Marvellous chaos as Republicans fail to elect a House of Representatives Speaker. Party leader Kevin McCarthy was expected to be confirmed in post in what is usually a shoo-in. He had the backing of Donald Trump and most of the representatives. That was until the even dafter ultra conservatives decided that he was a ‘Deep State trash’ presumably because he has occasionally spent his time in office working with the Government. A truly outrageous thing for an elected representative. That’s how mad they all are. They think they can be in Government to be anti-Government.
How mad people are could also be measured by whether they do the same thing over and over again, despite everyone saying that the system is broken. The ultra conservative opinion expressed in the above post (there is no other way to describe it), that says the mainstream should not be challenged and that to diverge from it is madness, is the real sign that democracy is dead or dying. How much better would it be if there were a number of good candidates, with varying ideas and directions, that could be considered? And how much better if people could discuss the matter without calling their opponents anti-American or 'the enemy'. All this is doing is showing the Conservative (in the sense of resisting change) establishment as a beast that is made up of those on the left and the right. Call me radical, but I would rather be in a party that is prepared to question and challenge its leadership, rather than a party that expresses radical views, but NEVER votes in a way that may upset Nancy Pelosi, or upsets her authoritarian leadership. Very similar views, to this poster, were expressed by the other side about the effects Sinema and Manchin had on the Dems when they voted against the party line, and my view then was consistent, in thinking that such criticisms were stupid and ill-founded There is no denying that the view expressed in the post above is ultimately a most steadfastly Conservative view. The poster has said that I don't back up what I say, so here is an example of me making a claim, and explaining exactly why I possess it.
Err. Forgive me, but your sources have let you down here, once again. The first day of the republican led congress has not happened yet, and won't happen until a Speaker has been voted in to lead the house. That is the whole point of this story. You really should ask more questions about the lies and miss-information these sources are feeding you
I’m sure that tedious (and inaccurate) response to what was clearly a superficial jokey post sounded much better in your head. Happy New Year Hooter
Happier now that I have been cheered by one of your wonderful coping strategies! Inaccurate? How so? Isn’t it one of Pelosi’s deputies presiding at the moment? Genuine question. Hardly Republican led if true.
There is nothing radical about self-interested posturing posing as a threat to the system. This simply indicates how deep the cult has its grip on you. Politicians are elected to administrate, legislate and work, selflessly, to make the lives of others better. This is the very least we should expect. We’ve seen this before with UKIP in the European Parliament. Well paid politicians forgetting their duty to sensibly take part, indulgence that ultimately lead to embarrassments like the MEP who claimed Carbon sequestration would take all the CO2 needed by plants. Just because he felt his job was simply to be anti anything the EU came up with. This irrationalism dressed up as radicalism leads nowhere good. It’s not justified by the obvious deficits of democracy, in fact that’s the worst excuse in the World for it.
Exactly what you would expect someone that wants to maintain the establishment status quote to say. It is, without doubt, as politically conservative a view to change as it is possible to express. Telling me it is irrational without discussing the issues and concerns that are driving these people - that they want to ensure things will happen, rather than the controlled apathy that usually ensues after the fighting talk has ended. You don’t like it, you don’t understand it, so it must be irrational and the people doing it must evil. Conservative establishment types have been saying these types of things since day 1 of politics. You think it is irrational that there may be more than one candidate in a democratic vote to represent a party? The madness, to the rational, would actually seem to be the idea that when people are asked to vote, they be given only one person to vote for, and that any discussion be stifled. But it seems you think democracy is betrayed by things like choices and people expressing concerns that are contrary to the established narrative. That, in my opinion, is ridiculous and irrational. Yes it could be handled better, and that goes for both sides, but the tendency in America today is to ignore things so they go away. The only way to stop that appalling attitude is to stand up to it, and not let it go away until it is dealt with. Everyone seems to think the system is broken, so why is it so many people complain when others try to do something about it?
I'm not a big fan of the party system but at least what UKIP were doing in the EU Parliament was their party's policy and they were, in effect, voted in to do it. What I doesn't make sense is why these radicals within the Republican party don't like the current position of the party, or most of the people in it, but still want to stay within the GOP. Of course I understand that, like all political parties, there is a spectrum of views in the Republican party and those that regard the current group in control as "RINOs" believe that they should fight to get control of the party for their preferred policy direction. But, for a political party to work, you need to, at some point, unite behind whoever is in charge or leave. At the moment, the only hope for the GOP is for them to find a uniting candidate for Speaker that can silent the radical minority, at least in the short term. Unfortunately for them, they have a number in their ranks who are "deep state" conspiracy nuts who won't trust anyone in government, even when it's their own party! The only beneficiaries of this chaos is the Democrats and that's what the GOP radicals need to wake up to.
Whoooops!!!!!!!! https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1610835935511322624 Some unkind wag has produced a new portrait of "Soft Focus" Kari: Spoiler: It's entitled... ..."Almost Gone".
I gather that it is not any real or significant difference in policy, but a lack of belief that the party establishment is sincere in its willingness to reflect the concerns of the party and its members. That is, they agree about what is bad, but the rebels also believe that the current leadership will continue acting with apathy, and not take the bull by the horns to instigate real change. There is no need to divide the party, in their opinion, just a need to make sure the party does everything it promised to do whilst it was in a minority. Seems entirely reasonable to me that a few people have said "enough of the old BS" and are shaking up the party in a way that reflects its voters. Republicans fear the same old same old under McCarthy, which would delight the Democrats. No one is harmed by this democratic exercise, apart from a few egos and reputations. But if it mixes things up a bit, and creates some change in the stagnant system, I am not convinced it wi be a bad thing. But this argument, not yours, that all Democrats tow the line, I think, is unhealthy and undesirable.
What the US has is a fight between different sections of the ruling class, including a highly irrational one that eats only fire. There should be no interest whatsoever for any person serious about making the World better to back the ruling class’s mental contortions - the philosophy that emerges when irrationality, employed to defeat progressive social change and worker’s advancement, is taken to its most extreme degree. These politicians and their basket case Qanon followers are channelling anger for an authoritarian agenda. Actual governing would bring them into the real World to try to solve real problems, which they would find cannot simply be dispelled by refusing to accept experts or science. That’s why they run from it, so those difficulties don’t expose their absurd positions.
Totally agree but in most functioning democracies these "protest politicians" join fringe parties that have no chance of actually governing (e.g. UKIP or the Greens). I know the Tories have recently felt like several parties within one and Labour have their own historical factions. But, in general, they tend to come together when forming government. The Republicans have an opportunity to come together and show they are fit to govern but they are too busy with their internal squabbles and the influence of extreme radicals. Why are they all in the same party if they cannot work together? And why do people that believe that the GOP is part of a deep state conspiracy want to represent it? It's very (potentially terminally?) damaging to the credibility of the Republican party imho.
They are already a terminal case. This is an effort to drag them up by the scruff of the neck. Whether it works or not, we shall see in time...
Wow. It is difficult to know whether you are talking about the Democrats or the Republucans at times, naming one but describing the behaviour of the other. Republicans, the party that freed the slaves, authoritarian? Where? Yet Democrats with their racist CRT, Jim Crow, KKK, political censorship, vaccine mandates and criticisms of free speach are your heros here?
It’s a symptom of the desperate ideas the ruling classes have had to encourage in order to inject energy into their opposition to socialism and progressive politics. They have now infected all right wing parties with this nonsense. The Tories are no different with their dislike of experts and need to forever conjure up enemies. In the US the irrationality dial is just turned up a little higher, is more vivid and extreme. But that’s what reactionary politics is. A reaction to the demands of the working class. Post financial crash those demands were big. People were hurting, wanted the banks and financial institution tied down forever and for the rich to pay for their **** ups. The reaction required, in the shape of populism, in order to prevent harsh regulation of incontinent capitalism/maintain wealth has been severe, hysterical at times, that hysteria magnified by a new force, more difficult even for the ruling class to predict and control, social media. It’s a strategy of fire that will eventually consume all the oxygen in the room. Then capital will invest in another reactionary strategy. Folk like Hooter are collateral damage.
I'm sorry. Are you saying that the best way to change things is to toe the line, and do the same things that have failed for so long? I know you wil think that is not what you meant, but fortunately, for anyone reading it, it is the meaning of yhe words you are saying, and yet another explanation of why you do not understand how Labour left its supporter's behind.
You don’t seem to understand. I’m pondering on why your brand of ideological extremism has flourished. How you journeyed from New Labour to someone who shouts at people on a football forum that they all support racists and paedophiles, who barely retains a faith in either democracy or medicine and posts more than 200 hundred times (the search max on this forum) about CRT, an theory (or at least your version of it) no one else has shown any interest in whatsoever. While you are likely to always have had a tendency towards misanthropic crankery, it’s impossible to believe you made this leap without the facilitation of the thousands of paid opinion formers who have promoted extreme ideas towards the mainstream, post financial crash. That is toeing the line. And probably the end of this conversation.
I think that encapsulates the problem with too many modern politicians. They see it as a game. If I were a Republican voter in the US I would be furious. I'm in the middle of a cost of living crisis. I've been told that it is because of the Democrats and Biden. The Republicans tell me if I vote for them then they will fix things and my life will get better And now, after making the effort to vote (possibly queueing for hours) I get these literal jokers who think it's just a bit of a laugh and a game. The USA deserve better than this from the elected representatives.
Nice analysis, but then, what evidence do you have of any of this? Yet I can back up every claim I make because you did the things on a football forum… Do you support racism (not saying you are a racist)? Yes you do. You defended a poster when they said the most disgusting things about a racial minority, and instead of criticising them yourself, you attempted to get me banned for calling them out. You use terms like “black and brown people” that no one else on this forum uses. You have attacked me for criticising CRT, which is the very basis of racism, and even BLM do not deny that. You use outdated “gammon” phrases like third world to describe people being exploited by the UK. So yes, it is fair for someone to point out to you when you s**t spray your own claims of racism and white supremacy, that you have openly supported ideas that people consider to be racism. Like I say, if you didn’t say the things, I couldn’t quote you on it. Yet you love suggesting I am the racist, without me saying anything like what you have said and then defended on here. New Labour, in my experience, was anti-racist like myself. They certainly never expressed the opinion that any racial minority were ****s. So I think it is fair to say I am not the one who has miss-represented myself on the subject of racism. If you disagree, show me where I did… The only time I got even close to accusing anyone of supporting minor attracted people (sorry mods, I am responding to Moose) was when you and another poster got upset that I criticised the film “Cuties”. I didn’t accuse you of anything, just recognised that you got all defensive when I criticised it. Your response, of course, was to accuse me of being of that inclination, even though all I had done was criticise it. It is fair then to point out on here that you supported a persons right to make and watch such films, fair enough if that is what you believe, and fair of me to criticise your response when it is so defensive, yet made without any reasoning why my comments were improper. As for the rest of your bubble babble, you are simply describing how you believe that any political view that is contradictory to your own is unacceptable and morally wrong, and whilst you are saying it, you make out that it is me that has lost touch with democracy. Simply, it is very clear that all you are doing is projecting your own behaviours on to me. You shout about racists far more than me but never explain your accusation, but, to be fair, you do not, for whatever reason, often accuse anyone of being a pedo. When it comes to shouting at people on a football forum, you have that particular niche cornered, and when it doesn’t work on me, you go shouting to the mods, trying to get me banned, or to get posts by other members removed that I replied to. I don’t shout at you, and I always back up what I say. You never have to ask me to justify my comments, and you never challenge my explanations when I give them. You just make a post like this weeks later with oblique references to what you would like people to think I said. All you do is shout and then run away when I politely ask you to prove your point.
Even the GOP members most against the rebels are starting to say that a lot has been achieved by their actions, so it seems that the democrats are not the only ones gaining from this democratic exercise. But then, it would be pretty futile to say there was nothing to gain, when it turns out that what Republicans have been promising in order to gain the votes that got them their majority, were not being guaranteed under McCarthy’s leadership until now. Indeed, the rhetoric of his most loyal cronies has moved away from any swamp busting before he is even in place. Now if a situation were to benefit only the Democrats, it is that. If the only thing that the rebels achieve in this is to ensure greater action from McCarthy, and a more defined method to hold him to account, then that is surely a big win for all republicans who are not part of the system that has always failed, and has helped create the stagnant mess that every one says is broken, whilst getting an allergic reaction when people try to change things.
Anyway . What is this all about ? Since that Trump fella got voted out everything is a bed of roses . Ain't it ?. Don't start me .. Meet the new boss ...
No one claimed it would be a bed of roses, only that it would be better if Trump wasn't in power. Things are indeed better with him not in power. This isn't hard stuff to get your head around.
Really? Can you name the things that are better, after two years of Biden, that were not better after two years of Trump? And yes, it is disingenuous of me to ask you to compare Trump pre-pandemic, just as it is for you to do so with his post pandemic position. Truth is, comparison of performance is not a good measure. But what you can measure for sure is Biden's involvement in a new (potential World) war and compare it to Trump's Abraham Accords and Putin holding back on Ukraine (until Biden got in), his massive increases in spending (much of it abroad), his relinquishing of the border, etc.. Barring the pandemic, the US was very much on the up under Trump. But you think things are better under Biden? Fair enough. I and many others, would disagree with you, and wonder what the things are that you think have gotten better. A reduction in racism, perhaps?
A genius. A difficult thing to do - make a farcical situation look even more ludicrous: https://twitter.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1612105607502249984
