Victory Has Defeated You, Mr. Speaker
Catching the falling knife of "leadership" and the rise of Congressman Matt Gaetz
If the new Congress seems incoherent, it’s because it is.
There is a sort of vague, amoral silliness to the whole affair as evinced by a multitude of strange photos (staged or organic?) — what is going on with Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene anyway? — and bad lip reading had a field day.
(Say, has anyone got good lip reading that could actually tell us what was said? If they do, they aren’t talking and probably wisely)
But incoherence is a feature of the modern right-wing, which doesn’t reveal its true intentions and which has, at least, sold itself to the mob.
It’s worth considering the past Republican speakers of one’s own lifetime and what brought them to power and took them down.
Newt Gingrich was brought to power on Sheldon Adelson’s casino cash, and he quickly collapsed. (“His mind was a roulette wheel,” said one Gingrich staffer to me. “But it wasn’t his money he was playing with. It was yours.”)
Later pornographer Larry Flynt outed would be Speaker Bob Livingston’s affair and soon Dennis Hastert ascended. We didn’t know that Dennis Hastert was a child molester but you can be sure that Turkish and Israeli intelligence knew.
Now Flynt and I were friendly and we would occasionally breakfast together at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills when I lived in LA. He’d chide me for being a Republican — I was an Independent — and then we’d talk shop. Only later did I realize he had been a sort of mob informant type for the FBI.
John Boehner was the country club, chain smoking GOP speaker, Paul Ryan the Paul Singer-think-tank construct, and now Kevin McCarthy is the nihilistic mob speaker. Or, if you prefer, we swapped the uber competent Italian mobster’s daughter with the feckless Irish mobster’s son.
“Kevin believes in nothing,” wrote Rep. Matt Gaetz. “Every single Republican in Congress knows that Kevin does not actually believe anything. He has no ideology.”
Of course, the signs were there for anyone who was truly looking at doing a serious inquiry. Here’s Roll Call, way back in 2013.
McCarthy lacks the attention to detail and deep knowledge of the issues that make a good whip, his critics contend. He is too concerned with maintaining good relationships to exert party discipline, and he does not delegate enough to a staff described as quite capable, they say.
“The knock on Kevin is that he has gained a reputation for talking a great game, but under-delivering,” said a former House Republican leadership aide who, like most others, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Added a second GOP operative who served in a similar position: “He cares more about being liked than he does twisting arms to get the job done.”
And totally unrelatedly are we really supposed to believe that Kevin McCarthy, who taught the amoral Kevin Spacey how to be Frank Underwood, is such a good guy?
Nihilism makes it hard to pin you down — and impossible for you to govern. Eventually you get exposed. But not before you dismantle the House Ethics committee and foul up the sense-making apparatus of the federal government.
Kevin will assuredly fail for the same reason that so many on the GOP do — outsourcing competence to foreign compromised actors.
When Kevin inevitably fails, the public will remember those who stood up and opposed making him second in line to the president.
That, at least, seems the bet that Congressman Matt Gaetz is making by publicly — and emphatically — in humiliating Kevin McCarthy.
The reason you find this photo pleasing isn’t the Golden Spiral/Fibonacci sequence (lol) but because you’re so accustomed to the GOP being the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. You’re not used to people making arguments. You’re not used to drama on the House floor.
There may as yet be a vision — a program — proffered by Matt Gaetz for the sort of country he imagines. His 2020 book, Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution, gave us a hint of what that agenda might be.
Until then I suppose we’re all along for the ride.
A friend of mine sent me questions earlier which I thought I might try to address.
January 7, 2023
What comes next?
• What does this do for McCarthy? Does he have a mandate as the newly elected Speaker to take on bold new legislation contra- the Biden Admin?
It’s hard to claim that McCarthy has any mandate. His promised red wave failed to materialize and Biden had one of the best midterm performances of an incumbent president in recent memory. In some very real sense McCarthy has been imprisoned as Speaker of the House. It’s his job to be a short tenured speaker.
• Is there significance to the Church Committee and January 6th Oversight committee actually getting some momentum, especially since the January 6th committee accidentally released over 2000 SSNs in a careless publication.
I more or less share my friend Arthur Bloom’s assessment of the futility of a Church Committee and how such an effort might actually be a way of weakening rather than strengthening the U.S, especially if it’s headed up by foreign-compromised players.
I’m also not so sure I believe that the “accidental” release of the Social Security numbers of the (alleged) traitors was so accidental. Have they caught the people who released all the billionaire taxes yet? Will they ever?
• What does this mean for the Motion to Vacate? If every democrat and the resistance 6 supported that motion, McCarthy could be gone within the week, especially if the rules vote fails (also, does the motion to vacate even become a rule if the rules fail?)
I said at the time that autistic tweaks were enough to assuage the fools within the House Freedom Caucus and that — in relatively short order — McCarthy would feel pressure to betray them. After all, how can you trust the word of a liar?
One of the members of Congress I was texting with told me that they had gotten assurances in writing from McCarthy. Yeah, well so did Chamberlain. You can’t make a deal with someone who can’t or won’t keep it.
• Who gets what committee assignments? The interesting ones to watch will be:
o Andy Harris, who flipped, but could have been holding out for a subcommittee chairmanship
o Ralph Norman, who flipped earlier than Harris, who has been angling for a bigger role on Financial Services
Knowing both men a little bit I was disappointed to see them cave so readily but perhaps they’ve cut a deal.
• What does this mean for the leadership structure? Will it remain status quo, or will McCarthy allow more members to take responsibilities in larger capacities? Moreso, what does the motion to vacate do to the political entities? McCarthy is in charge of CLF right now, and if he isn’t speaker, does it automatically flow to Scalise, whoever is next on the totem pole?
I have my doubts that Steve Scalise, who once spoke before a group affiliated with David Duke, wants the sort of national attention he’d get were he to become speaker. It’s always better to be the lieutenant. I’d say nobody takes shots at you but well, that’s not entirely right is it? You’re not supposed to ask what that was all about. We’ve moved on, right?
• What legislation will they actually take up? Will defunding the 80000 IRS agents pass the Senate? Will anything McCarthy has promised have any chance of becoming law? Or will we see a pliable speaker who knows he needs some legislative accomplishment to hang his hat on in order to not automatically lose the gavel in 2025.
The purpose of this congress is going to be a series of terrible investigations that go nowhere and reduce the overall appeal.
If you favor the reelection of Joe Biden — and I currently do — you look up McCarthy catching the falling knife with some mixture of humor and satisfaction. After 15 votes you now know where everyone stands. There’s no running from it. Congressman Dan Crenshaw calls his opponents “enemies” and “terrorists.” Well, okay. Duly noted.
• What will Frank Luntz’ “focus group politics” influence have over the Speakership?
Let’s hope Frank the Fraud stays far away from decision making within the GOP and let’s acknowledge that he’s been a disaster ever since he emerged with his pseudoscience mumbo jumbo. Luntz smacks of Elmer Gantry but rather than being a revival minister he’s a just a classic grifter.
I mean what is he doing with Chinese asset Paul Kagame in Africa anyway?
• What happens to Gaetz and Boebert who were the most stalwart holdouts? Gaetz put himself in the national spotlight being the last one to cave, if we even call it that. What does it mean that his extending an olive branch (post Trump call or so it seemed) allowed him to dictate how this process would finish?
Gaetz and Boebert are almost assuredly some of the more powerful voices within the conference. Boebert’s move looks especially brave when you consider that she nearly lost reelection. There’s lots of speculation about why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene joined the Kevin McCarthy caucus but both of them looked quite close — at little too familiar if you ask me. He was spotted hugging her sans wedding ring and she’s newly divorced. Who am I to gainsay love after divorce? Women "belong to the highest bidder," Napoleon Bonaparte once observed. "Power is what they like -- it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs." Enjoy it while it lasts. This, too, shall pass.
• Will there be petty grudges or vengeance against those who voted against McCarthy? Primaries?
There’s always retribution in one form or another.
• What does this mean for Trump? MTG and Gaetz allowed it to seem as if he still has control over the party and his will was enacted. Was this a power play to show he still has sway amongst the party? Did MTG call DT or vice versa?
Trump’s decision to support Kevin McCarthy — and his inability to move votes — revealed that he’s a vastly diminished force. Gaetz’s decision to nominate Trump was quite clever. Gaetz knows that DeSantis can’t run for president and for governor and so he is locking up the Trump part of the base ahead of his own run for the Florida governorship.
Excellent work as always sir
Matt Gaetz the statutory rapist is my friend!