After 11 votes, there is still no Speaker of the House. Which has never happened in American history. No speaker, house cannot legislate. No government.
My mind automatically draws parallels to the Gracchi brothers who tried to reform Ancient Rome and were beaten to death in the Senate floor.
Had the candidate currently failing not made a joke in very poor taste about battering Pelosi with the speaker's gavel, I suspect there might be a little less popcorn and a little more defringing action.
Entirely believable. The political culture in question supports write in candidates and it's happened before that people make facetious, and fawning proposals on the record. This one has even been proposed as a political framing of how to undo Tramps moral and legal hazard, as if a functional role in a parliamentary chamber is a tool to avoid legal risk.
It seems a lot of the people here think this is a bad or embarrassing situation, I would rather see this drama than everything seems to be converging quickly for the “party”’s image.
If you like fast convergence, go to China or North Korea , your request will be guaranteed.
Why do people always reach to reductionism? As if there aren't great democracies which elect a neutral speaker, and do a significantly better job than this.
I don't like how a notionally neutral role has been distorted into a political weapon. Historically within modern history the UK parliament has had independent and functional speakers and deputy speakers. Lord Thomas of Tonypandy and Betty Boothroyd come to mind. John Berkow rather let the side down with some facetious behaviour in the chamber and bullying accusations but overall, a neutral arbiter between opposing sides chosen from amongst them is possible.
Fast convergence is not inherently a problem. What's a problem here is not the speaker election, it's the underlying dynamics of destroy-the-joint performative dimwits and serial liars. You know this as well as everyone else.
The whole point of a party is that it's a set of people who have already set aside most of their differences in pursuit of a common set of goals. You resolve general issues among yourselves, then present a more-or-less unified front in public. If you can't do that, you can't do any of the genuinely hard negotiations to achieve your own priorities.
If the majority of the party is willing to tolerate this guy, then anybody going against him breaks the party trust that they need to get anything done. It bodes badly for the rest of the session.
For a lot of the dissenters, that's OK. This has long been the anti-government party, and it's not surprising that a fraction of it are happy to have no sitting legislature at all. It's actually a bit surprising this hasn't happened before.
So this isn't really about "fast convergence". This is about not even getting to the "convergence" step. (Oh, and you'd be surprised at how much complexity and delay there is in the Chinese Communist Party. It does have an absolute leader at the top, but unlike North Korea, it is a functioning government with a lot of internal competition at all of the lower levels.)
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 44.7 ms ] threadMy mind automatically draws parallels to the Gracchi brothers who tried to reform Ancient Rome and were beaten to death in the Senate floor.
If you like fast convergence, go to China or North Korea , your request will be guaranteed.
I don't like how a notionally neutral role has been distorted into a political weapon. Historically within modern history the UK parliament has had independent and functional speakers and deputy speakers. Lord Thomas of Tonypandy and Betty Boothroyd come to mind. John Berkow rather let the side down with some facetious behaviour in the chamber and bullying accusations but overall, a neutral arbiter between opposing sides chosen from amongst them is possible.
Fast convergence is not inherently a problem. What's a problem here is not the speaker election, it's the underlying dynamics of destroy-the-joint performative dimwits and serial liars. You know this as well as everyone else.
If the majority of the party is willing to tolerate this guy, then anybody going against him breaks the party trust that they need to get anything done. It bodes badly for the rest of the session.
For a lot of the dissenters, that's OK. This has long been the anti-government party, and it's not surprising that a fraction of it are happy to have no sitting legislature at all. It's actually a bit surprising this hasn't happened before.
So this isn't really about "fast convergence". This is about not even getting to the "convergence" step. (Oh, and you'd be surprised at how much complexity and delay there is in the Chinese Communist Party. It does have an absolute leader at the top, but unlike North Korea, it is a functioning government with a lot of internal competition at all of the lower levels.)