willdelve4beer
Well-known member
So, I've been watching the speaker of the house shenanigans in DC with bewilderment and amusement, like many of the few Americans who bother following off-season politics. What seems apparent to me, is that the GOP is in the process of fracturing.
Now, arguably this has been made possible by the rise of online media, PACs, and direct to politician mass funding, but I don't think those factors are causative, so much as enabling politicians and their supporters to indulge in pre-existing inclinations. What I mean here is that before the current environment, anyone wanting to influence the federal government or pursue a career in federal politics, had limited avenues to do so. Support from current politicians and existing interest groups was essential to either secure the visibility to win elections, or leverage those who did to advance/protect one's interests. The internet, especially viral social media, changed the visibility equation drasticly. This in turn changed the financial calculations of politicians. As long as they could be provocative enough to stay in the spotlight, they could secure constant streams of donations from politically active seniors (wealthy and middle class) with time on their hands and money to burn. Interest groups, meanwhile, could bend the ears of federal bureacrats directly, skipping the tedious (and more expensive) process of securing congressional support. So the factors stopping congresscritters from political entrepreurialism, as it were, fell. That meant they could go bonkers. But does not explain why they wanted to. Here is my thought experiment as an attempt to do so, as least for the Republicans.
Short history lesson (biased, skewed, etc, no doubt) - Pre 1950s/60s the Republicans were the party of Northern & Midwestern business interests, blacks, and great plains small town business owners and farmers where possible. Democrats were the party of the south, northern labor/ "ethnics", and ivy league academics who would prefer to call themselves socialist or communist but feared carreer impacts.
During the 60s and 70s several things changed, what emerged from that time was a Republican party leadership and core that combined several distinct but temporarily aligned groups/interests. Main street small business owners/Libertarians, Big business capitalists, Anti-communist patriots, Evangelicals, Southern identitarians, and (as time went on) conservative Catholics, all ended up under the GOP tent. BLacks largely left the Republicans during this time, hitching their fortunes to Lyndon Johnson's expanded welfare state. That would go poorly for them, but wonderfully for the Democrats.
This is the coalition that brought Reagan and both Bushes to power. However, during the Clinton interregnum between Bush 1 and Bush 2, the world changed notably, though the party, like most institutions, was slow to keep up. The main street small business owners/libertarians and Evangelicals temporarily allied in the form of first the Perot movement, then the Tea Party. In both cases the rather orderly expression of distaste for the ever-growing federal bureaucracy was motivate less by philosophical objections and more by some practical considerations - government had consistently proven itself to be corrupt, incompetent, expensive, aloof, and misguided. These were problems that were perceived to be worsening, despite any steps taken to address them. At the same time, the evangelicals, southern identitarians, and conservative catholics had found each other, and a greater sense of confidence from an awareness of their numbers, first through radio talk shows, later through online means and eventually corporate media brands such as Fox.
While this was happening, the academic left had solidified its control of first academia, then media, and finally (most importantly) big business. It did so, in no small part, by abandoning large portions of the earlier redistributionist ideology, and substituted in (at least temporarily) the caste-based social model commonly referred to as Woke (aka DEI, intersectionality, decolonization, and identity politics). The result was to enable to wealthy to justify their station and privileges with performative acts of scripted 'rebeliousness' which serve primarily to keep the lower classes agitated against the middle class, whilst leaving the wealthy untouched. That such a model also enables censorship of their lessers and restricts the otherwise disrupting rise of new centers of wealth and power is a strong factor generating support for the ideological model.
The Obama years primary impact was to take this elite ideological model from academic circles enforce it first upon the federal bureacuracy, and then upon big businesses through the influence of the now-ideologically saturated federal bureaucracy.
The split of the big business wing of the Republican party became more and more pronounced during this timeframe, as the interests of big business and Democrats were brought into alignment through federal pressure. "Personnel is culture is policy" drove this transformation, primarily through the motivated offices of the HR departments of corporate America.
Meanwhile, the small business / tea party wing of the party (often mistakenly conflated with the 'moderate' or big business wing of the party), became increasingly frustrated as, despite /them/ providing the Republicans control of most states, and more influence in DC than the GOP had enjoyed since 1920s, /their/ primary goals (reducing the size and scope of the government, reducing taxes, reducing the debt) were mostly ignored. Similarly the Evangelical/Orthodox 'social conservative' wing as increasingly frustrated as depite /them/ providing Republicans the keys to DC power, their concerns of halting abortion and pushing back against popular decadence in favor of traditional morality were discarded. So far as both groups could determine, the increasingly disloyal chamber of commerce wing and the national security wing (former anti-communists, current anti-islamic terrorism, part time drug warriors) who seemed to trade away social conservative and small business interests to secure their goals, whilst ignoring those who put them into power.
To understand the nature of Trump's rise to power, one must understand the sheer anger both of these groups directed at the 'RINO' big business and national security wings of the party. Both groups had, to their perception, played by all the rules, won elections, and achieved precisely nothing for their troubles (not saying those perceptions were correct, but that they existed). They were at their wits end, and fully ready to, effectively speaking, secede from modern America- setting up their own schools, security arrangements, and communities away from federal interference. Of course, after Ruby Ridge and Waco, the assumption was that doing so would lead to federal kill teams masked as law enforcement actions, so that wasn't much of an option either. They were desperate for any way out of the predicament, and eager for a chance to throw the 'RINO' betrayals in the faces of the detested establishment.
Trump wasn't/isn't so much a political genious as a gasbag with a knack for marketing. As an outsider, and a lifelong NYC limousine liberal Democrat he knew all about playing various competing groups against each other, and about jumping ahead of an existing trend to claim the mantle of leadership. That he owes the success of his initial run less to his own gifts, or his core followers than to DNC/Media (I repeat myself) machinations to ensure his rise as the least electible opponent to HRC, is self-evident, and has been a font of remorseful 'confession' biographies from those involved in steering coverage his way in 2014-2016.
This then was the Republican party when Trump took office - four groups that had come to distrust, dislike, and often despise each other, one motivated by a desire to cut the leviathan down to size, hell or high water, one that wanted to use that leviathan to enforce a return to 1950's morality, one that viewed the leviathan's entire purpose as defending their idealized America from foreign threats, and one that was purely interested in maximizing the security of their wealth, and happy to entertain competing offers to that end. None of these groups were thrilled with Trump qua Trump, but three of them despised the Democratic policy package, and two of them despised pretty much the entireity of the existing DC establishment, a loathing that was and is openly and enthusasticly reciprocated. Trump was initially a means of both blocking the policy package, and of demonstrating their contempt for the establishment in an unmistakeable fashion.
What bears noting, for those wringing their hands over the J6 tomfoolery, was the reaction of both the DC establishment as a whole, and the Left in general to Trump's election. The unhinged rage and blatant attempts at what would 4 years later be characterized as sedition and insurrection were breath-taking. Neither Nixon, nor Reagan, nor either Bush had inspired such a lunatic reaction. The right saw this, and took notes. After watching the on-again off-again rioting and left-wing poltical violence since the 1930s, the concept of retaliation in kind was increasingly spreading from the fringes to the mainstream of the right.
Hilariously, for folks whose original political involvement was driven by a distrust of politicians and a disgust with generalized immorality, sizable portions of both groups came to fixate on Trump (a corrupt and decadent politician) as a faux-savior, who would somehow, single-handedly, defend them from all their left wing enemies (who, in all fairness, where quite open about both their hatred of the right and their idolization of totalitarianisms of various stripes). This, of course, they expected from a man who demonstrated, even with all the powers fo the presidency, no adeptness or capacity to defend even hiimself, nor any concern for much of anything beyond gratiating his own ego. Instead he fumbled and flailed through a four year long series of crises, real and manufactured, all with the message:
"Give us back control of DC, and things go back to normal. Refuse and we'll burn the country down."*
This was the message that elected Joe Biden.
Even so, as both that election and events afterwards have proven, a good 10-20% of the Republican base has chosen to fall under the sway of a narcissistic demogague. That isn't much in the scope of things (the Hamas-DEI-Alphabet soup wing of the Democratic party is more powerful, as it includes over 80% of their donor base by funds raised), but it was certainly enough to kick over the apple cart in Congress.
So now we have the doubly/triply disillusioned Republican party. At least 40% of both the base and the elected officials have been convinced that nothing they can do short of taking up arms en masse matters. Another 10-20% aren't so much involved to achieve ends as to either support Trump or stick it to the Dems (the two are, given Democratic emotional reactions, currently interchangeable). Their belief is that election laws will be changed on a whim to steal victories from them. Any victories they do achieve will be rendered meaningless by a combination of establishment court maneuvering and bureacratic sabotage. There is, in their view, no reforming DC, and nothing to be gained in trying to do so. The left threatened to burn it all down in riots, or lock it all down with their various invented 'emergencies'. The establishment clearly regards the constitution itself as ad copy or toilet paper, used as a 'gotcha' against the right, and utterly ignored otherwise. In this context, the actions of the various wings of the Republican party in the House make perfect sense.
1. The Big business wing wants government to continue trundling along, but would prefer taxes to be lowered (or loopholes restored, even better), and for the hostility of regulatory zealots to be directed elsewhere. A speaker who can work with Democrats is required for this.
2. The national security wing wants to restore American deterrence after Biden's Afghan surrender debacle, and to fund the Ukrainian and Israeli brushfires against the Chinese-Russian-NorthKorean-Iranian alliance. A speaker who can work with Democrats is required for this.
3. The small business wing want to shrink the government. As 1% automatic cuts will take place if no budget is passed, a speaker is not required at all, from their perspective. As any speaker would likely need to make deals with Democrats to achieve teh goals listed above, no speaker is better than any likely speaker.
4. The social conservative wing wants the government, at a minimum, to stop forcing them to fund decadence, immorality, and perversion, and to stop foisting it on their children. Those cuts mentione above? Also hit all those federal grants for DEI, alphabet nonsense, and the like. A speaker is not required to reduce that spending, and (given the narrow house margins) even a hard-line R speaker is unlikely to move the needle in their desired direction. Once gain, no speaker is better than any likely speaker.
5. The Trump wing wants to hobble the Biden administration any way it can, and to defend Trump to the extent feasible. A speaker would be useful for this, but only a Trump loyalist speaker. The problem for this bunch is that they have been so ham-handed in setting this situation off is that about the only thing the first two groups can agree on is keeping the Trump wing from benefiting from this whole mess. Effectively this makes this rump faction a 'no speaker is better than any likely speaker' vote.
TL: DR -> 40% - 60% of the Republican party and the Republican base are happy to settle for no speaker at all, rather than another one who will continue the current DC establishment mandated policies.
As such the two most likely outcomes to the current speaker issue are:
1. A deal wherein the speaker pro-tem is granted some or all of the powers of a full speaker until the next election as a result of a deal between the big business and national security wings of the Democractic and Republican parties.
2. Continued Republican failure to coalesce around a speaker, eventually leading to enough Big Business Republicans voting with Democrats to give the gavel to Jeffries until the next election. This results in the 'no speaker better' factions sitting out the next election, and Democrats sweeping Congress. Based on conversations with professionals from the other side of the spectrum, this is the result that large portions fo the Democratic party are eagerly maneuvering to bring about.
I give it even odds that some point in the next three elections the Republican party splits, with the current 'anything is better than the way things are going' portion hiving off, and if need be sinking the rest on their way out as a final 'fuck you' for the perceived betrayals.
*It was of course a 'Jedi truth', as the right perceived it. The right thought the 'normal' on offer was a return to the pre-Obama Bush1-Clinton status of mild corruption, only minor foreign entanglements, and a focus on growing the economy. What they got instead was Obama 2.0, twice the radicalism, and none of the charisma, charm, or growth.
**NB - I refer repeatedly in the above to beleifs and perceptions. Politics is not about what was, what is, or what will be, but about the various players perceptions and mental models. An objective and disinterested review of the last several decades would almost certainly lead the involved groups across the spectrum to different conclusions, but objective and disinterested are not words oft used to reference political matters, and for good reason.
Now, arguably this has been made possible by the rise of online media, PACs, and direct to politician mass funding, but I don't think those factors are causative, so much as enabling politicians and their supporters to indulge in pre-existing inclinations. What I mean here is that before the current environment, anyone wanting to influence the federal government or pursue a career in federal politics, had limited avenues to do so. Support from current politicians and existing interest groups was essential to either secure the visibility to win elections, or leverage those who did to advance/protect one's interests. The internet, especially viral social media, changed the visibility equation drasticly. This in turn changed the financial calculations of politicians. As long as they could be provocative enough to stay in the spotlight, they could secure constant streams of donations from politically active seniors (wealthy and middle class) with time on their hands and money to burn. Interest groups, meanwhile, could bend the ears of federal bureacrats directly, skipping the tedious (and more expensive) process of securing congressional support. So the factors stopping congresscritters from political entrepreurialism, as it were, fell. That meant they could go bonkers. But does not explain why they wanted to. Here is my thought experiment as an attempt to do so, as least for the Republicans.
Short history lesson (biased, skewed, etc, no doubt) - Pre 1950s/60s the Republicans were the party of Northern & Midwestern business interests, blacks, and great plains small town business owners and farmers where possible. Democrats were the party of the south, northern labor/ "ethnics", and ivy league academics who would prefer to call themselves socialist or communist but feared carreer impacts.
During the 60s and 70s several things changed, what emerged from that time was a Republican party leadership and core that combined several distinct but temporarily aligned groups/interests. Main street small business owners/Libertarians, Big business capitalists, Anti-communist patriots, Evangelicals, Southern identitarians, and (as time went on) conservative Catholics, all ended up under the GOP tent. BLacks largely left the Republicans during this time, hitching their fortunes to Lyndon Johnson's expanded welfare state. That would go poorly for them, but wonderfully for the Democrats.
This is the coalition that brought Reagan and both Bushes to power. However, during the Clinton interregnum between Bush 1 and Bush 2, the world changed notably, though the party, like most institutions, was slow to keep up. The main street small business owners/libertarians and Evangelicals temporarily allied in the form of first the Perot movement, then the Tea Party. In both cases the rather orderly expression of distaste for the ever-growing federal bureaucracy was motivate less by philosophical objections and more by some practical considerations - government had consistently proven itself to be corrupt, incompetent, expensive, aloof, and misguided. These were problems that were perceived to be worsening, despite any steps taken to address them. At the same time, the evangelicals, southern identitarians, and conservative catholics had found each other, and a greater sense of confidence from an awareness of their numbers, first through radio talk shows, later through online means and eventually corporate media brands such as Fox.
While this was happening, the academic left had solidified its control of first academia, then media, and finally (most importantly) big business. It did so, in no small part, by abandoning large portions of the earlier redistributionist ideology, and substituted in (at least temporarily) the caste-based social model commonly referred to as Woke (aka DEI, intersectionality, decolonization, and identity politics). The result was to enable to wealthy to justify their station and privileges with performative acts of scripted 'rebeliousness' which serve primarily to keep the lower classes agitated against the middle class, whilst leaving the wealthy untouched. That such a model also enables censorship of their lessers and restricts the otherwise disrupting rise of new centers of wealth and power is a strong factor generating support for the ideological model.
The Obama years primary impact was to take this elite ideological model from academic circles enforce it first upon the federal bureacuracy, and then upon big businesses through the influence of the now-ideologically saturated federal bureaucracy.
The split of the big business wing of the Republican party became more and more pronounced during this timeframe, as the interests of big business and Democrats were brought into alignment through federal pressure. "Personnel is culture is policy" drove this transformation, primarily through the motivated offices of the HR departments of corporate America.
Meanwhile, the small business / tea party wing of the party (often mistakenly conflated with the 'moderate' or big business wing of the party), became increasingly frustrated as, despite /them/ providing the Republicans control of most states, and more influence in DC than the GOP had enjoyed since 1920s, /their/ primary goals (reducing the size and scope of the government, reducing taxes, reducing the debt) were mostly ignored. Similarly the Evangelical/Orthodox 'social conservative' wing as increasingly frustrated as depite /them/ providing Republicans the keys to DC power, their concerns of halting abortion and pushing back against popular decadence in favor of traditional morality were discarded. So far as both groups could determine, the increasingly disloyal chamber of commerce wing and the national security wing (former anti-communists, current anti-islamic terrorism, part time drug warriors) who seemed to trade away social conservative and small business interests to secure their goals, whilst ignoring those who put them into power.
To understand the nature of Trump's rise to power, one must understand the sheer anger both of these groups directed at the 'RINO' big business and national security wings of the party. Both groups had, to their perception, played by all the rules, won elections, and achieved precisely nothing for their troubles (not saying those perceptions were correct, but that they existed). They were at their wits end, and fully ready to, effectively speaking, secede from modern America- setting up their own schools, security arrangements, and communities away from federal interference. Of course, after Ruby Ridge and Waco, the assumption was that doing so would lead to federal kill teams masked as law enforcement actions, so that wasn't much of an option either. They were desperate for any way out of the predicament, and eager for a chance to throw the 'RINO' betrayals in the faces of the detested establishment.
Trump wasn't/isn't so much a political genious as a gasbag with a knack for marketing. As an outsider, and a lifelong NYC limousine liberal Democrat he knew all about playing various competing groups against each other, and about jumping ahead of an existing trend to claim the mantle of leadership. That he owes the success of his initial run less to his own gifts, or his core followers than to DNC/Media (I repeat myself) machinations to ensure his rise as the least electible opponent to HRC, is self-evident, and has been a font of remorseful 'confession' biographies from those involved in steering coverage his way in 2014-2016.
This then was the Republican party when Trump took office - four groups that had come to distrust, dislike, and often despise each other, one motivated by a desire to cut the leviathan down to size, hell or high water, one that wanted to use that leviathan to enforce a return to 1950's morality, one that viewed the leviathan's entire purpose as defending their idealized America from foreign threats, and one that was purely interested in maximizing the security of their wealth, and happy to entertain competing offers to that end. None of these groups were thrilled with Trump qua Trump, but three of them despised the Democratic policy package, and two of them despised pretty much the entireity of the existing DC establishment, a loathing that was and is openly and enthusasticly reciprocated. Trump was initially a means of both blocking the policy package, and of demonstrating their contempt for the establishment in an unmistakeable fashion.
What bears noting, for those wringing their hands over the J6 tomfoolery, was the reaction of both the DC establishment as a whole, and the Left in general to Trump's election. The unhinged rage and blatant attempts at what would 4 years later be characterized as sedition and insurrection were breath-taking. Neither Nixon, nor Reagan, nor either Bush had inspired such a lunatic reaction. The right saw this, and took notes. After watching the on-again off-again rioting and left-wing poltical violence since the 1930s, the concept of retaliation in kind was increasingly spreading from the fringes to the mainstream of the right.
Hilariously, for folks whose original political involvement was driven by a distrust of politicians and a disgust with generalized immorality, sizable portions of both groups came to fixate on Trump (a corrupt and decadent politician) as a faux-savior, who would somehow, single-handedly, defend them from all their left wing enemies (who, in all fairness, where quite open about both their hatred of the right and their idolization of totalitarianisms of various stripes). This, of course, they expected from a man who demonstrated, even with all the powers fo the presidency, no adeptness or capacity to defend even hiimself, nor any concern for much of anything beyond gratiating his own ego. Instead he fumbled and flailed through a four year long series of crises, real and manufactured, all with the message:
"Give us back control of DC, and things go back to normal. Refuse and we'll burn the country down."*
This was the message that elected Joe Biden.
Even so, as both that election and events afterwards have proven, a good 10-20% of the Republican base has chosen to fall under the sway of a narcissistic demogague. That isn't much in the scope of things (the Hamas-DEI-Alphabet soup wing of the Democratic party is more powerful, as it includes over 80% of their donor base by funds raised), but it was certainly enough to kick over the apple cart in Congress.
So now we have the doubly/triply disillusioned Republican party. At least 40% of both the base and the elected officials have been convinced that nothing they can do short of taking up arms en masse matters. Another 10-20% aren't so much involved to achieve ends as to either support Trump or stick it to the Dems (the two are, given Democratic emotional reactions, currently interchangeable). Their belief is that election laws will be changed on a whim to steal victories from them. Any victories they do achieve will be rendered meaningless by a combination of establishment court maneuvering and bureacratic sabotage. There is, in their view, no reforming DC, and nothing to be gained in trying to do so. The left threatened to burn it all down in riots, or lock it all down with their various invented 'emergencies'. The establishment clearly regards the constitution itself as ad copy or toilet paper, used as a 'gotcha' against the right, and utterly ignored otherwise. In this context, the actions of the various wings of the Republican party in the House make perfect sense.
1. The Big business wing wants government to continue trundling along, but would prefer taxes to be lowered (or loopholes restored, even better), and for the hostility of regulatory zealots to be directed elsewhere. A speaker who can work with Democrats is required for this.
2. The national security wing wants to restore American deterrence after Biden's Afghan surrender debacle, and to fund the Ukrainian and Israeli brushfires against the Chinese-Russian-NorthKorean-Iranian alliance. A speaker who can work with Democrats is required for this.
3. The small business wing want to shrink the government. As 1% automatic cuts will take place if no budget is passed, a speaker is not required at all, from their perspective. As any speaker would likely need to make deals with Democrats to achieve teh goals listed above, no speaker is better than any likely speaker.
4. The social conservative wing wants the government, at a minimum, to stop forcing them to fund decadence, immorality, and perversion, and to stop foisting it on their children. Those cuts mentione above? Also hit all those federal grants for DEI, alphabet nonsense, and the like. A speaker is not required to reduce that spending, and (given the narrow house margins) even a hard-line R speaker is unlikely to move the needle in their desired direction. Once gain, no speaker is better than any likely speaker.
5. The Trump wing wants to hobble the Biden administration any way it can, and to defend Trump to the extent feasible. A speaker would be useful for this, but only a Trump loyalist speaker. The problem for this bunch is that they have been so ham-handed in setting this situation off is that about the only thing the first two groups can agree on is keeping the Trump wing from benefiting from this whole mess. Effectively this makes this rump faction a 'no speaker is better than any likely speaker' vote.
TL: DR -> 40% - 60% of the Republican party and the Republican base are happy to settle for no speaker at all, rather than another one who will continue the current DC establishment mandated policies.
As such the two most likely outcomes to the current speaker issue are:
1. A deal wherein the speaker pro-tem is granted some or all of the powers of a full speaker until the next election as a result of a deal between the big business and national security wings of the Democractic and Republican parties.
2. Continued Republican failure to coalesce around a speaker, eventually leading to enough Big Business Republicans voting with Democrats to give the gavel to Jeffries until the next election. This results in the 'no speaker better' factions sitting out the next election, and Democrats sweeping Congress. Based on conversations with professionals from the other side of the spectrum, this is the result that large portions fo the Democratic party are eagerly maneuvering to bring about.
I give it even odds that some point in the next three elections the Republican party splits, with the current 'anything is better than the way things are going' portion hiving off, and if need be sinking the rest on their way out as a final 'fuck you' for the perceived betrayals.
*It was of course a 'Jedi truth', as the right perceived it. The right thought the 'normal' on offer was a return to the pre-Obama Bush1-Clinton status of mild corruption, only minor foreign entanglements, and a focus on growing the economy. What they got instead was Obama 2.0, twice the radicalism, and none of the charisma, charm, or growth.
**NB - I refer repeatedly in the above to beleifs and perceptions. Politics is not about what was, what is, or what will be, but about the various players perceptions and mental models. An objective and disinterested review of the last several decades would almost certainly lead the involved groups across the spectrum to different conclusions, but objective and disinterested are not words oft used to reference political matters, and for good reason.
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