The Coming Congressional Chaos

Remember how crazy, how broken the House Republicans were in 2023 when they tried and failed around fifteen times to elect their own Speaker? 

The coming vote for the Speakership - currently held by Mike Johnson, who only got the job when the guy who struggled that first time around (Kevin McCarthy) lost a No Confidence vote by his own party not more than nine months later - is gonna be that mess but pumped up on steroids and PCP. The House GOP is riven by factions clawing at each other over who's More Conservative Than Thou (via Rebecca Morin at USA Today):

Even as President-elect Donald Trump threw his support to keep House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in his powerful leadership role, some Republican lawmakers are holding out on offering their endorsements.

“I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson is going to work out about as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote Monday on X, formerly Twitter. “We’ve seen Johnson partner with the Democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget.”

House lawmakers on Friday are set to vote on the speakership amid dissatisfaction from key Republicans over Johnson's leadership...

The naysayers among the Republican ranks are upset with Johnson now over the recent efforts by the extremists - pushed by Elon Musk and his partial-presidency displays of power bullying - to stop a continuing resolution earlier this month in order to force a federal shutdown right as Christmas holidays were happening. Johnson, who is just as Far Right as most of the House GOP, still understood the madness and utter destruction to the national economy that shutdown would have caused, and so passed a weakened version of the resolution to keep government funded until March.

It was the same kind of "betrayal" for the House extremists - the so-called Freedom Caucus among them - that drove them to turn on previous Republican Speakers like John Boehner, Ryan, and McCarthy. A public display of Purity Testing their own leadership, to force either shutdowns or massive spending cuts that would tear down the social safety net that tens of millions of Americans rely on to survive.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Az., who has been critical of Johnson over the spending bill battle earlier this month, remains undecided about whether to support Johnson despite Trump’s endorsement.

“I haven’t publicly or privately committed yet,” Biggs told Fox News on Monday. “I do want to speak with the speaker just to see what his plans are because there are some issues that I think need to be worked out.”

Shortly after Trump’s endorsement, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., spelled out a list of demands dealing with legislation, taxes and federal spending that she wants to see from Johnson before she backs him for the speakership.

“Congress has abandoned its constitutional duty to the American people to properly oversee the spending of their hard-earned money paid as taxes,” Spartz said in a statement. “Our next speaker must show courageous leadership to get our country back on track before this ‘Titanic’ strikes an iceberg at any moment.”

These Republicans want massive spending cuts as though that will "save the sinking ship" never caring how that federal spending actually keeps families and communities afloat. Anything to justify the massive tax cuts - the real cause of deficits and federal debt - to the uber-rich that a majority of Americans don't want to pass.

The fight for the Speakership is going to be crazier than the last time because the margin for error is smaller:

House Republicans will hold a narrow majority in the new Congress after they won a majority of seats over the Democrats, 220-215. But that number will be even smaller – 219 to 215 – when lawmakers convene Friday because Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., resigned from the House last month and won't take his seat on Jan. 3.

The math last time had it where the potential Speaker (McCarthy) couldn't afford five defections from his own Republican ranks. This time around, Johnson can't afford even two defections. And based on how the extremists behaved in 2023, we can predict that the holdouts are going to make harsher and more back-breaking demands for favors, deals, and greater power that Johnson or the rest of the House Republicans may not be able to satisfy.

There's only so many favors, so many seats in the powerful committees, so many internal rules to benefit only themselves that can get doled out before the other more Rational factions are denied any benefits of their own. I can still remember how one congresscritter Mike Rogers tried to punch Matt Gaetz because Gaetz was demanding Rogers' assignment to Chair the Armed Services Committee. Gaetz may no longer be there, but the other "Freedom Caucus" members are just as self-serving.

You would think the House Republicans would read the room - literally - to see how minimal their grasp on control of their wing of Congress really is, and how they need to tamper down their personal ambitions to secure their party's control of the House. They don't have a commanding 20-seat lead over Dems to set a mandate here. They're barely holding on even with the extreme gerrymandering at the district level across most of the Red states, propped up more by Fox Not-News propaganda and by angry billionaires who want things done their way at the expense of the nation's actual majority.

Given how craven and broken the party's leadership already is, they're bound to cater to the "Freedom Caucus" as much as possible. But how much can the GOP really give away to their own extremist factions?

This is going to get messy in 2025.

I hope the 77 million Americans who voted for this chaos understand just how f-cked they made our nation become. I hope the Leopards eat your faces first.