Sunday Thoughts January 08, 2023

I must confess that I enjoyed the McCarthy circus quite a bit. Like most reading this, I have long ago thrown in the towel on conventional politics. I no longer follow the various dramas they cook up to keep the suburban peasants distracted from important matters. I did enjoy watching these idiots and their mouth pieces in the media go crazy over the holdouts. I think every time Conservative Inc. hisses at their audience, another dissident is born.

That said, two things were revealed in all of this. If a small group of serious people in Congress want to throw sand in the gears and get something they want, it is not that hard. These twenty holdouts showed just how easy it is to do if you commit to it. They went into this with a plan to highlight their complaints, paint the leadership as weak and untrustworthy and then demand concessions. The point is the so-called conservatives could have been doing much more if they wanted.

The other important thing here is that a small group can exploit the rules to extract rule changes that they can exploit down the line. This is how the usual suspects have subverted America since the middle of the last century. Every connivance set up the next connivance. They gnawed away at the system a little at a time, by gnawing away at the rules. Again, if there are genuine reform minded people in either party, they will have to take the same approach.

That is unlikely to happen. What I expect is over the next year the party will systematically claw back all of these concessions. They will make a deal with the Democrats to first get rid of the rule regarding how many votes are required to remove the Speaker. Once that is passed, they will then fink on the rest of the concessions in short order. Then the twenty holdouts will be stripped of their committee assignments and given a primary opponent financed by the party.

Topics

Charlie McCarthy Hearings

* Politico: Inside the 28 minutes that saved Kevin McCarthy – Link

* LA Times: Now the country will pay the price – Link

* Politico: Proposed GOP select panel – Link

* ZeroHedge: Here Are The Concessions McCarthy Had To Make For Speakership – Link

Ukraine

* Economist: The West sends armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine – Link

* The New Atlas: Latest US Arms Shipment to Ukraine – Link

* MSN: Ukrainian Forces Face Being Surrounded in Bakhmut – Link

* WaPo: Time is not on Ukraine’s side - Link

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