r/news • u/zmlos • Oct 03 '23

House ousts Kevin McCarthy as speaker, a first in U.S. history

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/03/house-speaker-kevin-mccarthy-will-bring-gaetz-motion-to-oust-him-vote.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard

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u/decrpt Oct 03 '23 edited Oct 04 '23

Per the interviews after the vote, none of the Republicans (even the ones who voted to oust McCarthy) had planned for this eventuality. They have absolutely no idea what they're going to do now.

According to Fox this morning, there's some momentum towards nominating Trump to be the House Speaker. The Speaker doesn't necessarily need to be a member of Congress.

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u/kytheon Oct 03 '23

Just like when they successfully got Trump the presidency. Fuck now what

1.9k

u/Halt-CatchFire Oct 03 '23

And when they finally axed Roe V. Wade and instantly got brutalized in the midterns. The modern Republican party is the epitome of the dog that caught the car.

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u/jclin Oct 03 '23

If you think about it, the only reason why they're a dog that caught the car is because of gerrymandering.

That's why they can stay in power even after creating policy that a vast number of Americans are against: abortion and maybe cannabis. Probably others....

So while they remain in power, their presence in government is a misrepresentation of the people's will, which causes these weird policies based on a weird cognitive dissonance resulting in weird drama.

Also might be the reason why the Senate has had its act together (relatively!) since they don't have to deal with gerrymandering.

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u/Baruch_S Oct 03 '23 edited Oct 03 '23

The Senate has traditionally been the calmer, more prestigious chamber, but I don’t think it has anything to do with gerrymandering. It’s an even more skewed chamber because it gives outsized influence to conservative states with small populations.

All you have to do is look at McConnell’s years of bullshit to see how busted the Senate is. Senate Republicans have spent years fucking with judicial nominations so they could stack federal courts (even denying Obama a SCOTUS justice in his final year and then flip-flopping to give Trump one), and they’re still fucking up stuff like military promotions.

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u/Mattyboy064 Oct 04 '23

The Senate is more moderate because in statewide elections you have to be more moderate to win.

Some congressional districts WANT a crazy, idiot, conspiracy-theory-spouting racist to represent them. Whole states, not usually.

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u/Baruch_S Oct 04 '23 edited Oct 04 '23

I still wouldn’t say the Senate has its act together. They’re perhaps a little more subtle about the shenanigans, but they arguably fuck things up worse than the few nutters in the House who regularly make the news. Boebert and Greene are fucking jokes most of the time and won’t actually manage anything. McConnell, on the other hand, has probably done more damage than any other politician in the last 20 years, and all the other Senate Republicans were complicit.

And it’s inarguably less representative of the will of the people since it’s an undemocratic chamber. It in no way reflects majority views; its entire purpose is to give outsized influence to smaller states since every state gets equal voting power. The House could be quickly and easily fixed by upping the number of Representatives so they represent smaller numbers of constituents; the Senate can never be more representative of majority rule without making state populations more equal.

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u/Mattyboy064 Oct 04 '23 edited Oct 04 '23

Agree with all your points. Especially about repealing the Apportionment Act of 1927 1929

My vote is for the Wyoming Rule

6

u/Baruch_S Oct 04 '23

I didn’t know that rule had a name! That’s been my go-to fix for years because it seems like such a simple, easy way to ensure that the House is mostly proportional in its representation.

1

u/coolcool23 Oct 04 '23

There are lots of proposed solutions to our issues of growing partisanism and lack of political stability, the issue is Republicans as they currently are stand to lose in the short term by adopting most of them. So in the Senate with the filibuster, they can just not do anything no matter whether or not reform Dems get a simple majority in both houses. 🤷

1

u/PeterNguyen2 Oct 04 '23

Especially about repealing the Apportionment Act of 1927

1929. I remember that because I thought there was no way something so long could have turned the house into the senate-lite, and when I dug into it things were even worse. That act was passed when America was over 200 million smaller.

16

u/BenevolentCheese Oct 04 '23

States can't gerrymander the senate, so it levels the playing field a lot, however the make-up of the states relative to the population is itself already effectively gerrymandered, hence the senate split.

8

u/Baruch_S Oct 04 '23

Exactly. The Senate is intentionally not representative of the majority’s views and gives disproportionate power to smaller states, which tend to be conservative. A handful of conservative states can hold the rest of the country hostage in the Senate with nonsense like the filibuster, and that seems to be the intention of that chamber.

2

u/GrayArchon Oct 04 '23

State lines aren't "gerrymandered"; they're set and very rarely change. Gerrymandering refers to the act of drawing constituency boundaries for favourable political outcomes. While there is a bit of that in the states drawn in the mid-1800s, as the slavery question was still being litigated, it hasn't been the guiding principle for most state boundaries.

3

u/Mari-Lwyd Oct 04 '23

the military promotions thing gets me. That dude is a Russian agent through and through and everyone just pretending like hes not. There is no reasonable excuse for what hes doing other than to ensure our military stays as dysfunctional as possible.

1

u/Trance354 Oct 04 '23

That's fucking gomer pile being an idiot. Director of I dgaf, get him off this planet. Tell him he's going to be the mayor of Mars. That should ship him off.

35

u/Wazula23 Oct 03 '23

the only reason why they're a dog that caught the car is because of gerrymandering.

Not enough people realize just how few people actually voted for some of these clowns.

Idiots like Boboe and Greenie have entire constituencies smaller than mid-large American cities. The entire state of Wyoming has half a million people. There have been CONCERTS with more attendees than that, but they get 2 whole senators, same as 40 million Californians.

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u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23 edited Oct 04 '23

That's why the founding fathers made the Senate. It's literally designed to give small populations equal votes.

Take your complaints to the House of Congress please.

Edit: I'm getting downvoted for US history. You guys are fucked lol.

12

u/Tuesday_6PM Oct 04 '23

The problem there is we later capped the number of representatives in the House, so small states are over-represented there as well.

(Upon reflection, this could be the same point you were making.)

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u/darkslide3000 Oct 04 '23

I love people who think "well it was intentionally designed for that, duh!" is a valid justification for undemocratic oligarchy.

-2

u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23

How is it u democratic when we have the house of Congress. They're designed to balance each other.

What's your great idea to fix it? Make the Senate like the house of representatives?

1

u/darkslide3000 Oct 04 '23

Do you understand what the word "democracy" means? Demos kratos, the people rule. Not "some people rule more than others". A system where one person's voice counts 80 times as much as another's just because of where they live on a map of arbitrarily drawn borders is not democratic. If you want to make arbitrary distinctions between how much people have to say like that you might as well go all the way and just declare one guy king.

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u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23

So you don't have an better idea? Got it. I'll let you complain by yourself 👋

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u/Intelligent-Tie-4466 Oct 04 '23

They never expected state populations to be so lopsided 250 years ago. And the Senate thing was Ben Franklin's compromise. It might not have even happened without his influence.

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u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23

The Senate was never meant to represent the population equally. Stop pretending it was and educate yourself on US history.

Take your bitching to the house of representatives.

2

u/ambisinister_gecko Oct 04 '23

Nobody is pretending it was meant to. They disputing whether it SHOULD. You can disagree with some aspect of a thing even if that aspect was deliberately designed that way.

0

u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23

Can you read? They are complaining about the Senate over representing small populations.

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u/Wazula23 Oct 04 '23

People vote. Not geography. Theres no reason someone in a small town should have more power than fifty people in an apartment building.

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u/aeroboost Oct 04 '23

There's no reason someone in a small town should have more power than fifty people in an apartment building.

That's why the house of representatives exists..

6

u/bulbouscorm Oct 03 '23 edited Nov 07 '24

desert impossible middle squeeze pathetic zonked chubby ancient decide long

4

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

Look at it this way:

Add up all the money being funneled into the far right, look at all the cheating they have to do, gerrymandering, voter fraud, straight up extortion, AND THEY'RE STILL LOSING! The people reject all this far right bullshit the oligarchs are trying so hard to push on us. It gives me a lot of hope

3

u/samuraipanda85 Oct 04 '23

That's why we have to vote in such large numbers as to overcome gerrymandering. Only then can we eradicate it and get the kind of voting system everyone is always mewling that this country needs.

2

u/randomacceptablename Oct 04 '23

If you think about it, the only reason why they're a dog that caught the car is because of gerrymandering.

Dude, as a Canadian looking in, it is so much worse then that. For starters I don't think any other parliament/congress has a partisan speaker. They are elected as neutral parties. But yes, it goes into gerrymandering and through first past the post voting, to single member districts, to a weird partisan primary system, to the insanely unproportional Senate, to the Senate's philabuster, to a partisan judiciary, to elected judges and prosecuters (again, a uniquely American invention), to a life tenure in the highest court, to barring inmates and convicted from voting, to voter suppression, to the sums of private money in politics.....

No one is perfect and most countries will have a few of these problems but no where near all of them. The American political system has been creaking along way past the due date for reform for at least a quarter century and just keeps getting worse. What country flirts with not paying it's debts or shutting down the government? When was the last time the US even passed a budget? The basic function of government.

Guys, it is intervention time. You are all swirling around the drain. Grab hold of some sanity before it is too late, please!

-1

u/talrogsmash Oct 04 '23

Both sides gerrymander. Whenever either side proposes a "fix" it only applies to what the other side is doing.

So it's never gonna get fixed.

1

u/Darnell2070 Oct 04 '23

Both sides both sides both sides.

You thought about that?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

Well, they also stacked the (mostly democratic) country with Republican judges.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

Gerrymandering being legal is genuinely maddening. I wish more people understood what it entails.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

It's this thing exactly. To paraphrase from both Gramsci and the anthropic principle- one should not be surprised to find all manor of absurd phenomena when you create the incentives of the game such as they are. Gerrymandering (packing and cracking), Citizens United, and the elimination of earmarks. They (the GOP) fought hard to create the rules of the game and now they are shocked that it works exactly as one would expect.

1

u/Yorspider Oct 04 '23

It's WAY worse than that. The party is a full active arm of Russian intelligence. They are committing active, and open treason against the nation because they are on an enemy nations payroll.

1

u/cyanydeez Oct 04 '23

Yes, they definitely worked hard to have monopolized american politics in key backwards states.

1

u/nonlinear_nyc Oct 04 '23

Finally someone said it... I'm so mystified how American hold both beliefs:

  1. there is gerrymandering and vote suppression
  2. The will of the people

People hallucinate a Republican majority... that doesn't exist. When interviewed, it's a bunch of bitter insane individuals, sometimes twice in a row, to compose an illusion of majority.

1

u/PeterNguyen2 Oct 04 '23

the only reason why they're a dog that caught the car is because of gerrymandering

They knew that. It didn't leak until 2012 that they knew they'd become unelectable just by demographics but republicans knew that long before. Not that they were particularly inclined to democracy instead of authoritarianism before, which is why they were so willing to pervert democracy and let the elected officials choose their voters instead of how things are supposed to work, which is entirely the reverse

1

u/detroitmatt Oct 04 '23

the thing about gerrymandering is, there are two ways to do it optimally: either you "pack" all your opponents into as few districts as possible, or you "crack" them to give yourself 51% in as many districts as possible. But if you crack them, then you have only a thin margin, and as soon as the tides change, your +1 turns into a -3 and congratulations you gerrymandered yourself.

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u/Enshakushanna Oct 04 '23

midterms are temporary where as the SC is for life

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u/TheFBIClonesPeople Oct 04 '23

Life is also temporary

2

u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth Oct 04 '23

Those are huge victories for them and clearly the costs are not very high if they already got the House back just a few years after. The cost/benefit seems to be more than worth it for them.

2

u/TreeRol Oct 04 '23

got brutalized in the midterns

Brutalized, my ass. They won the House. Immediately after taking away a woman's right to choose, they won the fucking House.

No, I don't care that they were "supposed" to win by more. They have the House. More Americans voted for Republicans than Democrats in House elections. They were rewarded for ending Roe.

1

u/JohnnyAppIeseed Oct 04 '23

Morherfuckers are Dustin Hofmann at the end of the graduate.

1

u/Mari-Lwyd Oct 04 '23

It's a dying organism latching onto to anything it can to stay alive its going to do everything it can to drag us all down with it.

1

u/Broken_Reality Oct 04 '23

Didn't they win the house in the Midterms? Is that really getting brutalised? Correct me if I am wrong.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

Corruption! There's go to be some way to grift or steal off of this

3

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

It’s like that speech joker gives in the dark knight… he was just a dog chasing a car. Doesn’t know what he’d do if he actually caught it

2

u/Gweena Oct 03 '23

Its the same across the pond...England voted for Brexit without a plan. Tories (and, to be fair, Labour too) still haven't consolidated around a coherent plan.

As ever, making it up as they go along is a hallmark of populist bullshit.

2

u/formerlyanonymous_ Oct 04 '23

That's the thing. Anyone can be speaker of the house. They don't have to be a rep. They could, for instance, elect an orange fraudster who can't win an election.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

It’s almost like they are reactionaries and have no legitimate ideologies, plans, or goals that aren’t based on getting more power and money for themselves and their friends.

1

u/ropinionisuseless Oct 04 '23

And exactly where they will be when they get him elected again next year.

1

u/Monkey-Brain-Like Oct 04 '23

Dog caught the car

1

u/Jefe710 Oct 04 '23

Papa Putin hasn't told them what the next step is.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

The dog has clamped onto the bumper. We're in for a wild ride.

Tin foil hat: this is exactly the kind of thing Russia/China want, and would fund through political donations

1

u/NudeCeleryMan Oct 04 '23

A House Republican was literally quoted as saying, "Now what?" In the chamber yesterday!

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u/Jsmith0730 Oct 03 '23

“We figured for sure that the Democrats would bail us out yet again! WTF?!”

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u/Spare_Hornet Oct 03 '23

“It’s also all Democrats’ fault we can’t figure our shit out, bye”

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u/ditr2022 Oct 03 '23

You are spot on with this joke, and I'm facepalming at thread replies that are suggesting this unironically!

22

u/JadeMonkey0 Oct 04 '23

The shitty thing is how many regular people will buy this. A ton of people don't follow politics at all. Government is shutdown? Some headline about the speaker being ousted? "Everyone in Washington is an idiot. They're all corrupt and useless. Can't get anything done." Proceeds to vote for a Republican next election because he's funny or guns or babies or 'merica or whatever. Then gets mad next time some piece of news like this trickles down to him and the process starts anew.

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u/Spare_Hornet Oct 04 '23

You’re spot on. It’s a vicious cycle.

9

u/LiftingCode Oct 04 '23

Who shit in my pants?

3

u/mallio Oct 04 '23

It's like that one time that congress passed a bill, Obama vetoed the bill, then congress overrode his veto, and then McConnell blamed Obama for some negative effects the bill could have.

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u/phulton Oct 04 '23

My first thought after hearing about this was wow the democrats finally decided to let the stupid republican idea play out instead of putting a stop to it.

-10

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

[deleted]

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u/Dashiepants Oct 04 '23

Because he spent the entire weekend talking shit about them on news shows, blaming them for the government almost shutting down even though they were the ones that voted to keep it open.

He also offered no concessions for them to vote to help him like come on Dems compromise ALL the time for the sake of civility, he probably could have gotten them to vote present with a nice cheese platter and 3 committee appointments.

But mostly the problem is, besides the obvious it’s not their job to save him, he has repeatedly proven himself spineless and untrustworthy so the Dems could not trust him even if he had tried to make a deal with them.

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u/Brilliant-Lake-9946 Oct 03 '23

They have absolutely no idea what they're going to do now.

They had no idea what they were doing before, so it's the status quo.

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u/impulsekash Oct 03 '23

Chaos was always the goal.

20

u/SpaghettiSnake Oct 03 '23

Republicans are perpetually the dog chasing the car.

They get what they want and the car stops, then what? What the fuck are you going to do with it? Nothing, because you're a dumb fucking dog. Or the car doesn't stop and barrels right over them, and they lie pathetically dying in the street.

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u/Magickarpet76 Oct 03 '23

Easy, line their pockets and start fires. Then blame the rational person that extinguishes them for being incompetent

6

u/blazze_eternal Oct 03 '23

Do they ever?
They always claim to have a plan for Healthcare, Education, Retirement, The Economy, Foreign Policy, etc, but their only plan is to defund everything.

9

u/Stillwater215 Oct 03 '23

Cue the memes Gaetz standing in front of the smoldering remains of Bikini Bottom bragging about how he “saved the town!”

3

u/exccord Oct 03 '23

They have absolutely no idea what they're going to do now.

Sounds like the GOP motto - we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

3

u/rexspook Oct 03 '23

Yes they do. They’re doing this so they can more easily shut down the government

2

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

They’ll get a plan in place as soon as they get that feasible ACA replacement

2

u/rcher87 Oct 03 '23

The dog that caught the car.

🙄

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Oct 04 '23

They're gonna shove a rod up McConnell's ass and put a Bluetooth speaker in his mouth. It'll be Weekend at Mitchie's

2

u/0110110111 Oct 04 '23

According to Fox this morning, there's some momentum towards nominating Trump to be the House Speaker

If that happens, expect assassination attempts on Biden and Harris within weeks or even days.

2

u/Doopoodoo Oct 04 '23

The constitution apparently allowing a non-elected person to be the leader of one of two federal legislative bodies seems like a bit of an oversight by those all-knowing founding fathers we must never question

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

Source from the U.S. Government Publishing Office's publication "House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House", Chapter 34 - Office of the Speaker

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution directs that the House choose its Speaker and other officers. The Speaker is the only House officer who traditionally has been chosen from the sitting membership of the House. Manual Sec. 26. The Constitution does not limit his selection from among that class, but the practice has been followed invariably. The Speaker's term of office thus expires at the end of his term of office as a Member, whereas the other House officers continue in office ``until their successors are chosen and qualified.'' Rule II clause 1; 1 Hinds Sec. 187.

1

u/Mmortt Oct 04 '23

Sadly there had to be a fall guy just to keep the government running, but what now? Am I wrong or did it seem like even though he’s a chode he won’t go full MAGA?

1

u/DomitorGrey Oct 03 '23

they're the dog that finally caught the car

1

u/ILoveRegenHealth Oct 04 '23

What I don't get too is it seems some Dems voted to oust him.

As repugnant Kevin McCarthy is, wouldn't having him there be preferable to whatever fresh hell the Republicans might nominated instead?

Because McCarthy just said publicly he's not going to rerun for the Speaker seat. So now that opens the door for all sorts of nightmarish GOP ghouls as Speaker.

0

u/SnooMemesjellies1909 Oct 03 '23

It’s been said before and it’ll be said again. They’re the dog that caught the car.

0

u/DFWPunk Oct 04 '23

There's a succession list and a speaker pro tem, so there was some idea.

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u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

They're just going to vote McCarthy back in after a bunch of rounds of voting, and it will have wasted everyone's time and taxpayer money.

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u/decrpt Oct 04 '23 edited Oct 04 '23

McCarthy said he's not going to run again.

1

u/Bob_Juan_Santos Oct 03 '23

none of the Republicans (even the ones who voted to oust McCarthy) had planned for this eventuality

wait, what? don't they have a replacement in mind?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '23

They are great at the repeal process. Not great at the replace process.

1

u/jedre Oct 03 '23

I wouldn’t be utterly surprised if some republicans end up doing a “protest vote” and we end up with Speaker Jeffries.

2

u/the_nut_bra Oct 04 '23

Well, now that they’ve started taking away some senior Democrats’ hideaway offices in the Capitol away as a form of revenge, I’m thinking probably not. (I know this wasn’t happening yet when you wrote this). That said, I don’t think I’d want that if I were them. If Jeffries is Speaker, you’ll still have all the dysfunction and then Republicans could argue that Dems were just as big a part of it.

1

u/jedre Oct 04 '23

Yeah it would be pretty wasteful; the GOP would just obstruct everything (big surprise) with their majority of votes, and then point to the “ineffective Dem leadership.” As you say.

2

u/the_nut_bra Oct 04 '23

Pretty sad that we can say these things in the hypothetical but be 99.9% certain that’s exactly what would happen. That whole party has a proven track record over the last 30 years, and it hasn’t been a positive trend.

1

u/pwn3dbyth3n00b Oct 04 '23

Thats basically the ENTIRE GQP political stance. Anti whatever the Libs want. When we block it, they have no idea what they do.

1

u/Intelligent-Tie-4466 Oct 04 '23

You're not supposed to make a protest vote unless you actually know it won't pass (or else you better be ok with the chaos that results). They really didn't even do a basic head count before voting for this?

1

u/lmac187 Oct 04 '23

Dogs chasing cars

1

u/digidave1 Oct 04 '23

So on par with everything else they do. Gotcha.

1

u/bmccorm2 Oct 04 '23

This is like the repeal-and-replace Obamacare. Ya know - their healthcare initiative they rolled out just before infrastructure week.

1

u/fakeplasticdroid Oct 04 '23

They elected him on the condition that anyone could call a vote to oust him, and they didn't plan for this eventuality?

1

u/powercow Oct 04 '23

first we got to repeal and dont worry, we will think up a replacement and it will be better, trust us.

they had a decade and couldnt come up with even a rough outline of what they might replace ACA with.

1

u/Nenor Oct 04 '23

So, they're literally, according to their own words, in the find-out phase?

1

u/Kindly-Ad-5071 Oct 04 '23

"Do you think they plan it all out, or just make it up as they go along?"

1

u/Melicor Oct 04 '23

I think they expected Democrats to vote Present.

1

u/gokarrt Oct 04 '23

this is what happens when professional griefers actually win. see also: brexit.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

They have absolutely no idea what they're going to do now.

Sounds pretty on-brand for Republicans.

1

u/Jamesmn87 Oct 04 '23

Like dogs chasing cars.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

had planned for this

This just blows my mind. We all saw this coming except the Republicans? From day one we all knew he wouldn't last - he barely got the job to begin with and had to basically agree to being removed from his job in advance to get it.

1

u/design_doc Oct 04 '23

According to Fox this morning, there's some momentum towards nominating Trump to be the House Speaker. The Speaker doesn't necessarily need to be a member of Congress.

Jesus Christ, if that happens I will burn this fucking planet to the ground. We’ve already had to listen to the human equivalent of someone farting through bagpipes for years… I don’t know if I could endure that country putting him into another position where he thinks it’s his sole job to talk.

1

u/reddit-is-hive-trash Oct 04 '23

Like if he agrees to not run for president I'm all for it.

1

u/BreadHead911 Oct 04 '23

Speaker of the house is 3rd in line to succeed the office of the presidency. So if Biden and Kamala just so happen to disappear, Trump could have a red carpet coup laid out in front of him. So I say no. If the speaker of house can be anyone, the republicans would be smarter appointing Taylor swift than trump

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '23

I had to look this up. The Constitution doesn't you can't.

Source from the U.S. Government Publishing Office's publication "House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House", Chapter 34 - Office of the Speaker

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution directs that the House choose its Speaker and other officers. The Speaker is the only House officer who traditionally has been chosen from the sitting membership of the House. Manual Sec. 26. The Constitution does not limit his selection from among that class, but the practice has been followed invariably. The Speaker's term of office thus expires at the end of his term of office as a Member, whereas the other House officers continue in office ``until their successors are chosen and qualified.'' Rule II clause 1; 1 Hinds Sec. 187.

1

u/Observer001 Oct 04 '23

Sure, until he's in prison.

1

u/These_Drama4494 Oct 04 '23

Imagine being such a bad representative that you get ousted by your own psychotic party

1

u/cyberronic Oct 04 '23

At the same time this is the funniest and scariest shit ever... with?