Everyone On The Clown Car!

Back in the nineteen sixty we used to call it by a racially insensitive name of a Chinese Fire Drill, that is the Republican party now. They are running around in circles with no direction. They are like a child throwing a temper tantrum when they can't get their way the only thing is the whole country has to pay the price. 

It is the same clown car just a different driver!

And we may be back at square one, looking for a new speaker.

Speaker Johnson’s honeymoon period is over — or never even began

Just three full weeks into the job, Speaker Mike Johnson faces all the same problems as Kevin McCarthy

The Washington Post

Analysis by Paul Kane

November 15, 2023

Just three weeks into the job, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has landed in the same legislative dead end that left Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as political road kill.

Just as former speaker McCarthy did in the spring, on a debt deal, and on Sept. 30, in a government funding bill, Johnson had to rely on House Democrats on Tuesday to advance a bill that keeps federal agencies running deep into the winter as more than 42 percent of his caucus objected.

[…]

And just as happened with McCarthy in June and September, Johnson subsequently suffered an embarrassing defeat Wednesday on a procedural motion to bring a bill funding the Justice Department and a few other agencies to the House floor.

Will we end up starting all over for a new Speaker or will he have enough support to keep his job? He did the same thing as Speaker McCarthy going to the Democrats to get the bill passed.

But it’s clear that Johnson, if he wants to pass laws, is going to have to reach deals with Senate Democrats and President Biden that will disappoint staunch conservatives like Biggs.

Two big national security tests await next month, one being the annual policy bill for the Pentagon and the other a proposed $106 billion emergency request to fund the defenses of Israel and Ukraine, to beef up U.S.-Mexico border security and to support Taiwan.

[…]

The House took a sharply partisan approach to its National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), loading it up with social policy riders that hard-right Republicans demanded, passing it almost entirely on party lines. The Senate took a more traditional approach and won passage with an 86-11 vote, giving the upper chamber leverage in those negotiations.

Already the far right MAGA Republicans are say no way! And remember, like an elephant the Republicans never forget.

Conservatives hold back on Johnson ouster threat — but plot other payback

The House GOP’s right flank is furious the new speaker worked with Democrats to avoid a shutdown, a move that essentially mirrored Kevin McCarthy’s last act on the job.

Politico

By JORDAIN CARNEY, OLIVIA BEAVERS and SARAH FERRIS

November 14, 2023

Speaker Mike Johnson is averting a government shutdown essentially the same way Kevin McCarthy did: by partnering with Democrats to pass a government funding bill with no spending cuts.

Unlike his predecessor, it won’t cost him the job.

Many House conservatives are fuming that Johnson — the most ideologically conservative speaker in decades — refused to take a hard line in his first attempt negotiating with Democrats and instead leaned on them for help. In the end, more Democrats voted for the measure than Republicans, in nearly identical numbers to the September stopgap measure that triggered McCarthy’s firing. Some tore into his strategy in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, arguing that his plan, which would allow funding levels set under Nancy Pelosi to persist for months, is tantamount to surrender.

Reuters write,

A group of hardline Republicans has put new U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson on notice that he can no longer count on their support for legislation, signaling a possible early end to his "honeymoon" period.

Three weeks after the Louisiana lawmaker won the gavel of the House of Representatives, 19 House Republicans - including 15 hardliners - voted to block debate on their party's bill to fund federal programs on commerce, justice and science for fiscal 2024, which began on Oct 1.

"We want the message to be clear," said Representative Scott Perry, chairman of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus. "We're not going to pass bills that don't address the problems that America faces."

It was the second floor protest this year by Freedom Caucus members and others, who were angered by Johnson's decision not to include spending cuts and conservative polices such as U.S.-Mexico border restrictions in his stopgap measure to avert a partial government shutdown on Saturday.

It seems to me that they are putting politics before the needs of the county!

Johnson, who has commanded respect within the far right as an outspoken Christian conservative, irked hardliners this week with his own short-term spending bill to maintain existing government funding levels and programs into early 2024.

He committed the gravest sin a Republican can commit… he worked across the aisle to pass a bill.

Hardliners now want Johnson to marshal his fractious 221-213 Republican majority into agreement on spending and then fight the Democratic-led Senate for spending cuts and policy changes that would defund programs that Democrats view as priorities.

Party before country.

“So let's have another verse, that worst than the other verse.”

Here we go again! Another fire drill with the clown car.

 

And if they do pass a budget with all these cuts, it will never make it through the Senate so it will be back to square one.

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Temper flare on the Senate floor!

All this tension in the Senate has caused a number of short tempers incidents…

'Stand your butt up': Fistfight nearly breaks out during Senate hearing until Bernie Sanders steps in

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, had challenged the president of the Teamsters union, Sean O'Brien, but Sanders shut them both down.

NBC News

By Frank Thorp V, Rebecca Shabad, Kyle Stewart and Rebecca Kaplan

November 14, 2023

Tensions erupted on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after a fistfight nearly broke out in a Senate hearing and a Republican congressman accused former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of assaulting him.

At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, an argument almost turned into a fistfight between GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma and the president of the Teamsters union, Sean O'Brien.

The exchange occurred when Mullin, a former MMA fighter, recalled an interaction he had with O'Brien in June on Twitter, now known as X.

Is that the only way Republicans know how to settle disagreement, with a fight?

On the other side of the Capitol, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who voted to oust McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker last month, said that McCarthy had elbowed him in the kidneys while Burchett was speaking to reporters in a hallway.

Burchett said he believes it was intentional, telling reporters: "Oh, it was 100% on purpose, ma’am, what are the chances ... 435 members of Congress, eight of us voted against him. I’m the one who did it, one of them who did it. He publicly called me out."

Burchett said that he chased after McCarthy to confront him and that the former speaker didn't know what Burchett was talking about.

McCarthy denied that he attacked Burchett, telling reporters, "If I’d kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground."

They are like a bunch of 10 year old's going at it on the playground.