I haven't been following this closely, but I have the strong impression that Steve Scalise would have been a better choice for speaker than McCarthy. Scalise seems right-wing but blandly professional, while everyone in politics thinks McCarthy is dumb and craven.
I get that the mainstream of the House Republicans don't want to give in to the crazies. Still, McCarthy's obvious mediocrity and the presence of a broadly acceptable alternitive creates a strong incentive for the far right to claim a scalp.
He's better than McCarthy, but that's a short hill to climb. Scalise was an objector to the electoral count certification on January 6th. And a survivor of political violence, to boot, so you think he'd understand the stakes.
Can any Democrat vote for him under those circumstances? Scalise would need nearly every R.
If past is prologue, the far right objectors will make a spectacle of themselves for a while, then look for an excuse to climb down. Steve Scalise can be that excuse.
I don't like Scalise or approve of what he stands for, but McCarthy has become one of the silliest, most undignified figures in American politics. Mainstream Republicans in the House should be grateful for the chance to get rid of him.
The demographic effects of abortion-on-demand won't be completely known for fifty years - though they seem obvious and can thus be predicted. The pro-life segment of the GOP doesn't think or care about that, though. They don't think at all. They are right of course in that the instinct *toward life* is the correct one; but that instinct is in no way honored by the GOP (or, for that matter, the left) when it comes to Life writ large, to nature - and thus only weakly stands upon every day more irrelevant religious considerations, and is at odds with the last virtue accepted by left and right (even if it manifests differently), the primacy of the individual.
The problem with the GOP is that even when they're right, they're always in some sense wrong, or wrongheaded. As a conservative, this "Inside Baseball" stuff couldn't matter to me less. The GOP could cease to exist and while that would be perfectly welcome news to Democrats, and thus for a time grating - it would not represent much change to the country, and there's a minute chance it could even be to the good, as perhaps it would force the right* into a re-appraisal of values away from the dumb and dumbening political arena.
*Apologies for revealing my right-leaning politics here, on Josh's blog, but I feel like this is an adult-enough space where I need not pretend; merely trying to express the sentiment of my tribe, which non-threateningly consists of no more than four or five people, all of whom are known to me ;-).
I am pretty suspicious of polls on abortion simply because people in a given community know what they're supposed to say but don't have to actually vote that way. That was a lesson I learned from Trump's election, and the results in places like Kansas and Michigan seem to support that theory. It's why I supported overturning Roe - in most places we're heading toward a sane middle ground, with extremes in typical places like CA and Mississippi. I doubt FL will be able to pass anything like a six-week ban (I know I could be wrong!). But regardless of what FL does, it's been returned to the state legislative process, where it should have been all along. The 60's and 70's saw pretty heavy-handed Supreme Court overreach as they extended the philosophy of the Civil Rights Act to conflicts that were not equivalents to the legacy of slavery.
I haven't been following this closely, but I have the strong impression that Steve Scalise would have been a better choice for speaker than McCarthy. Scalise seems right-wing but blandly professional, while everyone in politics thinks McCarthy is dumb and craven.
I get that the mainstream of the House Republicans don't want to give in to the crazies. Still, McCarthy's obvious mediocrity and the presence of a broadly acceptable alternitive creates a strong incentive for the far right to claim a scalp.
He's better than McCarthy, but that's a short hill to climb. Scalise was an objector to the electoral count certification on January 6th. And a survivor of political violence, to boot, so you think he'd understand the stakes.
Can any Democrat vote for him under those circumstances? Scalise would need nearly every R.
If past is prologue, the far right objectors will make a spectacle of themselves for a while, then look for an excuse to climb down. Steve Scalise can be that excuse.
I don't like Scalise or approve of what he stands for, but McCarthy has become one of the silliest, most undignified figures in American politics. Mainstream Republicans in the House should be grateful for the chance to get rid of him.
I missed that his line was that he "earned" the job, after he promised a red wave and his party blew it!
You never know with these things but I bet "I earned the job" will be the phrase Kevin McCarthy is remembered for.
2022 was the year of dogs catching cars.
The demographic effects of abortion-on-demand won't be completely known for fifty years - though they seem obvious and can thus be predicted. The pro-life segment of the GOP doesn't think or care about that, though. They don't think at all. They are right of course in that the instinct *toward life* is the correct one; but that instinct is in no way honored by the GOP (or, for that matter, the left) when it comes to Life writ large, to nature - and thus only weakly stands upon every day more irrelevant religious considerations, and is at odds with the last virtue accepted by left and right (even if it manifests differently), the primacy of the individual.
The problem with the GOP is that even when they're right, they're always in some sense wrong, or wrongheaded. As a conservative, this "Inside Baseball" stuff couldn't matter to me less. The GOP could cease to exist and while that would be perfectly welcome news to Democrats, and thus for a time grating - it would not represent much change to the country, and there's a minute chance it could even be to the good, as perhaps it would force the right* into a re-appraisal of values away from the dumb and dumbening political arena.
*Apologies for revealing my right-leaning politics here, on Josh's blog, but I feel like this is an adult-enough space where I need not pretend; merely trying to express the sentiment of my tribe, which non-threateningly consists of no more than four or five people, all of whom are known to me ;-).
So here's a dilemma.
I think their should be exceptions to abortions.
Does that make me pro-abortion?
I fell more "pro-two lives" with what I would prefer.
But if you label me pro-abortion I bristle at that.
How do you make the tent bigger, and stop with the two-dimensional explanations?
Might be an opportunity for the democrats on this one.
I am pretty suspicious of polls on abortion simply because people in a given community know what they're supposed to say but don't have to actually vote that way. That was a lesson I learned from Trump's election, and the results in places like Kansas and Michigan seem to support that theory. It's why I supported overturning Roe - in most places we're heading toward a sane middle ground, with extremes in typical places like CA and Mississippi. I doubt FL will be able to pass anything like a six-week ban (I know I could be wrong!). But regardless of what FL does, it's been returned to the state legislative process, where it should have been all along. The 60's and 70's saw pretty heavy-handed Supreme Court overreach as they extended the philosophy of the Civil Rights Act to conflicts that were not equivalents to the legacy of slavery.