"The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."

Writes Michelle Cottle, in "How Many People Heard About Swalwell and Did Nothing?" (NYT).

Cottle does not delve into this "built differently" hypothesis or the reasons why people believe it and choose to condone bad behavior. She seems to hope to light a fire under these weaker people and motivate them to oppose the "powerful, ambitious men" who — supposedly — are fueled by sexual desire. 

Maybe she doesn't delve into the hypothesis because she thinks it's true and self-evident. Maybe she's too puritanical to open up the subject. "Built differently." Say it clearly and explicitly. When I was a child, circa 1960, I asked my mother how babies were born. That was long ago, but I remember her answer verbatim: "Well, you know how men and women are built differently."

Can we please grow up and say it bluntly? There's no reason to be polite here. Powerful, ambitious men are built differently... the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women. We're diminishing ourselves if we filter out the men who have it. Look at JFK. Look at Trump. And by the way, it's also the reason why none of the women are truly great political leaders.

That's not my personal belief. That's the hypothesis Cottle gestures at, and I'm just putting it bluntly. Maybe you can put it more bluntly, so I'll turn the conversation over to you.

"This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen people who have direct knowledge of how and why Mr. Trump salvaged Mr. Hegseth’s bid, at least for now."

I'm reading "Power, Intimidation and the Resurrection of Trump’s Support for Hegseth/The president-elect became convinced that letting Pete Hegseth fail would set off a feeding frenzy among senators. What followed was a MAGA swarm that helped salvage his bid, at least for now," by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in the NYT.

I'm giving you a free-access link so you can judge the quality of the sources, the likelihood of a senatorial "feeding frenzy," and the meaning of "MAGA swarm."

We're told that Pete Hegseth went "from dead man walking to a man with a real shot of being confirmed by the Senate" in what was "a test case of power and intimidation," where Trump demonstrated his "ability to summon an online swarm, even while spending minimal personal capital of his own."

Gaetz withdraws.

WaPo reports.

Former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) announced in a social media post Thursday that he was withdrawing his bid to be attorney general for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, saying his confirmation was “unfairly becoming a distraction.” “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle,” Gaetz said after meeting with senators on Wednesday. Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, is meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday after police records revealed new details about a sexual assault allegation against him. Vice President-elect JD Vance is accompanying Hegseth.

"If we're going to dance, let's all dance in the sunlight."

"And so it became this kind of self-licking ice cream cone where Gaetz would say something, Trump would love it, Gaetz would want to please him even more. And on and on and went."

Said Robert Draper, in "Will Republicans Reject Gaetz?" this morning's episode of the NYT podcast The Daily.

"I mean, I would describe it as god-tier level trolling, that has triggered a full-on China Syndrome to own the libs in perpetuity."

Said John Fetterman, quoted in "Sen. John Fetterman calls Rep. Matt Gaetz AG nomination ‘god-tier’ level of trolling to 'own libs'" (NY Post).

Amazing 😂
pic.twitter.com/CmDmUFXptP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2024

"Senate Republicans reacted with alarm and dismay to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s decision to nominate Representative Matt Gaetz... for attorney general..."

"... and several said they were skeptical that he would be able to secure enough votes for confirmation....  Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, raised his eyebrows when reporters informed him of Mr. Trump’s choice. 'I’m still trying to absorb all this,' he said, adding: 'I don’t really know him, other than his public persona.' Mr. Gaetz, who has been one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest attack dogs on Capitol Hill, has routinely used his position on the House Judiciary Committee to question the motives of Justice Department officials and rail against what he has called the 'deep state.'... Mr. Trump has called on Senate Republicans to allow him to circumvent the confirmation process by calling recesses during which he could install personnel without Senate approval. It was not clear whether Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican elected as majority leader on Wednesday, would be willing to do so for Mr. Gaetz, or other nominees who might struggle to draw enough support to be confirmed...."

The NYT 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.

You've got the order of order all out of order.

I imagined saying to myself if I were to make a list of the characters who've appeared on the blog so far this morning and put them in order of order — from order to chaos.

The blog — of its own accord — had a theme of "Order and Chaos," I'd realized, as I was walking toward the sunrise this morning. 

Only one post had that "Order and Chaos" tag — possibly my favorite tag (the other contenders being "Light and Shade" and "Big and Small") — "The man just loves chaos." But was "that man," Matt Gaetz, the greatest agent of chaos on the blog so far? What about Rudy Giuliani? Michael Zack? The man who killed Ryan Carson? Bataa Mishigish?

I knew if I put the characters in order of order, it would be all out of order, but I wanted to make the list anyway, just to see how easy it would be to argue that the order is wrong, and that some of the characters that seem to represent order could be said to represent chaos:

"The man just loves chaos."

Said Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), quoted in "GOP tensions explode after McCarthy bows out of speaker race" (Axios).

"The man" = Matt Gaetz.

So much depends on hating chaos. What are chaos-haters to do in the presence of someone who doesn't put the fear of chaos first?

"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).

Matt Gaetz lambastes McCarthy: "Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role."

Text:

"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).

"And the pool view of the Congress is antiquated and a little boomer-fied."

I'm reading "Gaetz introduces amendment to bring C-SPAN cameras back to House floor" (Fox News).

"I've received a lot of feedback from constituents about how interesting it was [during the Speaker voting], and that you were able to see in real time how our government is functioning, what alliances are being created, what discussions are being had, what animated moments drive the action," Gaetz told Fox News Digital in an interview. "And the pool view of the Congress is antiquated and a little boomer-fied."

"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).

"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.

The stunning ignorance of Matt Gaetz — smugly palming off completely sexist bad comedy. Does he think he's Andrew Dice Clay... in the 80s?

Gaetz: "Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb." pic.twitter.com/0qqvun3Pf8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2022

At least "look like a thumb" is an original image. But he's using a very old idea about feminists: They're the women who are so unattractive that they can't succeed in the traditional feminine way, which is by partnering with a man. And it's creepy to use the words "Nobody wants to impregnate you" when the format of your humor suggests that you're trying to say "Nobody wants to fuck you."

"How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?"

Straight-out misogyny from Matt Gaetz: 

 

Gaetz is himself a millennial — he's 39 — so what can account for his creepy nastiness? Was he under-educated, over-loved, and excessively catered-to by his happy wife Ginger Luckey, and too easily accepted on that Seeking Arrangements website? I don't know. I'm just trying to keep up with his free-wheeling, hilarious approach to the psychoanalysis of people he loathes.