In my blog post for last Thursday, I wrote about the short-sightedness of the Republicans in Congress as they ousted their speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and faced the prospect of choosing a replacement that would somehow do what Kevin couldn’t do – appease the crazies in the GOP conference. In that essay, I passed along a warning I had been alerted to in a podcast – a warning that the US would be ill-positioned to respond to an emergency because the Republicans won’t select a Speaker. The problem would be, I noted, that without a Speaker, the House wouldn’t be able to act.
Today we see the consequences of the House GOP nonsense from last week. The country does indeed face a bona fide emergency – the terrorist attack by Hamas on the state of Israel that began on Saturday (and the Israeli response) – and the Congress is paralyzed because there isn’t a Speaker.
Members of Congress have introduced a Resolution affirming United States support for Israel – but it can’t be passed because there’s no Speaker. President Biden has talked about a possible supplemental appropriation for aid to Israel to combat this attack – but Congress can’t consider it because there is no Speaker. Resolutions don’t matter much, but appropriations do. When the GOP (under the feckless former Speaker McCarthy) grudgingly accepted a budget continuing resolution a few days before they ousted McCarthy, their agreement extended the funding deadline until the middle of November. Their current intra-party squabble means it is unlikely that they will be able to pass any meaningful budget legislation before a government shutdown looms once again.
On Wednesday, the House GOP conference chose its nominee for Speaker – Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise. He defeated Ohio Representative Gym Jordan by a vote 113-99, with eight members of the conference voting for other candidates. The House adjourned tonight without a floor vote – primarily because the House Republicans cannot guarantee that all members of the conference will support Scalise when the entire House votes. The House Republicans don’t want a televised repeat of the debacle in January, when it took 15 votes for Kevin McCarthy to be elected to the spot.
So now it’s Thursday, and there’s still no Speaker. What’s the likelihood that some other nefarious actor on the world stage decides that a weakened United States is a good target for some kind of direct action? Pretty good, I’d say. You know that the Whole World is Watching, as I wrote last week. They’re still watching, and this is really Not Good.
Not Good at all.
“Stupid is as stupid does.” It might have been funny in the Forest Gump movie but it’s a far from funny quote when we apply it to the GOP leadership and how their stupidity has put us all at risk. God help us!!
You’ve exactly expressed the anxiety that rises from my gut to my chest. We are not in a good position thanks to Republican who just will not get it together in any sort of productive or adult way. I agree with Ann.