs to stop,” she said.

Failing to Resolve the First 118th House Black Holes Controversy: Rep. Jim Jordan in the House Freedom Caucus

McCarthy conceded to the hardliners, including a pledge to give lawmakers 72 hours to read a bill before voting on it, but it’s hard to imagine how they could find time to read it.

He also agreed to allow just five Republicans to force a vote to remove the speaker instead of the current requirement that a majority of Republicans join the call.

When CNN asked Donalds if he wanted the job, he said it wasn’t true.

Often, multiple funding bills on everything from farming to defense and transportation to space are lumped together in massive end-of-year omnibus bills like the mammoth $1.7 trillion spending package that Congress finally passed in December. Multiple Republican members appeared on CNN on Wednesday making reasoned arguments about the need to mend a broken institution, to open the House’s business to the public and to conduct a proper appropriations process through committees with time for full debates, budget assessments and amendments.

Even after a direct appeal from former President Trump, the fourthballot vote signaled that Republicans were far from breaking the stalemate and giving Mr. McCarthy a chance to lead them.

The endorsement failed to move a single defector in Mr. McCarthy’s direction. The Republican leader and his allies were trying to get votes despite the fact that the fifth vote was still going on.

The Republicans in the House have been at a stalemate over the opposition of a group of conservatives. The fight, which began on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House GOP majority into chaos and undercut the party’s agenda.

On Tuesday, Republicans coalesced behind Representative Jim Jordan of OH, a founding member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus as an alternative to Mr. McCarthy.

For generations it was the definition of party loyalty for every member of each party to vote for its nominee for speaker. For the better part of 50 years, no stray vote was cast for anyone other than the two major party nominees.

Gillett’s Party, Harden’s White House, and the 1930s Reionization Scenario: A Brief History of The Failed 118th Congress

Still, a distant mirror can show us things, and even across 10 decades of profound change, there are parallels between this week’s meltdown at the outset of the 118th Congress and the fiasco that occurred in the 68th.

But in both cases, the results of the latest November elections had been somewhere between disappointing and devastating, leaving the party clinging to majority control. That created anxiety and aggravated long-festering internal disputes over rules and procedures, including the powers of individual committee chairs.

The nominee was not controversial in either case. Each had risen through the ranks, a survivor of earlier leadership upheavals, generally compatible with the party’s broad rank and file.

But having reached the top of the leadership ladder, these men represented a party establishment regarded with hostility by a potent faction of the party. They became the embodiment of that faction’s grievances.

The oldest member of the House was a Boston Brahmin named Gillett with a Harvard law degree. He had first grasped the big gavel years earlier, after Republicans seized the House majority in the 1918 midterms the month World War I ended.

Gillett’s party rode to a huge majority on the same postwar wave that propelled Warren G. Harden into the White House in 1920. A decade of Washington domination in both the White House and Congress followed the rise of the party of Lincoln.

But the brief era of the Harding administration stalled the party’s momentum. The economy was still recovering from its postwar recession and labor unrest was widespread, including major strikes by coal miners and railroad workers.

The House had also brought criticism of itself in 1921 and 1922 by refusing to accept the Census of 1920. For the first time, more Americans were living in urban areas than rural, according to the study that documented how immigration had exploded.

These controversies, coupled with the typical swing of the midterm political mood led to Harding’s GOP losing 75 House seats and a net of 6 Senate seats in 1922. It was worse than any president of the past four decades, even Barack Obama, who would have experienced it in his first midterm.

The congress was officially inaugurated in March 1923 but did not start its first session until the fall of that year under the congressional schedule at that time. In the meantime, Harding died in August and was succeeded by his vice president, Calvin Coolidge. The vote for speaker finally commenced on December 5. The 20th Amendment adopted a January 3 starting date for the current schedule.

Gillett’s majority in 1923 was barely larger than Republicans have now, and he found it difficult to corral the factions within his party. He got just 197 votes on the first ballot, even fewer than McCarthy got in his first test this week.

Seventeen House members who identified as progressives (The New York Times called them “radical progressives”) would cast their first-round speaker votes for Henry A. Cooper of Wisconsin. From 1893 to 1919 and again from 1921 to 1931 the former prosecuting attorney of southeastern Wisconsin was from Racine. Cooper only lost once in his career when he opposed U.S. entry into World War I.

Cooper, whose parents had operated a station on the Underground Railroad by which escaped slaves reached freedom, was a longtime ally of Wisconsin’s legendary progressive governor and Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette. There was an uprising against the GOP leaders in the Senate when Cooper was opposing Gillett.

Ultimately, however, Gillett survived. The voting continued for many days without any apparent alternative that was going to get a majority. In the end, he was able to win over the Cooper voters with the help of his No. 2 leader, Nicholas Longworth of Ohio. Widely viewed as Gillett’s heir apparent, Longworth was able to convince enough of the progressives that there would in fact be procedural reforms.

There were some people this week who said this may be a template for McCarthy’s strategy. Over many votes and ballots, some of the less zealous members might drift away as the hour grew late or the weekend grew near.

The decentralization of authority in the chamber has been a main motivation for some of McCarthy’s critics. They want less reliance on the leadership and more empowerment of the committee chairs.

They wanted a rule change that would help facilitate the use of a motion to leave the chair, an obscure procedure found on the House floor. The provision allows enough members to demand a vote on the speaker, a threat to replace him.

At the height of his power, Cannon not only chose all the committee chairs, he chose all the members of all the committees. He was chairman of the Rules Committee and he determined which bills and amendments would be allowed on the floor and which members would be permitted to speak.

One inquiring constituent who asked a member for a copy of the House rules in that era was said to have received an envelope that contained only a picture of Joe Cannon.

When Cannon’s high-handed practices had become intolerable, a coalition of Democratic members and Republican progressives put together the bipartisan majority needed to “vacate the chair.” Cannon remained Speaker speaker but stripped of most of his powers. He was defeated in the 1912 election, but came back two years later and served again as a Republican.

The first official building housing the offices of House members was opened in 1908 and called the House Office Building. Later it was called the Old House Building. In 1962, it was named for Cannon. It stands as a monument both to the preeminence of the speakership and the impermanence of power.

The California Republican was humiliated by right-wing extremists and a failed GOP-led legislative majority: a farcical debut for the new House

The California Republican unveiled major concessions on Wednesday evening after he was stung by right-wing radicals who blocked his bid for power in six humiliating votes – a farcical debut for the new GOP-led House.

The idea that a new majority is coming to town in order to help the American people is not going well. The mess in the new House on Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that every tough vote, and even easy ones, in the new House could be gummed up by the reality of a dysfunctional majority when small groups of members could shut the chamber down.

The proposals surfaced after the new House majority finally agreed on something Wednesday: following another day of feuding and insults, they narrowly voted to adjourn their futile search for a speaker until Thursday.

Cheers that erupted from Republican benches when the vote closed reflected the risible state of the House’s new GOP management, which is unable to perform the only task it currently has – choosing a leader – and is holding up the functioning of the chamber.

“The country or Kevin McCarthy. Which should have more weight?” said recently retired GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who is now a CNN political analyst.

The other side has a group of right-wing extremists who hold their party, the house and the country hostage, but have no clear objective other than to destroy governance itself. Chaos is the point for them.

There was a hint of some kind of support as the California lawmaker was humiliated and a divide within the anti-McCarthy block began to open.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/politics/mccarthy-desperation-speaker-analysis/index.html

On the groundhog of the House: what can we learn from a groundhog day in the House of Desperation Speakers, with an application to Rep. Chip Roy

Several lawmakers who want far-reaching changes to the way the House works reported genuine progress in talks with McCarthy. One of their number, Texas Rep. Chip Roy, predicted he could bring over 10 votes if the talks pan out.

The question is whether another day of pointless voting on Thursday will prompt members to begin to consider whether he should step aside for a more universally trusted colleague – perhaps Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for instance. Many Republicans are complaining that their hopes for quickly wielding power and throttling the Biden administration have been dashed.

While another Groundhog Day in the House didn’t produce a new speaker, it did offer hints on how an endgame in the battle for the speaker’s gavel may develop. It gave insight into the new balance of power in Congress and how it will change in the months to come.

“If it’s the latter, it’s not as constructive because it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about the process, but I don’t know. He said he didn’t know how many were in either camp.

Roy has argued in floor speeches and interviews that the House is having consequential debates. Under recent Democratic and Republican speakers, normal order and the sequencing of new laws through the committee process and debates on the House floor have been curtailed as severe partisanship and gridlock causes leaders to enforce ruthless party-line discipline.

Some of the Republicans accused of using the spotlight to raise campaign money are from the same party. If there’s a philosophical grounding to the opposition, it’s as the latest expression of the longtime anti-establishment wing of the GOP that seeks to neutralize government itself.

Donald Trump sent thispolitics of destruction into high gear with his vows to drain the Washington swamp. At the beginning of the Trump administration, Steve Bannon called it the deconstruction of the administrative state. McCarthy, who cozied up to Trump and often appeased the zealots, has a problem with how to negotiate with someone who wants chaos.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/politics/mccarthy-desperation-speaker-analysis/index.html

Insubordination in the House of Representatives: What Are We Waiting for? Why Are Democrats Sobring Up the Bills and How Will They Be Voted?

The type of social media blast used to have Republican members jumping into line. But no longer. It didn’t appear to change a single vote.

After two years in political exile, a disaster in the elections, a low energy campaign launch, and a rebuke from her own party, one can see that Trump isn’t what he used to be. It is unlikely that this type of insubordination would go down well with the Republican base in Mar-a-Lago.

The spectacle in the House on Wednesday had more in common with the chaos and recrimination that unfolds in parliaments in Europe or Israel, where it can sometimes take weeks or months to arrive at a leader or governing majority, than in the US House, where the vote for speaker is normally a formality.

President Joe Biden used the chaos in Kentucky to promote his massive infrastructure package, appearing with Senate Republican leaderMitch McConnell at an event.

In two more concessions, the sources said, he’s also agreed to allow for more members of the Freedom Caucus to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee, which dictates how and whether bills come to the floor, and to vote on a handful of bills that are priorities for the holdouts, including proposing term limits on members and a border security plan.

But even after proposing major concessions to his hardline opponents late Wednesday, it remains unclear if the California Republican will be able to lock in the 218 votes he needs to win the gavel, and patience is wearing thin among lawmakers as the fight drags on.

But sources said the talks Wednesday between McCarthy allies and holdouts have been the most productive and serious ones to date. One of the main demands of conservatives has been that McCarthy did not allow the McCarthy-aligned super fund to play in open Republican primaries in safe seats.

Republican sources say that if McCarthy is elected speaker, Texas congressman Chip Roy will be able to get 10 holdout Republicans to vote with him.

There were a lot of people involved in this, and some of them are talking about what they want to do next.

One moderate Republican told CNN Thursday morning that they aren’t happy about the concessions, though they are willing to have “discussions” about them.

“I don’t like the rules but am willing to hear discussions. I don’t believe they are a mistake for the conference. These handful of folks want a weak speaker with a four-vote majority. The public will not like what they see of the GOP, I fear,” the member said.

The core of this group are anti-establishment, ideologic skeptics of government. They want it to be smaller, spend less and have a hard line on immigration. Donald Trump’s influence is only going so far in this fight, even though most were endorsed by him.

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C.: The House Freedom Caucus member was one of seven members to sign a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining concerns, like “increasingly centralized decision-making power” that result in “massive, multi-subject bills that are unable to be amended or fully read, all driven by supposedly must-pass defense and appropriations measures” that amass large debt.

The six other congressmen who signed the letter were Scott Perry ofPennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Walker of Georgia, and Chip Roy of Texas.

Representative Lauren Boebert, R- Colo. The controversial Colorado firebrand narrowly won reelection by only hundreds of votes. She and others want a single member to be able to bring a motion to vacate the speaker.

Josh Brecheen, R-Okla.: The rancher and construction company owner is a new member of Congress, who aligned himself with the House Freedom Caucus during his campaign.

Michael Cloud, R-Texas: Cloud cites wanting to get the country on a “path toward fiscal responsibility” and notes that he’d “worked for months in high hopes and good faith that our conference would chart a course away from the status quo.”

The gun shop owner, who sent an encouraging text about Trump to the White House Chief of Staff days after he took office, was one of the seven signers of the December “Dear Colleague” letter.

Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.: Gosar is one of the most controversial members of Congress. He’s defended white nationalists and spoken to them and was censured after posting an anime video depicting the killing of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Biden. He is one of the leaders of the insurrection against McCarthy who nominated an alternative. On Tuesday, Gosar was seen talking with Ocasio-Cortez about whether the Democrats would help McCarthy win the election. Ocasio-Cortez said she told the faction: “Absolutely not.”

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas: Another of the five incoming freshmen to vote against McCarthy, even though a couple months ago, he strongly backed him. McCarthy gave $5,000 to Self’s campaign and stumped for him in Texas.

Michael Fanone: Managing the Capitol Illusion: The Case for Political Violence in the 21st Century after the January 6 Capitol Assault

Michael Fanone, a former Washington DC police officer who was injured during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, is the author of a memoir. He is an analyst for CNN. His own opinions are expressed here. CNN has more opinion.

I almost died two years ago defending the US Capitol from an armed insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the government, the same uprising that Kevin McCarthy and many others were involved in. The Capitol was nearly destroyed two years ago, but the violent insurrectionists ignored my pleas that I have kids.

Unfortunately, the nation faces as great a risk from political violence as ever, fueled by inflammatory speech and a refusal by many politicians on the right to acknowledge the ongoing spasms of extremism and conspiracy.

The conspiracists have a large group of the public in their camp, as politically motivated attacks are on the rise across the nation and many people now believe the use of force would be justified to restore Trump to the presidency. It’s important to reverse this dangerous trend.

The incoming GOP House leadership must find the backbone to condemn political violence and hateful rhetoric incited by members of their own party. The Republican Party needs to condemn Trump, who is the party’s defacto leader. The incoming Speaker and the leadership of the House need to demand that members of their party never amplifylanguage or take actions that put their lives at risk.

In recent months, there has been a lot of such behavior, starting with McCarthy. As GOP leader, McCarthy once vehemently condemned then-President Trump for his role in ginning up the rioters who stormed the Capitol – and then swallowed those words of condemnation several days later. He traveled to Mar-a-Lago – presumably with one eye on the speaker’s gavel he had coveted for so long – pandering both to the defeated president and election deniers in his own caucus.

Since then, influential GOP House members have called the January 6 assault a “normal tourist visit.” Some people had called for Nancy Pelosi to be executed and shared antisemitic messages on Holocaust remembrance day.

I thought outrage and horror over the insurrection would encourage us to unify around a belief that political violence has no place in our society. It’s up to Republican leaders to join other Americans who disavow such behavior and the despotic former president who inspired it.

Many of her rightwing allies in the House have promoted the baseless, unhinged conspiracy theory around “grooming.” Small wonder, in the wake of such outlandish statements, that irate protesters are overrunning story hour at their local libraries, and calling for the banning of books from neighborhood schools.

The examples of recent acts of violence that appear to have been instigated by right-wing rhetoric are almost too numerous to name. The homes of three New York council members, who were opposed to the drag queen story hour in libraries, were vandalised last month, and the attack on the home of former Speaker Pelosi was spurred by rhetoric from the political right.

Rep. Matt Gaetz encouraged voters to arm themselves at polls, and armed intimidation did take place as voters cast their ballots. Research has even shown that MAGA Republicans are more likely than others – including GOP moderates – to endorse violence as usually or always justified to advance their political objectives. And after agents searched Mar-a-Lago, Twitter posts threatening the FBI saw a dramatic spike.

GOP lawmakers have over-the-top rhetoric. In their voting records, their extreme views have been all-too-evident. The results of 2020’s free and fair election and-35 House Republicans who voted against it are included in that group.

And – what was for me a personal affront – there were 21 Republican members who, in an unconscionable action, voted against DC and Capitol Police officers like me receiving the presidential medal of freedom for our role defending the Capitol during the insurrection.

The fact that I never considered myself to be a political person might surprise some people, but I know who I am. I voted for Trump after being turned off by the anti-law enforcement rhetoric on the left.

And sure, I dipped my toe into the last election, to oppose a few Trump-inspired candidates who I thought posed a danger to democracy. But I’ve never believed in politicians; I believe in people. I support two new groups that want to demand sanity from our politicians.

I am joining veterans, members of Congress, and the group Courage for America at an event this week called on legislators to ramp up the fight against political violence. In order to combat the kind of right-wing violence that almost ended me, Courage for America and Common Defense have joined forces. The event is being held at the Capitol reflecting pool, where two years ago supporters of the MAGA movement made a threat to hang the VP and were met by rioters.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/opinions/january-6-anniversary-republican-house-fanone/index.html

After Scott Perry Nominated Byron Donalds to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives Laura Boebert and Matt Gaetz on Wednesday

I was always a troublemaker when I was young and law enforcement was the perfect place for a rambunctious kid with no direction to go. Becoming a cop taught me to stand up for what’s right, and being an investigator taught me to keep revising and refining the conclusions I drew, as I gathered additional information.

Even though I was surrounded by protesters, I could see my kids’ faces: My four daughters are the ones I am speaking out for.

I want them to be able to live in a country where elected officials are accountable to the people they serve. Condemning political violence isn’t a partisan issue. It is a moral one.

From left, Representatives Bob Good of Virginia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida applauded after Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania nominated Byron Donalds for speaker on Wednesday.

Some have strongly suggested that they can, and the California Republican has agreed to many of their demands, including moves that would weaken the speakership considerably and make it exceedingly difficult to pass the most basic legislation, including bills needed to keep the government open and to avoid a default on the nation’s debt.

Ms. Boebert went on television numerous times to defend her stance against Mr. McCarthy, despite pressures from Mr. Trump’s allies outside of Congress. And she scoffed on Thursday at the notion Mr. McCarthy’s many concessions would be sufficient to deliver him the votes to become speaker.

Bob Good, a Virginia congressman and former administrator at Liberty University, made it clear on Thursday that he would never vote for Mr. McCarthy.

The Role of Donaldson and the Establishment in Voting for a New Speaker: Representing Donalds as the Commander of the House of Representatives

Mr. Donalds, like Mr. Roy, pointed to a provision that would allow a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust Mr. McCarthy from the speakership as a key priority.

Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina has shown willingness to negotiate. When asked if he would be open to voting for Mr. McCarthy after the new round of concessions, he replied: “The devil is in the details.”

Several of the lawmakers who have declined to back Mr. McCarthy have not answered questions about what would be needed to convince them to drop their objections, or avoided a grilling from conservative media outlets.

Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana was among the returning lawmakers who continued to vote for someone other than Mr. McCarthy, along with Representatives Mary Miller of Illinois and Andy Harris of Maryland.

Some lawmakers are pushing for votes on specific bills. The group has also demanded their own representatives to sit on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation receives votes and the terms for debate on the House floor.

Over time, the acolytes demand more and become more extreme than the leader who originally welcomed them into the fold. Jim Jordan was blasted as alegislative terrorists by the speaker. They were the rebels, he had become the establishment.

A significant part of Trump’s influence was his nihilistic attitude of political combat. He helped to spur a younger, more extreme cohort to step up and demand power. It seems these burn-down-the-house conservatives will do almost anything in pursuit of victory and believe – like Trump – that chaos, instability, and hyper-divisiveness have great political value. Some of the Trump loyalists may be close to concluding that they don’t need him anymore, or at least, they no longer need to follow his every move.

The very influence that Trump has may play a part in his defeat. He is going to face a lot of politicians now that he is not able to change votes on Capitol Hill. If the GOP is now full of Trumpian Republicans who have taken his playbook and run with it, then voters might want to choose someone other than Donald Trump to lead them into the next political era.

A comment on CNN adversariality and the role of the speaker in a partisan coalition: When Avlon and Kinzinger discussed it on CNN THIS AM

They will shake your head and laugh at you if you ask anyone in Washington. McCarthy won’t ever ask Democrats for help. The Democrats wouldn’t give it to him. It’s silly.

In fact, as CNN political analyst John Avlon pointed out on “CNN This Morning,” variations of power sharing or a moderate speaker upset could be seen in multiple states this year:

In Pennsylvania , aDemocrat wasnamed speaker of the state House after gaining support from Republicans. He announced that he would not be acorporator after the vote.

This is not the first time Kasich has seen this process. He was chairman of the House Budget Committee after the so-called “Republican Revolution” of 1994 and took part in the famous budget balancing of the second Bill Clinton administration, when the Democratic president was forced to work with a Republican House majority.

When Avlon suggested the idea of a bipartisan consensus-builder on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday, former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania agreed that it is indeed what would happen in a “functional Congress.”

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the moderate Illinois Republican who was part of the House January 6 committee and is now a CNN contributor, pointed out to Burnett on Wednesday that the role of the speaker as a partisan leader is relatively new.

Speaker used to simply oversee House proceedings. Maybe Democrats can support a Republican who is not trying to use the House for partisan purposes.

“I think the institution, and frankly the country, could use somebody sitting in that position simply saying, here is how the House is gonna work. Go debate,” Kinzinger said. That kind of solution could become more likely, although still pretty unlikely, as this roadblock drags on.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/politics/mccarthy-speaker-vote-stalemate-what-matters/index.html

When McConnell left the Democratic Congress, he became a polarized figure in the early 1900s and his legacy remained the same

It was not the sort of thing you could have imagined McConnell doing with Obama, as he made it his mission to oppose on nearly every level.

The Republicans and Democrats who vote in favor of the bipartisan option will be attacked by people in the trenches of the parties who contribute to political campaigns.

There’s also the issue that members of Congress wait around for years for plum committee assignments. They know that leaving the system would ruin it.

Defeated in the 1912 election, he returned two years later and served several additional terms as a rank and file member. On the last day of his term, he was listed on the cover of the first issue of Time Magazine.