The GOP Shutdown Gambit (w/ Update)

(Update not more than six hours later): Goddammit I suck at predicting. Just as I figure the House Republicans would refuse to let even a Continuing Resolution pass, they get a Continuing Resolution passed and sent to the Senate for their vote. I swear, the GOP is doing this out of spite at me.

About half of what I wrote below isn't worth the paper it's printed on (...wait a second...) and the other half depends on how screwy the 45-day delay the CR bill is going to grant the Republicans another try at a Shutdown.

There may still be a Motion To Vacate next week, as Gaetz and his Freedom Caucus allies are going to look at ways to hurt McCarthy and stir the chaos they need to collapse the federal government. I have no idea now if they have a decent chance of pulling it off. I honestly shouldn't hazard any more guesses on that since after all I couldn't get this part right. This is why I've never won the Powerball lotto.

Read the below part to get a good laugh, thank you:

Several observations to make about the now-unavoidable Far Right Shutdown of the federal government as we head into yet another Long October of Republican destruction. 

This may be the clear effort of a small faction of hard-liners among the House Republicans, but you will notice the rest of House Republicans refuse to do anything to hold those extremists accountable. Whatever "moderate" factions there are among Republicans, forget it they are not really moderate. They are merely pursuing the same objectives - massive tax cuts for the wealthy, massive deregulation of business to make corporations richer at the expense of both workers and consumers, massive gutting of the social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Food for poor families) to make the poor poorer - but would prefer doing so in more subtle fashion.

If you look closer - examine the game plan of the "Freedom Caucus" and the more radical elements of the GOP - you might notice what is actually at play here.

The Shutdown itself is merely the Far Right enjoying the cruelty of breaking the federal government, creating the self-fulfilling narrative that "government is bad" while ignoring the fact it's THEIR bad actions AND bad faith causing all this. Everything they're doing and plan to do is merely perpetuation of this primary objective.

At the next level of the wingnut game plan is their objective to make the House ungovernable no matter what, not only with their open effort to oust Speaker McCarthy - who had issues even getting that seat of power - but creating the kind of chaos that would make it impossible to allow a Republican Speaker a chance to lead. Jim Newell over at Slate can see part of what's happening and how messy it will get:

...Barring a quickie last-minute agreement between the House and Senate, by late Saturday night, to keep the government open for a week or a few days, the federal government will shut down at midnight. This is all happening because a small group of House Republicans, most notably Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, want to make McCarthy look bad and then attempt to overthrow him. If he keeps the government open with Democratic votes, they’ll try to oust him for that; if he lets the government shut down, they’ll try to oust him for failing to pass spending bills, which they didn’t support, in time. It’s a shell game, and Gaetz et al. are already putting out feelers for whom they’d like to nominate to replace McCarthy. The House has finally reached, if not exceeded, the level of ungovernability predicted when Republicans failed to get their “red wave” in the midterms and were left with a bare-bones majority. And it is an absolute sight.

Newell highlights the Damned Do/Don't scenario: McCarthy can't craft a deal with bipartisan Democratic support - something the Senate has done because they're playing the game differently - without risking his career (and place in the history books) as Speaker; and even if the government shuts down those same Freedom Caucus bomb-throwers will attempt to force him out anyway (and if he stays in office due to the sympathy of Democratic support, he'll be doomed as a "traitor" to the GOP and likely lose his congressional seat this 2024 primary/election).

Those extremists don't even really have a replacement Speaker in mind, because they have to know their own party is fractured enough to where no one plausible replacement will get enough votes to win it. Look what happened in January when none of the alternatives to McCarthy could even summon more than 20 votes to gain momentum. If McCarthy does get ousted, there is an expectation that he will still have enough supporters angry from the betrayal to block any Freedom Caucus candidate.

If the Freedom Caucus does prevail and put one of their own in the Speaker's seat, do expect that scapegoat to quickly understand how fucked he/she is. That replacement Speaker is not going to have his/her own power, as the Caucus can and will pull the trigger on them if they get out of line. So expect not only the harshest, most extremist ideology - stuff that would make MAGA squeal and the Beltway Media squirm - to get shoveled out of the Speaker's office on an hourly basis, but we should expect the clown show of fraudulent "Biden impeachment trials" to expand along with the push for an extremist - anti-abortion, anti-Social Security/Medicare, anti-Ukraine, anti-immigrant, anti-Woke - agenda that would even alienate most of the Republican Senators who can't support that shit.

In other words: A new Speaker - anointed by the GOP House wingnuts - will still have a shutdown going because the Senate (and Biden with his Veto stamp) will never agree to the wingnut budget proposals the GOP House insists on pushing. And so that primary objective - Shutdown - remains in play.

There's another level of the game to consider as well. IF McCarthy is able to survive the Vacate vote, or IF the remaining "Rational" (not "Moderate") factions of the House Republicans refuse to back the Freedom Caucus' replacement candidate, the Freedom Caucus will be able to play "the victim" of McCarthy's (or the Rational factions') "betrayal." After all, all TRUE Republicans want to see the federal government broken and shuttered. If there are factions opposed to THAT agenda, time to call them traitors and use the upcoming election cycle to either remove them through primarying or through a rogue "third-party" conservative agitator in November 2024.

This is all part of the ongoing "purity purge" of driving out RINOs - any Republican who dares deviate from the dogma of God, Guns, and Grover's Bathtub - so that the PURE Far Right Republican party can rule, thanks to gerrymandering and voter suppression even as they purge themselves into demographic minority status. 

Another possibility at this level of the game is that enough sitting House Republicans - especially the eight or so who are representing districts that heavily voted for Biden as President - would break ranks to get the Democratic bipartisan deal done to save their hides. But it won't save McCarthy's Speakership, as we could be looking at an open fracture where that faction of Republicans are publicly excommunicated from the party. It could create either a flip in House control to the Democrats outright - which would put Jeffries in as Speaker - or create a temporary "third party" (the No Labels organizers have to be salivating at the prospect) that would create a plurality-based "coalition" with Democratic control of the House.

This is where the Far Right would actually celebrate, because to them this "loss" will be for them a victory for their narrative of "libruls are stealing your power" fearmongering. It should be noted that the loss of political control will free them from the burdens of doing any (boring) legislative work and let them do what they truly enjoy doing (shouting at and demonizing other people).

The GOP House wingnuts can then sell their fantasy on their Fox Not-News talk-show invites that "they" were betrayed, and that this was all the fault of Biden (Hillary/Obama/Slick Willie/LBJ/JFK/FDR/insert other accused pinko commies here) manipulating the weak to his will.

You can see that narrative coming from how the House Republicans rushed their "impeachment inquiry" into Hunter Biden without credible witnesses or verified evidence this past Thursday. As much as the rest of the world - even fellow Republicans - saw that congressional inquiry as a disaster, there was a method to the wingnut madness that pushed that clown show into the spotlight.

This is the Freedom Caucus' fall-back plan: If their attempt at a Shutdown breaks their control of the House - if the Democrats or a Coalition government takes over the House - they have this "impeachment inquiry" sitting there like a chicken bone in the next leadership's throat. If the Democrats gain control and try to shut that inquiry down - even for the obvious reason that there's no impeachable crime proven - the Freedom Caucus and their wingnut media allies can scream "COVER-UP" and hurt Biden's re-election bid. If the Democrats gain control and then allow the Freedom Caucus to continue that inquiry in spite of the lack of evidence in order to avoid the appearance of "interfering", the wingnuts can then continue to use the cover of "inquiry" to repeat and spread baseless and outright false claims about Hunter Biden (and his father) in order to depress Democratic voter turnout the way their attacks on Hillary's emails/private server did in 2016.

There's a reason why donald trump is backing this shutdown. No matter what, he profits from it, even as the Republican Party pays the price.

These games after all do carry a lot of risk. The Freedom Caucus thinks they have a win-win scenario, but they are gambling on what the Democrats would do if they regain control of the House. For example, the Dems could retain that "impeachment inquiry" into Hunter Biden but then expand it to include all the impeachable things trump and his family - especially Jared Kushner - did violating the Emoluments Clause and other acts of profiteering from political nepotism. Instead of impeaching President Biden for what Hunter did, the Dem-controlled House could impeach trump a third time for what Jared did (and possibly open criminal investigations into Jared).

A fully Democratic Congress - considering the limits that rogue Senators like Manchin and Sinema could throw up as logjams - could also work with Biden to pass more aggressive reforms and inflation-cutting moves in spite of Republican outcry - such as bringing back the successful Child Tax Credits that reduced child poverty - that could bolster Biden's re-election chances and hurt Republican chances in battleground states like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and others.

This isn't going to be an easy win for the Freedom Caucus wingnuts, not like they thought. Then again, there's not a lot of thought to begin with. We're talking about a group so self-serving and conspiracy-driven and willfully ignorant that they believed they had a checkmate in 3D chess before the whole standing board collapses on them.

Even so, this Long October isn't going to be a lot of fun. Be ready for the wingnut game plan to get worse if they realize they're getting out-gambitted.