Behind Closed Doors

the politicians are making deals

Well. For the first time in over a hundred years, experts agree, the vote for Speaker in the House of Representatives did not get decided on the first vote.

Which means what, exactly?

I am re-reading Phineas Finn, the second Palliser novel by Anthony Trollope, and a couple of chapters are devoted to a change in government in London. Everyone is speculating, everyone has an opinion. Everyone agrees that the various parties are totally at loggerheads. And then, all of a sudden, the Prime Minister is announced and so are his chief ministers.

Which goes to show that we peasants have no clue what is going on in the corridors of power.

So, when we read that

A group of five conservatives led by Biggs and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) have publicly stated that they will not support McCarthy under any circumstances and have called on him to stand down to make room for a more viable candidate.

Well, yes, of course they would say that. And we read that McCarthy and his supporters are really, really angry with their opponents in the GOP caucus.

One source told the outlet that McCarthy took his opponents “to the woodshed like I’ve never seen.”

“I’ve earned this job,” McCarthy reportedly said.

Well, yes. After all, politics is civil war be other means.

But I wonder what is the real story. Is it just that Republicans are being humiliated by the current Biden administration? Does it mean that there is a genuine split in the GOP between Inner Party go-along-to-get-along types and radicals who really want the party to go in a new diretion?

Or is it just politicians jockeying for position and trying to get the best deal, the best chairmanships, the best committee assignments, and we won’t ever really know the details of the deal that ends the current fight?

Whatever the result, I’d say that the GOP still has an almost insurmountable problem. Politics is all about fighting and defeating the enemy, and then handing out the loot afterwards.

Can the Republican Party ever really change the loot distribution in any meaningful way? Presumably there are very few Republicans that get healthcare with Obamacare. But the GOP still whiffed on reversing it. Social Security, Medicare, education? Forget it. And the same goes, for instance, with green energy and systemic racism. Climate change is a multi-trillion dollar boondoggle, but the opposition to it has not yet begun. Systemic racism is all about shoveling money and jobs at “people of color.” Yet nobody has the guts to call it out.

Will there ever be a Republican president and a Republican Congress ready to cut spending and cut taxes and live to tell the tale? Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it, and Donald Trump didn’t even try to cut spending.

Anyway. No doubt the GOP deadlock will be resolved in due course. Because the idea of a Democrat getting to be Speaker when the GOP has a majority is unthinkable. Because chairmanships, because investigations, because office assignments.

But there is this. Whatever happens in the House, the world will go on. And the US government will go deeper in debt. Until it doesn’t.

“Until it doesn’t.” I wonder what that would look like. I have a feeling that I don’t want to know.