"Amid the impasse, [Kevin] McCarthy is floating a plan that would reinstall him as speaker and make Jordan, a conservative Trump ally, the assistant speaker..."

"... according to three sources familiar with McCarthy’s pitch. Asked why the idea — which lacks key details, like how it would be enacted and whether it could even gain enough traction to happen — was being floated now, a GOP lawmaker replied: 'We’re desperate.'... A source briefed on the idea likened it to the Speaker Nancy Pelosi/Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark arrangement that the Democrats had. 'Kevin speaker, Jordan assistant speaker,' the source said. Two GOP lawmakers described McCarthy as having melted down in conference meetings [Tuesday] because, they said, he is losing his ability to handpick a new speaker...."

NBC News reports.

"It will be a while before the dust settles from this (to use Karl Marx’s evocative term) 'plastic moment.'"

"Matt Gaetz’s assault will probably not be good for House Republicans. By challenging their complacency, Gaetz may also undermine their authority. That is why Newt Gingrich, among others, was so exercised. The question is, though, whether the Republican status quo is beneficent or just a repackaged, lower-temperature version of what the Democrats have on offer: incontinent spending, foreign adventurism and capitulation to transnational globalist corporatism. Matt Gaetz may have sown the wind. I do not think we’ll know for sure about the whirlwind until November 2024."

Writes Roger Kimball, in "What hath Matt Gaetz wrought by tipping over the House apple cart?" (Spectator).

Here was Newt Gingrich 2 days ago, in The Washington Post: "Republicans must expel Matt Gaetz." Expel?!

I hadn't seen the old upset-the-apple-cart metaphor in a long time. According to the OED, its first appearance was in reference to American politics, in a letter written in 1788: "S. Adams had almost overset the apple-cart by intruding an amendment of his own fabrication on the morning of the day of ratification [of the Constitution]."

Searching for "plastic moment," I see it's more prominently a structural engineering term. But perhaps Marx used the term more evocatively. And yet, I couldn't find any Marx quotation with the phrase.

"I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.... Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy."

That's Matt Gaetz.

I'm reading "Gaetz Says He Will Move to Oust McCarthy for Working With Democrats/A day after the Republican speaker turned to Democrats for help passing a stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown, the far-right congressman promised to try to remove him from his post" (NYT)

In an interview that aired on CNN on Sunday, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. McCarthy’s main tormentor, said he would do just that. By bringing up a measure called a “motion to vacate,” he can call a snap vote on whether to keep Mr. McCarthy in his post.

I like the phrase "main tormentor." Seems like the writer wanted to say "arch nemesis" and knew she needed to tone it down for NYT standards. 

"Mr. McCarthy, in his desperate pursuit of the speakership last winter, ran around making promises willy-nilly to the House’s small band of right-wingers..."

"...  and he will now rise and fall on how he handles those commitments and expectations.... His attempt to placate them by announcing an impeachment investigation into President Biden went over poorly, prompting multiple Freedom Caucusers to scold him for trying to buy them off.... Gaetz & Company have a point: Mr. McCarthy is out of compliance with several of his promises...."

Writes Michelle Cottle, in "Maybe Matt Gaetz Is Right" (NYT).

"Now and through November 2024, Republicans will be able to say that Biden has 'admitted' he allowed too much spending, which of course they blame for every conceivable economic ill."

"And if inflation subsides and a recession does not appear, Republicans will take credit for that via the debt-limit deal they 'forced' Biden and the shadowy Marxists who control him to accept. It’s fine red meat for the perpetually angry and conflict-savoring MAGA base."

 
Writes Ed Kilgore in "Kevin McCarthy May Have Already Won the Debt-Limit Fight" (NY Magazine).

"We will slowly roll out to every individual news agency. They can come see the tapes as well. Let everyone see them to bring their own judgment."

Said Kevin McCarthy, quoted in "McCarthy: January 6 tapes to be ‘slowly’ rolled out to networks besides Fox News/Republican House speaker has only let Fox News see the tapes so far, giving access to the primetime host Tucker Carlson" (The Guardian).

Why is he saying "tapes" — to make it seem as though this material is bulky and difficult to copy and transfer to various places? You can "can come see the tapes"?! Isn't this all digital material that could be sent to anyone effortlessly? 

On Sunday, McCarthy claimed he did not “give” the tapes to Carlson. “I didn’t give the tapes,” he said. “I allowed [him] to come see them, just like an exclusive with anybody else. My goal here is transparency.”

Well, you are failing. That doesn't feel transparent at all. And if everyone else could just do what Carlson had to go — where? — to "see," why didn't everyone else just do that? And how did Carlson produce an edited version if he was just "seeing" "tapes"? Something like this?:

"Inside McCarthy’s conference, few if any members would say outright on Tuesday night that their speaker made a mistake by sharing the footage with Carlson..."

"... in fact, only a handful admitted to watching the segment at all. One of those is McCarthy himself, who defended the move in the name of transparency when pressed by reporters Tuesday night. But some House Republicans aired their displeasure with being forced to revisit the attack on their workplace. 'It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this.… So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?' Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show 'anything we don’t already know.' 'I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.'"

 
From "House GOP faces a new Jan. 6 headache, courtesy of Tucker Carlson/The Capitol Police chief and Republican senators slammed the Fox News host for falsely characterizing the violent riot — using footage Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided him" (Politico).

Who thinks the message is "nothing bad happened"? Isn't it more about unskewing what had been a skewed message? I understand the urge to say let's just stop talking about it, but when your opponents are obviously not going to stop talking about it, why should you stand down? The answer seems to be, because that's what well-behaved Republicans traditionally do. 

"His chief aim, he asserted, is to bring egalitarianism to a legislative process dominated by lobbyists and powerful committee chairmen."

"As a conservative, he said, he and his allies intend to use this push for greater transparency 'to draw the American people into our vision.' Mr. Gaetz became cagier when the subject turned to how he intended to use his influence on the burning issues of the day, including the debt ceiling and funding for Ukraine. 'Well, I mean, we’ll see,' he replied."

From "Matt Gaetz, Political Arsonist, Has New Powers. What Will He Do With Them?/'I am not some Lord of the Flies nihilist,' said the far-right congressman and chief tormentor of Speaker Kevin McCarthy" (NYT).

Speaker McCarthy pithily states why Schiff and Swalwell will no longer serve on the House Intel Committee.

 

The questioner tries to make it about Santos — a ridiculous distraction that McCarthy rebuffs: the lies of Schiff and Swalwell are more relevant and consequential. McCarthy doesn't get sucked into trying to minimize Santos's lies. He just maximizes Schiff and Swalwell's lies. Maximizes or right-sizes.

"In 2020, House Progressives and the incredibly radical Squad had exactly the same opportunity as House conservatives had."

"House conservatives defied Leadership to get major concessions to empower them and their agenda. House progressives did what they were told and got nothing.... The reason the Squad and House Progressives never defy Pelosi or anyone else is because they have a pathetic partisan media... who defend their harmlessness and venerate partisan subservience....  If these Dem Party loyalists who pretend to be leftists or whatever had even the slightest integrity, they'd apologize to @jimmy_dore , @briebriejoy , etc., because Gaetz & Co. just proved how politics works when you care more about your constituents than head-pats from the DNC."

Tweeted Glenn Greenwald, just now.

"Kevin McCarthy was well aware he was going to lose his bid to become Speaker of the House of Representatives on the first ballot, three people with knowledge of the situation told Rolling Stone."

"What he was not privately predicting was that the beatings would continue for an entire week. 'He knew he was going to get fucked — he just didn’t know they were going to fuck him this many times, or this hard,' explained one congressional aide."

Writes Asawin Suebsaeng in "Sex Trafficking Row Helped Fuel Gaetz’s Hatred for McCarthy" (Rolling Stone).

Literal sex (that may not have happened) and metaphorical sex (of the gang rape kind). 

Shall we read Rolling Stone?

"For the first time in recent memory, former president Donald Trump found himself relegated this week to the outskirts of a humiliating Republican implosion...."

"In the long run-up to the race for speaker, Trump was the leading character in a bevy of political parlor games — including breathless, overhyped scenarios in which the former president would offer himself up for the gavel and speculation about whether Trump would endorse McCarthy’s bid. In the end, Trump supported McCarthy’s candidacy — and his party responded with a collective shrug. The former president and his endorsement, it seemed, were essentially irrelevant."

Write Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey in "The House hard-liners blocking McCarthy aren’t listening to Trump/In another sign of the former president’s waning influence, his efforts to bolster McCarthy’s bid as House speaker have not persuaded 20 Republicans to drop their opposition" (WaPo).

Trump backs McCarthy.

UPDATE: Matt Gaetz responds: "Sad!" And: "This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote."

"Matt Gaetz rises to nominate Jim Jordan, who just urged his colleagues to vote for Kevin McCarthy."

"Gaetz says Jordan’s speech nominating McCarthy displayed 'more vision than we have ever heard from the alternative.'"

Reports Catie Edmondson at the NYT.

Are you caught up in the drama of the Speaker of the House vote?

"Only hours before the vote, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California was still laboring on Tuesday to lock down the support he needed to be elected speaker, with ultraconservative holdouts showing no signs of backing down from what could become a chaotic floor fight at the dawn of the new House Republican majority" (NYT). 

UPDATE: Here's the live C-SPAN feed as the House begins the first day of the 118th Congress.

"Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong, was Russia collusion, many of them have a security clearance."

"We’re going to bring them before a committee. I’m going to have them have a hearing​,​ bring them and subpoena them before a committee. Why did they sign it? Why did they lie to the American public?... Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you … but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?"

Said Kevin McCarthy, the likely Speaker of the House, come January, quoted in the NY Post.

"MAGA Republicans seemed to think that the scary setting for Biden’s alarming message was somehow beneficial to them..."

"... and they soon began sharing images of the dramatic black-and-neon-red scene. 'I can’t believe this is a real photograph,' J. D. Vance, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, tweeted. 'It depicts the president of our nation, as he took to the airwaves and spoke about his fellow citizens as if they were sewer rats.' Rick Scott, the Republican Senate campaign chief, tweeted the photo and dismissed Biden as a 'raving lunatic' who 'attacked half the country tonight.' Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, called it a 'hate speech.' Over on Fox News, Tucker Carlson was very, very angry about the 'blood-red Nazi background' and the Marine honor guard in front of Independence Hall, a setting that he termed a 'complete outrage.' Even before Biden spoke, Kevin McCarthy—the House Minority Leader, whose slavish devotion earned him the sobriquet 'my Kevin' from Trump—gave a prebuttal, in which he said that the President should 'apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists.'"

Writes Susan B. Glasser in "Joe Biden’s This-Is-Not-Normal Speech on the Rising Danger of MAGA Trumpists/The President calls out Trump and his Republicans, and they see red" (The New Yorker).

Glasser's penultimate sentence: "How telling it is that, when the President of the United States today speaks of threats to the nation, he is warning not about adversaries abroad but the danger within."

She means that to read pro-Biden, strangely enough. 

"Disinformation Governance Board?... I can see how disinformation requires monitoring. I can see how it requires fact-checking and refutation. But governance? How do you govern lies?"

Writes Eugene Robinson in "The Disinformation Governance Board is a bad name and a sillier idea" (WaPo). 

I agree that "governance" is a ludicrous term here. The first word in the phrase that bothers me, however, is "disinformation." I've noticed that, lately, Democrats and others of the left have forefronted a concern for misinformation, offering it as a counterweight to the interest in freedom of speech. Misinformation is a much larger category than disinformation. Is this new board concerned narrowly with the deliberate use of bad information to manipulate or just everything than anybody is saying that's wrong? Misinformation is everywhere. We live in it and must learn to deal with it. 

The only way for the government to go about its "governance" is to be selective and to choose which wrong statements to go after. Obviously, it should concern itself with the disinformation the enemy spreads in wartime, but you wouldn't set up a "disinformation governance board" to perform that function. Setting up the board is a theatrical show of going after something... but what? Claims of election fraud? Claims of election fraud made by Republicans but not claims of election fraud made by Democrats?

Robinson writes:

He'll have to name names then, won't he?

 

If he doesn't, people will infer he made the whole thing up.

The screenshot is from Drudge, and the links go to "Kevin McCarthy Says Madison Cawthorn Admitted He Exaggerated Claims About Cocaine and Orgies: He ‘Lost My Trust’" (Mediaite) and "'He's an embarrassment': Republicans threaten to primary Cawthorn over controversial antics" (CNN).

By the way "admitted he exaggerated" means that the underlying assertion is true. It's just that the words were imprecise. 

I don't remember to use my "embarrassment" tag often enough. You know, there are different ways of being "an embarrassment." An embarrassment to whom? Just himself? Or to the party? Or to a bipartisan group of powerful Washingtonians?

"For too long, we’ve been pretending that Jan. 6 didn’t happen. Kevin McCarthy is technically my Republican leader. And to call members of Congress by childish names like Donald Trump used to do, I guess is just kind of par for the course."

Said Congressman Adam Kinzinger, quoted in "Shunned by G.O.P., Cheney and Kinzinger Seek Answers on Jan. 6 Riot/They have been isolated and ostracized by their party for accepting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s offer to sit on the special committee investigating the Capitol assault" (NYT).

McCarthy called Kinzinger and Liz Cheney "Pelosi Republicans."

They've accepted a role on the committee. Now, Kinzinger and Cheney need to step up and distinguish themselves. It's fine that McCarthy has laid down his insult. It's a default interpretation that represents what many of us believe, that the committee will not seek the truth but do the political work of the Democrats. I'm sure Kinzinger and Cheney would love us to trust them and to regard them as truth-bringers. But I want a fire lit under them. They'll need to rebut the presumption that they're "Pelosi Republicans."