DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 8, 2023
Rep. Cole: Deals That McCarthy Cut With RWNJ’s ‘No Longer Operative’. Revenge of the (all things are relative) moderates?:
With Kevin McCarthy out as speaker, House Rules Chair Tom Cole says Republicans are free to step back from the deep appropriations cuts dictated by McCarthy’s backroom deal with the far right last June.
“This agreement was faulty from the beginning. It’s changed over time, and now in a sense, it doesn’t exist at all because McCarthy isn’t the speaker anymore,” Cole said in an interview. “So we’re not really bound by this agreement now. That will be an interesting thing the new speaker will have to hash out.”
“Look at the members who brought down the farm bill and they are some of our very best members,” said Cole, who had a front-row seat as a member of the Appropriations. “They felt like they had been misled, were very disappointed and they voted accordingly. … This had to do with the confusion around this very poorly written agreement that has never been public.”
In the race to elect a new speaker, the dynamics are very different from McCarthy’s own election last January. Back then, GOP centrists were largely forgotten, and all the focus was on McCarthy’s tortured efforts to win over the last holdouts on the right. The dynamics now are different, in that the leading candidates are more to the right than McCarthy and will need centrists to prevail.
I’m calling it: Ain’t gonna be no Speaker elected by Wednesday.
Rethugs: Hamas Attack Is Biden’s Fault. It’s always about the politics:
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel took to Fox News on Saturday to explain how GOP presidential candidates could respond to Hamas militants’ unprecedented, surprise attack on Israel.
“I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel – time and time again – and Joe Biden has been weak,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel, elsewhere in the interview, declared that the attack “is falling squarely on the shoulders of Joe Biden” and also referred to “unexpected events” that can have an impact on political campaigns.
Netanyahu, of course, is held blameless. Even though his vaunted intel forces were asleep at the switch.
Rethugs Finally Paying Price For ‘Faustian’ Bargain With Trump? The other Michael Cohen says yes:
The last three US elections prove the point. In what was largely seen as a rebuke to Trump, in the 2018 midterms, Democrats picked up more than 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives. In 2020, he lost re-election by at least 7m votes to Biden(4m more than he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016). In the 2022 midterms, the Democrats dramatically overperformed, picking up a seat in the Senate and barely losing the House of Representatives. So far this year, in dozens of special elections, Democrats are overperforming by a whopping 11 points. Part of this is a byproduct of the supreme court’s decision on abortion rights, but it’s also a backlash to the extremism that Trump has engendered.
Of course, elections are tricky things and there is no guarantee that the unpopular Biden will emerge victorious next November. But take his current lousy polling with a grain of salt. It’s one thing to want a different Democratic nominee, as many Democrats do, but elections are about choices. That the likely option for voters in November 2024 will be Biden, or a deeply unstable opponent who could be a multiple convicted felon, has a way of narrowing one’s focus. But even if Trump loses, the problem of the Republican party will still be with us long after he’s left the political scene.
Some days, the pickin’s are slim. Today is such a day. Not to mention, an early NFL kickoff from London.
What do you want to talk about?
My sad fate to know far too much about dementia and mental decline, few escape it in old age and suspect neither Biden nor Trump are among that lucky few. But as noted Fascism will not just disappear with Trump, indeed they’ve been here for a hundred years and are well funded by the super rich, who see them selves as the power behind the much yearned for throne. Every election counts, every one might be the end of democracy and an authoritarian America that the world will fear regardless of past alliances. Neither do I blame them. I blame us.