How do you fix a broken political party?

There is widespread acceptance outside the MAGA cult that the Republican party has ceased to be a political party in any accepted sense. Even within the MAGA movement, there are those who have contempt for the Republican party, seeing it as part of the establishment that is not fully accepting of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT). The rot did not begin with SSAT’s takeover of the party, though. The rot started earlier, and John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin has his running mate in 2008, and the way she was embraced by so many, was the first serious sign that it had ceased to be a serious party. But the surest indication that a political party has gone seriously off the rails is when a demagogue with no serious policy agenda but instead spouts a series of grievances is seen as a savior and becomes its unquestioned leader, leaving it as just a hollow shell. The brutal ouster on Kevin McCarthy as speaker, someone who tried to have it both ways as a establishment figure as well as a MAGA cult member, was seen as the stripping away of final veneer of any political credibility.

Politico had an interesting roundup of opinions from academics and journalists about how it went so horribly wrong for the Republican party and what needs to be done to make it into a party again. I picked out just a few of the many contributions and the gist of the things they said.
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What next in Israel and Gaza?

Like pretty much everyone else, I was taken by surprise at the sudden assault launched from Gaza by Hamas forces into Israel. The sheer scale of the attacks, coming from land, sea, and air, was shocking given that Gaza has been described as ‘the world’s largest open-air prison’, with Israel controlling pretty much every aspect of life there, including entrance and exit from the territory. And yet, there it was, and Hamas even managed to capture Israeli soldiers and tanks and civilians to hold as hostages.

While before Hamas was able to periodically launch small-scale attacks, the idea that they could do this on such a large scale and take Israel completely by surprise has caused consternation within Israeli political and military circles as to how there could have been such a failure of intelligence, given that it was believed that the highly-thought-of Israeli intelligence services had deeply infiltrated Hamas and Gaza society and thus should have had at least some inkling of these plans, since there were thousands of Hamas fighters involved.
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Cartoons that explain McCarthy’s downfall

Choices have consequences.

Incidentally, it appears that it was McCarthy who ordered the immediate eviction of Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer from their courtesy offices on the very day of his ouster. This kind of pettiness is not going to help the GOP when the time comes from them to seek help from Democrats to get them out of messes of their own making, as McCarthy found out, when after repeatedly going along with the Trumpian demonization of Democrats, he expected them to throw him a life-preserver when his own job was on the line.

Did Trump want a jury or not?

This last week saw serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) spend three days in a Manhattan courthouse for the fraud trial brought against him by New York attorney general Letitia James. Since this is a civil case, his presence is not required so I was not sure why he attended instead of playing golf. It may be that since this case deals with his money and properties and where he risks losing much or all of it, the very things that are so dear to is heart, he felt obliged to pay close attention to what was said, though since he has the attention span of a goldfish, it is not clear how much of the proceedings he absorbed.

During the breaks in the court hearings, he would come out and rant to the media about the usual things, that he is being treated so unfairly. But he also complained that he would rather have been in Iowa campaigning and implied that he could not because he had to be in court. This is obviously not true and his lawyers must have told him that so he was clearly lying, though as with so many of his lies, it is hard to see what purpose the lies serve other than give him one more thing to complain about.
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The GOP internal fight is going to be nasty

We have seen how the GOP has taken revenge on Democrats by various petty acts because of their preposterous belief that the Democrats should have bailed McCarthy out as ‘gratitude’ for bringing the debt ceiling and continuing resolution (CR) to the floor for a vote, even though Kevin McCarthy bad-mouthed the Democrats even after they voted for the CR, and had refused to acknowledge their major role in passing it.

But the minority party in the House is already powerless and there is little other than petty things that can be done to them. But the more significant acts of revenge can be done on the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, such as congresswoman Nancy Mace.

Elsewhere in the GOP, revenge is on the menu. House Republicans are now weighing whether to expel Mace from at least two centrist-leaning groups she belonged to, as POLITICO first reported. Her staff was quickly removed from several internal GOP communications channels shortly after her vote Tuesday.
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After whipsawing between distance from and embrace of former President Donald Trump, for example, she recently opened the door to backing his primary campaign. Within the Capitol, she’s known as an outspoken critic of party leadership and a frequent guest on cable news shows.

“I’m not sure what the fallout will be. She has no coalition of support,” said one House GOP lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party dynamics.

“I can’t stop her from going on the Sunday shows,” this lawmaker added. “But inside the conference, she is a running joke.”

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McCarthy has only himself to blame for his woes

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Kevin McCarthy loyalists are seething with anger over his ouster from the position of speaker. It would be understandable that they would be angry with Matt Gaetz and the seven other Republican congresspeople who voted for him to go. But they seem to be even more angry with Democrats for not voting to keep him in his position, acting as if it were an unprecedented betrayal, even though it has always been the case that it was up to the majority party to vote in and keep the speaker and that the minority party always voted against.

At his press conference, McCarthy blamed the Democrats for what happened but Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was having none of it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) railed against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calf.) for blaming Democrats for being ousted from his leadership role in a historic vote. 

“Does anyone believe for one minute that McCarthy would help elect a Dem speaker ‘for the institution’?” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “McCarthy’s hubris is a theme. He loudly stated he wouldn’t negotiate [with] Dems, called virtually none, trashed those who helped w/ [a continuing resolution], and then expected Dem votes for free?”

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McCarthy loyalist Republicans lash out

After the drama over Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speaker, the House has adjourned and will meet next Tuesday where the Republicans will meet for a candidate forum and begin voting for the next speaker on Wednesday. This Republican debacle is going to have ripple effects for some time. As is often the case after a humiliating experience like this, the people who come out of it looking bad try to pin the blame on others for their own mistakes and faults. In this case, the reason for the chaos is that the Republican party has ceased to be a party in the traditional sense but is now dominated by angry, unprincipled, attention-craving egomaniacs who have sworn their allegiance to an increasingly deranged cult leader.

For example, we have McCarthy blaming Democrats and former speaker Nancy Pelosi for his downfall, saying that they should have supported him “for institutional reasons”.

McCarthy blamed Democrats for his ouster as speaker — arguing that they should have supported his remaining in the top role for institutional reasons.

McCarthy said he had a discussion with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the days he was trying to wrangle enough votes to get elected speaker. McCarthy claimed that Pelosi promised to support him if he faced a challenge.

McCarthy then argued that by joining Gaetz and other Republicans, Democrats picked politics over the institution.

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McCarthy ousted as Speaker. Now what?

I watched C-Span today as the House of Representatives voted twice on the issue of whether Kevin McCarthy should retain his job as speaker. The House is currently split 221-212 (with two seats vacant) so if everyone is present, a majority will consist of 217 votes. Since Republicans have just 221 votes, McCarthy could not prevail if more than four Republicans defected, unless Democrats voted in favor or simply voted ‘present’.

The process was triggered by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz filing a motion to vacate. The first vote was on a resolution by McCarthy supporters to table Gaetz’s motion. If it passed, that meant that McCarthy’s job was saved. It lost by a vote of 218-208, with 11 Republicans joining with Democrats to defeat it. The next vote was on Gaetz’s motion to vacate and that carried by 216-210. The Democrats presented a solid front and, apart from some absences, they all voted against McCarthy on both issues. There had been some reports that McCarthy allies had been begging some Democrats to vote their way but clearly that effort failed.

Three of the Republicans who voted with Gaetz on the effort to table the motion, switched their votes on the second vote and voted to keep McCarthy as speaker. Their reasons were not clear, other than perhaps they just wanted a clean vote on the issue rather than a procedural maneuver.
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Shutdown averted – for now. What next?

Although there was a sigh of relief that there was no government shutdown as of midnight Saturday due to a deal that would fund the government for another 45 days through the means of a continuing resolution (CR), that just means that November 17 is the next deadline for this never-ending drama. In principle, the delay is meant to give time for the Congress to decide on the 12 appropriations bills that should have been passed by September 30th. But in reality, from now on we are going to have the drama of whether Kevin McCarthy will continue to be speaker. He was forced to choose between a government shutdown and angering the party extremists and he chose the latter by making a deal with the Democrats.

Under the rules that McCarthy negotiated with the extremists in the Republican caucus, any single member can bring up a ‘motion to vacate’ and Florida congressman Matt Gaetz has already announced that he will do so this coming week.

So what will happen next?
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Prisoner’s Dilemma situation in Georgia

One of the 19 people charged in the Georgia election interference case has pleaded guilty.

Former Republican bail bondsman Scott Hall, one of the 19 people charged alongside Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Friday, becoming the first defendant to plead guilty in the sprawling criminal case.

A live video of the court proceeding showed Hall pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, a misdemeanor charge.

Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state.

This is a relatively light sentence and there are two possible reasons for that. One is that he is a minor figure in the whole operation. The other is that he has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in return for more lenient treatment. His testimony is thought likely to cause the most harm to Sydney Powell, whose trial is due to start on October 27.

So we now have a real-life, enlarged version of the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. In that problem, two prisoners have to make a decision. If they stick together and do not cooperate with the prosecutors, they increase their chances of escaping punishment altogether by being found not guilty. But if they are found guilty, they will get stiff sentences. On the other hand, if one prisoner cooperates with the prosecutors and betrays the other prisoner, that prisoner can get a light sentence, while the other prisoner gets a heavy sentence.

In this case, because of the large number of defendants, all the other defendants now have to start making more complex calculations. The earlier they plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors, the more likely they are to get light sentences as part of a plea deal. As time goes by, the information that any individual can provide gets less valuable because prosecutors would have got most of what they need from the ones who made deals earlier. So each person has to guess whether their co-defendants will cooperate with the other defendants by staying silent and risking stiff sentences if found guilty or betray them by spilling the beans to prosecutors in return for a lighter sentence.