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It's hard to fathom that we're on the 12th ballot to decide who will be the Speaker of the House, but here we are. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the embarrassment of a party the GOP is, and what it is they think they're fighting for with this vote. They also discuss the near tragedy on the football field involving Damar Hamlin and how the NFL wanted to continue playing despite the players' protest.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the McCreck Podcast.
I'm J.J.
Sexton.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
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Nick, we have to start here in the House of Representatives.
Kevin McCarthy's absolutely snakebit campaign to become the new Speaker of the House has now just drug itself forward.
We just watched the 9th Ballot go past.
It is absolute gridlock in the last one, and this has been the predictable sort of result.
Hakeem Jeffries has basically won all of these stands at 212 votes.
McCarthy is right around 200.
All of a sudden, now you've got Donalds and Hearn who's in it.
This is mass hysteria.
Cats, dogs living together.
Nick, what What do you think about this?
Because this is just becoming more and more surreal by the hour.
Well, we knew this was going to happen.
This is not even a surprise.
He did not have the votes two weeks ago.
He did not have the votes a week ago.
He doesn't have them now.
We were actually looking forward to it a little bit, right?
this would be a little bit of a clown show, fun entertainment, this really show how the Republicans have no desire to legislate, they have no desire to actually govern.
This is what governing would be, which we have to get into the whole, the way they're doing this and why they keep going over and over the different votes, but the entertainment value and whatever satisfaction I might gain from observing this is tainted because of Donald's, for instance, All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a guy who served one term in Congress from Florida is suddenly now being thrust upon the stage, getting 20 votes to be the Speaker of the House.
And I'm angry because they're looking at Hakeem Jeffries, who will become the first minority leader of the House as a black person ever in the history of our country.
And you know That the Republicans must have looked at this and says, where is our black person?
Where is our black guy that we can somehow put up and show that we are also progressive?
So Chip Roy, of all people, Chip Roy, who had been quoted not long ago talking about this favorite saying in Texas about lynching people, is now quoting MLK and pretending that they're the party that is inclusive and all these things.
I'm angry now.
Yeah, you have every right to be angry, and this is the modern Republican Party.
I mean, they are so adept at this point.
Taking any sort of thing that in the past they would have just absolutely railed against and now trying to co-opt it and move it and turn it around.
What we're watching with the so-called Freedom Caucus and this little mutiny, I just want to say, first of all, politics can be weird.
Politics can get really, really weird.
And right now we're in one of those situations where it gets really strange, really quickly.
We're sort of looking at an immovable object and an irresistible force and what happens when the two hit one another.
The Freedom Caucus has just the right amount of votes that they need in order to hold up this process, which they want to do because they don't want the government to do anything.
They literally want the federal government to not exist.
I mean, they want to jam up the works as much as possible.
This is going to cause an absolute shit ton of problems.
Who knows how long this will go on?
Seriously.
Like, there is talk now that the Democratic Party might be in talks with the Republicans and trying to make this thing come into fruition or at least land the plane.
Who knows?
But the Freedom Caucus is going to, at every step along the way, jam up the works, possibly step in front of things like raising the debt ceiling, making sure that all of the processes that most people don't talk about with the House don't get carried out.
It's like a snake eating its own tail at this point.
It is an absolutely perfect situation to go wrong, and we were always going to get here.
From what we have covered, what we've talked about, the ideology of this party, where it is moving, what it is becoming, we were always going to end up at this point.
But watching it play out has been just nothing short of surreal.
I agree.
And you know what's funny is that they're railing a bit about governing and how they, you know, and people are mad because we can't get anything done.
They were not going to get anything done anyway.
That's the whole point, having the House for the Republicans and the Senate with the Democrats and the White House.
There wasn't going to be any legislation being passed in these two years anyway, which all of a sudden, I'm realizing, that was the point, Jared.
So, because they know they're not going to get anything done, they can do this performative bullshit for as long as they want, because it doesn't really have an effect, except for, remember, they live to kind of like stir up the base, fight and rub it in the liberals' eyes, and do all that kind of stuff.
So that all of a sudden kind of makes sense.
And the question here is, you know, I was looking at the process and trying to figure out why we have it this way.
Now, you can't even seat new members or any members, really.
Although, interestingly enough, the people they represented from Puerto Rico is a four-year term.
She's the only person right now who's actually a member of Congress, a member of the House.
But why do we do it this way?
Why do we have to have the speaker done first before you can kind of get any other stuff done?
And also, why do we do where you just kind of keep voting?
Can't get the majority, keep voting, keep voting.
I suppose, I wonder what your answer to that is, because in theory, my only answer I think I have is there is no other way to do it.
Well, there are ways you could.
You could come up with possibilities, but part of it, it's the same thing that, you know, is after January 6th happened.
You remember, Dick, we watched late into the night when all these members got up and spoke about the wonderful tradition of Congress, right?
Like, this is the greatest deliberative body in the history of humanity.
Always has been, always will be.
By the way, this is the same place that used to have, like, duels.
That used to have, like, canings on the floor.
I mean, this is an absolutely pathetic display by a pathetic institution that has always been pathetic.
And watching this, you have to continue to pretend like there's a history or like a gravity that holds this together, you know what I mean?
Like, because when all of a sudden, this is part of the problem, why nobody wants to criticize these institutions, because they have power in their longevity.
Right?
How long has the United States been doing this?
How long has Congress been doing this?
And the longer it goes without, like, giant massive reform or shifting things around, it's supposed to just keep holding of its power.
Meanwhile, We're not pointing out that the House of Representatives, in the very first place, was designed to basically make people feel like they had a democratic say in the process.
This, of course, was considered sort of the lesser house of the people, and the Senate would go ahead and keep all of the idiocy at bay.
But what we're watching now, with all of these traditions, these institutions, so to speak, we're watching it come unraveled.
Like, we expect people to go to Washington D.C.
and at least hammer things out and figure out how to make things work, but we have reached an era where federal government, and particularly federal oversight, federal power, you name it, these things are not just under attack, they've already been fundamentally destroyed, right?
They've already had their hamstrings cut, and now we're watching all of that Illusory sort of pageantry and the way it's supposed to work.
It's coming apart at the seams and it looks crazy because it is crazy, but also it's just a reflection of where our politics are now.
Oh, absolutely.
And here's what's interesting.
In a historical context, when we went in 1856, we had over 100 votes before they finally were able to pick a speaker.
And, you know, 1856 is a pretty important year in our country.
Yeah, there were some important things that we were dealing with, important things from each side.
On the other side, they were yelling and yelling at each other.
I'm not talking crazy, right, Jared?
Well, and by the way, those were the times of canings and duels, because one of the things that had happened was that the South, which had been given traditional power based on the structure of the government that we talked about, all these compromises that made sure that, you know, the founding fathers could go ahead and carry out basically their coup, All of a sudden they looked up and they were like, oh, we're losing power.
We have to go ahead and disable the federal government effectively.
They were pulling out like Bowie knives and basically brandishing them as they were trying to keep from losing power.
It is another situation that reflects very much so what we're looking at now.
And so, you know, in 1856, what the argument ended up being, that culminated in the voting for the Speaker, was slavery versus non-slavery and proliferation of slavery in the Western states.
That was the big talk of the day, which is, by the way, a very, noble is not the right word, but a very serious topic that they needed, they had two clear sides to, right?
Well, if you listen to what the Republicans are saying, they're considering this situation here and the Democrats as the same kind of issue, the same decision to make as serious as slavery.
Because the Democrats are such a threat to society that if we can't let them do anything and vote for or have control over any of these things, we have to make a stand just like the other people were making a stand against slavery back then, which is heinous.
The idea that you would try and use that kind of language to conflate those two things is ridiculous.
And as a result, here we have, you know, the argument ends up really being for some procedural rules like we saw 100 years ago.
And just the idea that the motion to vacate, which is kind of a big one that no one ever knew about and Pelosi had sort of tabled when she was in power, is the notion that, yeah, a one person in Congress can say, you know what, I want the Speaker out of here.
We can't take him anymore.
And correct me if I'm wrong, I believe he's actually capitulated to that.
He'll allow one person can do that now going forward.
Still hasn't gotten the votes, but he's actually been agreed to that.
Well, the amazing thing in all this, and we talked about this a little bit Tuesday, is that McCarthy basically handed them the keys to the Brinks truck.
He basically said it because he was so shameless about this.
Like, and by the way, if Kevin McCarthy had even an ounce of, like, respect or self-introspection, he would have been gone after the first ballot.
Bye, I'm done, find somebody else.
They can find, we talked about, there's really not a lot of people to take over that helm.
You had mentioned Scalise, I think he is probably where the support would have gone.
You know, even Jim Jordan seems like he might be one of the few candidates who could actually bridge the divide between these parts of the house.
But yeah, like Kevin McCarthy should have been gone already.
But he gave them everything.
This idea, I want to say he said it was going to be five.
Five people could bring this vote to remove him, which just meant, by the way, that if he carries this out, right, and if that carries forward, I mean, my God, it's going to be like an almost daily occurrence.
They're going to be a vote to do this.
The entire point of all of it, these people literally, literally are not just libertarian, but anarchist almost in their hatred of the federal government.
And Kevin McCarthy is not gonna fix that.
He has no ability to do that whatsoever.
He has already capitulated one way after another, bent over backwards.
There's no way to make this happen with those people.
You can make it happen with a deal with the Democrats.
That's very likely where this is going to go.
But if that's on the table, the idea that five people can bring a vote to get rid of them, my God, the House of Representatives is going to be inoperable.
Right.
And by the way, they would never get the votes to actually get rid of him.
They would just make a clown show every day, every hour of, like, nominating that.
And it's like, that is the point as well.
And that's why I don't blame, you know, Pelosi or McCarthy for not wanting to have that ability.
That's not a bad thing when you want to get stuff done.
But let's not forget why McCarthy is being vilified so much by these 20 people, or maybe it's a little bit more than that.
But it's because He did do a deal.
Like, you know, there was some compromise, which is what, you know, what's that word?
Oh, it's politics.
That's what it's called.
Politics is supposed to be compromise and people getting together and actually working some things out.
The Biden White House has had some success on a, not a lot, but a few major bills.
And I got to tell you, this has, this is the only reason why they're all upset.
And it wouldn't have mattered if it was McCarthy or anybody else who was the minority leader at the time.
But the fact that they made any kind of concessions or any kind of deal with the Democrats, Is completely not really a whole cloth against what they're for and they'll never because of their zealots.
They will never get on board.
You're right.
We're just going to do this forever.
They'll they'll never switch to either present or their votes McCarthy.
Yeah, and by the way, because this is, you know, this is what we do with this podcast, let's go ahead and give it some historical context.
The who's who of people who created this situation in the past, it's like a Mount Rushmore of modern Republican dysfunction, right?
Like, you have to blame Ronald Reagan and the neoliberals that he represented.
The entire idea was that the federal government should have no power and that, in fact, government was an impediment to success and freedom.
So as a result, it needed to be destroyed.
The next thing you know, you gotta go to Rush Limbaugh, who created this culture of bombast and sort of spectacle, right?
This adversarial sort of notion that, like, everything has to be based on who is winning day-to-day in terms of, like, the rhetorical war.
Next up, thanks Newt Gingrich, who, by the way, is showing up all over Fox News right now being like, I can't believe these people are doing this.
Are you kidding me?
You created this congressional scenario.
You created the modern Republican Party.
That was all about adversarial politics, and again, this sort of spectacle, grandstanding, and nationalization of politics.
And finally, number four, thanks Grover Norquist, who created an absolutely immovable system for Republicans to follow, where you could never possibly compromise, you could never actually do deals, you were constantly carrying out a zero-sum game with the Democratic Party, And, by the way, created a system in which the government was being destroyed for the purpose of this neoliberal libertarian idea.
You don't get here by accident.
You don't reach this terminal point in congressional action without those people laying the foundation for it.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I was waiting.
When's he going to say Newt?
When's Newt coming in here?
And that's exactly right.
Newt was the guy who made it popular to actually, you know, go after your own party for ethics violations or whatever.
It's sort of related to the motion to vacate.
Like, they have that notion.
They want to be able to hold it over you.
And by the way, they might say one day, if they had the power, well, we won't bring the motion to vote to vacate, but you better do this for the five of us that want to do this.
That's no way to govern.
And let's not forget what the real, you know, reason why we have a speaker is.
Like, back in the day, I was reading about this, you know, initially, at one point they had a speaker that really controlled everything.
He could put who he wanted on every committee and everybody was the head of each committee.
It's a little bit different now, but not that much different in the sense that This is probably really what these guys are looking for, right?
They're upset about the committee set up and what committees they're going to be on, who's going to lead them.
And I was thinking about this.
Why?
Why do we have plum assignments, Jared?
Why are certain committees more important than other committees and are more prestigious or whatever?
And people want to be on those more than others.
Why do you think that is?
Well, I mean, it's strict hierarchies within these power structures.
I mean, parties basically have created discipline based on not just fundraising, which is now the natural component of it, right?
Most politicians now would be happier to be near the purse strings, which is how Pelosi and Schumer have had control over the Democratic Party, how Mitch McConnell has had control over the Republican Party.
The House, not so much.
They've basically been funded by a cadre of billionaires and millionaires and regional barons, more or less, is how that has happened.
Now what is occurring is that these people, the Freedom Caucus, the holdouts here, they're getting money from people because they're doing this.
You know, they don't have to worry about the purse strings.
They don't have to worry about the Republican Party giving them money.
They've already got a basically like a shunt.
You know, they've already got like an instant way in.
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