Who Will Lose The House Speaker's Race Today? Day Four LIVEBLOG!
It won't be Hakeem Jeffries! Spoiler!
Allo allo, it is me, the Editrix, because Friday is Evan's day off! So I am here to BLOOG at you like the olden days, when you hadn't yet bought me four full-time employees, a nice freelance roster, a husband, and a mansion in Detroit!
Today we come together as one to watch 47 hours of MSNBC and laugh until we throw up at poor Republican (putative) leader Kevin McCarthy, whose lifelong dreams of untrammeled power are just getting beaten like a baby seal on this here pile of jagged rocks that is Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert and 19 or so of their stupidest friends.
Honestly, and this is true — don't hate the player (me) — the week so far of "make Kevin McCarthy huuuurt" has given me an inkling of an unfamiliar feeling I am identifying as "vague respect" for Gaetz, who is taking the spittle-flecked opprobrium of all of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal with something approaching aplomb. If he were the Squad and the speaker hopeful were Nancy Pelosi, I would not be happy! I would be very angry with them, probably angry enough for "rage stroke"! But the Squad did not do that, because the Squad are not nihilists. Gaetz and Boebs et al. are , and that is their ethos. Sure it's dangerous, and today's lunatics will be tomorrow's warlords in our post-apocalyptic Somali paradise, but he's not standing down. He's taking everything McCarthy is offering, and then shitting on him more. And I dig it. If the Republican Party doesn't want to be taken hostage, they are welcome to vote for a Democrat.
Now let's see, with today's expected absences, if Hakeem Jeffries can steal this shit : D
12: 10:WE GOT A QUORUM! OMG so exciting. (But it is, I haven't had this much fun in aaaaages.)
I still would like to know if it would fucking kill NBC to use one of its chyrons to say who the fuck these people. Anyway, some porcine gentleman from California rises to nominate "man of God" Kevin McCarthy, rick-santorum-wanking.gif. UPDATE: It was Mike Garcia apparently.
They're really sticking with "wide open border" (it's not), Democrats are doing Fentanyl at you, and the QAnon-adjacent "human trafficking" (which they're not actually willing to do anything about, because most of the actual human trafficking is "kids who got kicked out of their houses" and they don't want to actually help anyone). Anyway, vote McCarthy, also we love the police, which is pretty rich on January 6. Oooh, here's a new one: Joe Biden loves the Chinese Communists. Like we didn't know. Oh, and now he's bringing up Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan and military suicides. Guess what he's not bringing up! HINT IT IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY TWO YEARS AGO RIGHT IN THAT VERY HOUSE CHAMBER.
12: 20:Is it Jim Clyburn? I think so but don't know? IT WOULD BE HELPFUL IF ANYONE WOULD SAY. Mr. Presumably Clyburn rises to slap some fools with education about the greatness of America, you fuckin traitors. You fuckin insurrectionists. You fuckin piece of shit cop-murderers who tried to overturn the will of the people through Proud Boy violence and Oath Keeper armies, fuck you, says Clyburn not like that.
12: 28:Matt Gaetz rises to take exception with Mike Garcia's nomination of Kevin McCarthy, firstly that McCarthy had "earned" the position, when in fact he has not "earned" the votes, so ... yeah, I'm still with Hermy the elf who wanted to be a dentist here!
Hermy the elf who wanted to be a dentist
After quite a little speech about what a soulless piece of shit Kevin McCarthy is, Gaetz nominates Jim Jordan, which Jordan has already said he does not want. Matt Gaetz: Not concerned about consent! Boebs is up, she says Kevin Hern again. So ... sure okay.
12: 35:And this vote goes up to 12.
Dan Bishop of North Carolina fiiiiiinally flips from one of the "others" to Kevin McCarthy. And some other schmuck does too. If three more people vote against him, Kevin McCarthy loses No. 12.
Oh no! Andrea Mitchell (gross) says a McCarthy voter's wife gave birth and there are "medical complications" so he has to go, and the magic vote number today is 217, also someone else just voted for McCarthy, I can't tell who they are saying, maybe you can. And a fourth guy just switched to McCarthy, BOOO LAME THIS SUCKS.
But I hope that member's baby and wife are okay.
Steve Kornacki is on the screen to say the only people left who are anti-McCarthy (besides the Democrats, duh) are Gaetz and Byron Donalds? We know what Gaetz is doing. We don't know what Byron Donalds is doing though!
12: 45:Wait what is Kornacki's Family Feud style scoreboard, DAMMIT THAT WAS HALF THE SCOREBOARD. So strike all the last paragraph, it is NO LONGER OPERATIVE, stupid Kornacki scoreboard only showed half at a time. Fuckin misleading Kornacki bullshit.
Byron Donalds voted for McCarthy, now that he's not anybody's Black friend today : (
And with Bob Good of Virginia, Kevin McCarthy lost his 12th speaker vote. Boy bye!
Weird, Trump said this morning that he would serve as speaker if elected. Seems like somebody should have nominated him today then, or I guess they don't love him no more.
Also, there's two other Republicans missing today, according to Andrea Mitchell, who just makes things LESS clear than they were, since she says three are missing but the number is still 217, which doesn't seem right! OH WELL WHO CAN EVER KNOW, NOT ME!
1: 00:Anna Luna "Not A Witch" has switched to McCarthy, so six people so far have switched to McCarthy and six have not. With three of the Republicans gone — all McCarthy supporters — McCarthy can only lose three now. Well, not this time, he already lost this one. The 13th, when and if that starts.
MSNBC dude says he told Kornacki the wrong number of absences, and there's only two and WHAT THE FUCK MSNBC.
Ed note (that's me): If you've got the TV on msnbc, turn that shit off and watch the roll call in the video above instead. I am missing all kinds of shit while getting fed fucking misinformation from Andrea Mitchell and Steve Kornacki. ANYWAY, Matt Rosendale, dick of Montana, shouted KEVIN before a long pause and then HERN, which, again, nobody has ever heard of that dude before yesterday, but it's cool.
1: 20:For the first time, Kevin McCarthy has actually beat Hakeem Jeffries, with 214 so far to Jeffries's 212-vote ceiling, so I lied in the dek and it is a Christmas miracle!
Paul Gosar's flipped, they are very happy that he gets to be a person to them again instead of "Paul Gosar."
1: 50:Oh neat, according to Bloomberg, the deal Kevin cut for the speakership is "cut off aid to Ukraine." Man, they fuckin love gargling Putin's balls.
2: 00:Lucky vote 13! Here's James Comer of Kentucky promising SO MANY great investigations into Anthony Fauci invented COVID and Hunter Biden's scrot. Wonkette will never lack for livestreams this session! If you want to watch Joe Biden awarding medals of honor to the workers for democracy instead, we got you covered right here.
Here's a pretty lady from Texas to nominate Hakeem Jeffries and point out the Republicans had months to figure this out and also HEY JANUARY SIX, you fucking terrorists. UPDATE! I am told she is Veronica Escobar of TX-16, and she has a new fan, and it is I!
Is ... is nobody else being nominated? Did I miss a first nomination????
Well unless Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert vote for Hakeem Jeffries, I think that may have been it? BOOOOOOOOO.
I revoke my limited vague "respect" for Matt Gaetz above, dumb idiot fuckheaded quitter.
2: 15:I guess you don't have to bother "nominating" people to vote for them, Boebs just voted for Jim Jordan again. These people are v v good at their jobs.
2: 25:McCarthy's "JOEMENTUM" has worked about as well as Joe Lieberman's again, as there are already five "others," again, and he has lost. But it got up to the Gs this time first!
2: 40:A question from the comments! "I thought the rules were that you have to get a majority of votes for a nominated candidate and any other votes are counted as present. Do I have that wrong?"
And the answer is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
UPDATE! Shy nominates Bob Dobolina.
2: 45:Commenters point out that some of the GQP have ducked out for a smoke, so McCarthy's denominator has decreased. What does that mean? I am not even pretending to know, but it doesn't sound right, since there's still six GOP votes against him, and he never could lose five, and decreasing the denominator does NOT sound like that would help! It will all come out in the wash.
Maryland's David Trone gets applause for being back from surgery (fastest surgery in the West?) to bestow his vote on Jeffries, who will once again be back at 212 instead of the sad 211. Apparently he's still in his hospital slippers, god love him.
3: 25:And Steve Scalise, "David Duke without the baggage," moves to adjourn, in the opinion of the clerk the noes have it, and we are going to a vote on motion to adjourn. Y'all still here? Hi! Should I move the cocktail post up early? Do you have sherry in the house? It calls for sherry.
3: 40: Cocktail up early, we are ADJOURNED!
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Kev completes his transition away from being a man. Matt Gaetz groomed him.
I can't see him getting pissed off at the fellows who voted for him. Even if they'd stolen his grandmother and tied her up in a shed. But as I understand it he can't keep his promises and everyone understands that.