Tag: Rep. Matt Gaetz

  • Uncharted Water – Speaker of the House

    Uncharted Water – Speaker of the House

    Opinion: This thread will be somewhat long and certainly, the events of the last twenty-four hours with the removal of Kevin McCarthy, as Speaker of the House; leave us all saying “what’s next”? Arguably, there doesn’t appear to be a Plan B. However, even historically when provided with clear direction and empowered with the ability to do so; the Republicans fail to deliver. Time to listen to the American people DC?

    From: The Conservative Tree House

    Kevin McCarthy Tells Republican Caucus He Will Not Seek Speakership Again – Here’s My Thoughts

    According to multiple DC media sources, a quiet effort is underway by members of the professionally republican mindset to kick Matt Gaetz out of the House Republican caucus.  However, the advocates worry they will be primaried by voters in their district, as the population of Republican voters supports Gaetz.  It is a duplicitous dynamic.

    Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy has told his Republican conference that despite prior statements, he will not attempt to become the House Speaker again and will instead retire to his home district in California.

    No one is quite sure what comes next; what is clear is that Gaetz has channeled the frustration of the Republican/MAGA base into an actionable result.  This should not come as a surprise to the GOPe, although many of the cloistered clan continue pretending not to understand the dynamic at play.

    Allow me to provide some simple clarity.

    ♦ In 2009 72% of the country, and an even larger percentage of the Republican voters, did not want Obamacare.  The govt takeover of healthcare was along purely ideological grounds.  For the 2010 midterm election, the professional Republican apparatus campaigned on this single issue – repeal Obamacare.  The voters destroyed the Democrats and flipped 67 seats to Republican control.  The professional Republicans wanted the House, frustrated American voters gave it to them.

    The Republicans did nothing.

    ♦ In 2012, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and asked to begin a process of taking down the Democrat control of the Senate. Remember, it was a 60/40 Senate when the Obamacare boondoggle was begun.  Keep the House, help us take Senate seats, and we will repeal Obamacare and balance the budget.  That was the call of the 2012 professional Republicans.  The voters delivered.  The GOPe kept the house, took 6 seats in the Senate and introduced a wave of fresh Republican blood.

    The Republicans did nothing.

    ♦ In the 2014 midterm election, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and now flipping the Senate with more GOP seats.  Keep the House, give us the Senate majority, and we will repeal Obamacare and deliver a balanced budget.  The voters again delivered.  Beginning in January 2015, the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate majorities for Obama’s last two years.

    The Republicans did nothing.

    Worse still, even with professional Republican control of both chambers of congress, President Obama never had to use his veto pen.

    ♦ In the 2016 election, after the professional Republicans could no longer stop/block candidate Donald Trump, they said if we get the White House, retain the House and retain the Senate, we will repeal Obamacare, return to regular budgetary order, and balance the budget.   Stunningly, against all the odds, the voters yet again delivered.  President Trump won the election; Republicans now held the White House, the House and the Senate – as requested.

    The Republicans did nothing.

    Worse still, the professional Republicans acted as if they were the dog that just caught the car.  Now they had no excuses, and as a result there was an exodus of retirements announced from the caucus of the professionally Republican to begin in 2018.

    Simultaneously, the professional Republicans passively allowed the targeting of Donald Trump by a fully weaponized intelligence apparatus and justice system to commence.  To say the professionally Republican were willfully blind would be polite and generously honest.

    In the background the RNC did nothing.  The California ballot harvesting operation of 2018 reflected a complete lack of action by the RNC or CA GOP.  We all well remember how that operation expanded nationwide in 2020, again with the RNC doing nothing.

    This is the reality of what took place between the elections of 2010 and 2020.   Every ask of the professionally rRpublican apparatus was delivered by voters. Every ask of the voters in return was ignored.  Effective January 2021, Obamacare still exists, no budget was ever produced, the borders were unsecured, the economy tanked due to Biden policy, energy and printing presses.  Crises, along with insufferable government mandates, amplified and expanded from coast to coast.

    The Green New Deal was passed by Republicans and Democrats, and the collapse of the economy came with it.

    Clear enough?

    Suddenly, as if there was no background of repeated broken promises and a complete failure to deliver on any key request, Kevin McCarthy and his legion of professionally Republican supporters pretend they cannot fathom why the base voters are more than happy to support Matt Gaetz.

    WASHINGTON DC – Kevin McCarthy will not seek the speakership again, marking a devastating end to his time in GOP leadership.

    The California Republican informed his members behind closed doors Tuesday night that he will forsake another attempt to win the top job after his ouster on Tuesday, according to seven people familiar with the remarks.

    His announcement comes amid intense anger over his ouster by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven other GOP members, who voted with House Democrats to eject him earlier Tuesday. Most Republicans vocally opposed his eviction.

    McCarthy told his conference that he would return to California to spend time with his family. In his stead, the House will be run by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), his hand-picked choice as acting speaker. House Republicans have no plans to return to session until next week, scrapping their plans to try to pass party-line spending bills.

    The vacancy atop the House is sure to set off a scramble among ambitious Republicans — one that’s likely to get dirty and dragged-out, particularly if McCarthy’s deputies try to ascend. The GOP agrees that the most obvious choices are Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), all of whom had publicly backed McCarthy until he bowed out.

    “I might have been given a bad break, but I’m still the luckiest man alive,” McCarthy said, according to multiple people in the room when he revealed he would not, as he’d vowed, keep trying to stay speaker.

    […] Republicans are willing to admit one thing: No one knows what the coming days, or weeks, will bring. (read more)

    Battered Conservative no more!

    Source: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-tells-republican-caucus-he-will-not-seek-speakership-again-heres-my-thoughts/#more-251538

    From: RedState

    What’s Done Is Done, and Republicans Better Come Up With a Plan

    AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

    On Tuesday, for the first time in the nation’s history, a sitting Speaker of the House was ousted. That came after eight Republicans joined with the entirety of the present Democrat caucus to boot Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the post. 

    Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is certainly up for debate. On its face, it seems unlikely any consensus Speaker candidate will be markedly different from McCarthy. Rep. Steve Scalise is currently undergoing chemo treatments for an aggressive cancer, but he has indicated (at least according to reports) that he would accept the job. Does shifting the number two Republican and a close ally of McCarthy into the top spot really change anything? Probably not. 

    Source: https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/10/04/whats-done-is-done-and-republicans-better-come-up-with-a-plan-n2164660

    Nancy Pelosi Ordered to Vacate Her Office by New Acting Speaker, and the Tears Start Immediately

    AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

    Kevin McCarthy is out as Speaker of the House. What that means going forward for Republicans isn’t known yet, but there is some objectively good news that broke on Tuesday evening. 

    Following McCarthy’s ouster, acting Speaker Patrick McHenry ordered Nancy Pelosi to leave the special hideaway office she didn’t relinquish following her party’s defeat in the 2022 mid-terms. The email notifying Pelosi’s office of the order to get out got right to the point, noting that the office will be re-keyed if she doesn’t leave.

    As one of his first acts as the acting speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry ordered former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol hideaway office by Wednesday, according to an email sent to her office viewed by POLITICO.

    “Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed,” wrote a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee. The room was being reassigned by the acting speaker “for speaker office use,” the email said.

    McHenry is a close ally of McCarthy, and this is almost certainly well-deserved retaliation. According to McCarthy, as part of the passage of the recent 45-day clean continuing resolution, Pelosi had promised to not support Gaetz if a motion to vacate was filed. Instead, the former Democrat Speaker stabbed now former Republican Speaker in the back and actually encouraged her caucus not to save McCarthy. In the end, Democrats joined with a small group of Republicans to end McCarthy’s tenure.

    I suppose the lesson is to not make deals with Nancy Pelosi, but what’s done is done, and it’s good to see McHenry striking back. Naturally, Pelosi cried and moaned about the decision. 

    The former speaker blasted the eviction in a statement as “a sharp departure from tradition,” adding that she had given former Speaker Dennis Hastert “a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished” during her tenure.

    Oh, it was a “sharp departure from tradition?” So was ousting a sitting Speaker, but Pelosi had no problem helping make that happen. Democrats play for keeps, and the only way to respond to their ruthlessness is with ruthlessness.

    The band-aid was ripped off in a variety of ways with McCarthy’s ouster. Going forward, there should be no presumption that the opposition party won’t get involved in the majority’s fight over who will be Speaker. Pelosi wanted to cause chaos and chaos she should receive. That starts with making her staffers haul her big screen TV and the rest of her belongings out of her prestigious office.

    Source: https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/10/03/nancy-pelosi-ordered-out-of-her-office-by-new-acting-speaker-n2164656

    Who Will Be The New Speaker Of The House?

  • Maria Bartiromo Attempts Cleanup Saying, “Democracy Is Messy”

    Maria Bartiromo Attempts Cleanup Saying, “Democracy Is Messy”

    Maria Bartiromo Attempts Cleanup Saying, “Democracy Is Messy” – Matt Gaetz Has Hit a Nerve

    Yesterday, Maria Bartiromo was very visibly entrenched in her effort to defend House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the criticism of Representative Matt Gaetz.  During the combative interview, Ms. Bartiromo showed a transparent agenda to support the professionally Republican GOPe perspective.

    Today, following a considerable amount of backlash, and eyes-wide-open to the motives and intents of Bartiromo, she attempts cleanup by repeating the phrase, “democracy is messy” as a justification for her support of McCarthy Inc. The video of her effort today is below; however, before getting to that cleanup effort, let me just explain why Gaetz is majority correct on the bigger picture.

    The House Government Weaponization Committee is a complete sham – a ruse, a sound stage of actors and political performers who have no intention on actually exposing the government weaponization.   Gaetz focused on the failures of the House Oversight Committee (chaff and countermeasures committee) and gave examples of how they never subpoenaed Hunter Biden as one clear indicator of their intent. I have written about this extensively {GO DEEP}, and the Oversight committee’s lack of action is not even close to a surprise, regardless of whether McCarthy and Bartiromo want to keep pretending.

    The bigger let down is found in the lack of action by the Govt Weaponization Committee.  Let me explain how simple this is to see using an example I shared with former congressman Devin Nunes.   Sometimes litmus tests really are good for this purpose. The problem we have is accepting the reality of what they mean.

    Back in February 2019, around the time when Bill Barr came into the picture, everyone was excited about the potential for accountability. An honest investigation that would reveal and expose the corrupt nature of the DC system, so that a public would be aware, accountability would be metered, and a total restructuring of the corrupt systems could take place.  I was not one of those people.

    I accept the visibility of corruption through the prism of simple questions.  Everyone knew Robert Mueller was installed as a tool to cover up the preexisting corruption and simultaneously keep Trump under attack.  No one in Washington DC did not know this.  Everyone knew.  Despite that non-pretending admission and reality, not a single person ever said the Mueller probe was a farce.  Not a single congressional member ever dared say Robert Mueller was part of the corrupt system.

    Instead, every single DC participant, politician and Trump appointee, said Robert Mueller was an “honorable man.”  He wasn’t, and they all knew that.

    You cannot be an honorable man with the intent of delivering a corrupt and fraudulent outcome.  These two things are not compatible.  Yet, they all collectively pushed that bullshit opinion for two+ years, including Bill Barr.

    Once you understand the dynamic inside that simple and honest Robert Mueller litmus test, a litmus test this is still very valid to this day, then you realize the scale of the corruption we are talking about.  It’s either active, passive or willfully blind corruption; but regardless of variety it’s all still corruption.

    There seems to be a willful blindness on the part of the American people, a chosen refusal to acknowledge the implications of the unAmerican and unConstititional behaviors, actions and outcomes we are being served on a daily basis.

    It can no longer be presumed to be a matter of, “I can’t see what’s happening”, because a whole lot of normal Americans really are clean and articulate.

    I can’t see it”,  just doesn’t cut it.

    NONSENSE!  Most people can see it.  Most are just choosing to reconcile the irreconcilable, because it is more comforting to ignore the truth of it.  Just be honest.  For many people avoidance has become a survival mechanism.

    It’s more along the lines of, “I see what’s happening, but it’s scary and complicated and confusing, and if I admit that I see it, I will become responsible in a way that I am not if I keep pretending I can’t see it or hear it or maybe I don’t understand it.”

    Kevin McCarthy’s Lucy has unlimited footballs.

    Admit it or keep pretending.

    The choices are ours.

    Personally, I will not pretend.

    If we all stop pretending, eventually the DC house of cards collapses.

    So that sets the cornerstone.  Now, let’s move forward almost 4 years.  [DEEP BREATH]  Now we have the House Select Committee to Investigate the Weaponization of Government.  They’ve had some hearings on Twitter Files, they’ve had some hearings on other ancillary matters, but absolutely nothing has come from it.

    Before outlining the simple ‘how do I know this is futile’, the nerve that Matt Gaetz touches so necessarily, let me first be brutally honest.

    Jim Jordan is corrupt.

    Jordan is corrupt; not in a way of lying, cheating or stealing, but rather corrupt in the same familiar manner that generates all of the frustration we feel. Corrupt in the sense of satiating the masses while being disingenuous in the extreme of creating ZERO accountability.

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy uses Jim Jordan for exactly this institutional preservation purpose, and Jordan knows it…. and willingly goes along with it…. and willingly plays the role of “anger manager” on behalf of his leadership.

    The “how” is simple.  If the Govt Weaponization Committee was not futile, or created simply to satiate a mass of angry conservative/MAGA voters, they would be taking simple actions to expose the issues.

    SIMPLE ACTIONS – Like holding depositions and questioning people we know are Deep State actors who construct the weaponized processes.  Holding depositions to ask very simple and pragmatic questions of people like Mary McCord, John Carlin, ICIG Michael Atkinson, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Tashina Guahar, or any member of the Robert Mueller special counsel like Andrew Weissmann, Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zebly, Jeannie Rhee, etc.  Or Mark Elias, Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, or even former SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.

    The House Govt Weaponization committee could issue subpoenas to anyone and everyone who was a participant in all of the previously known corrupt endeavors, questioned them with very specific questions about all of the known activity that stemmed from within those corrupt practices…. and then simply PUBLISH THE TRANSCRIPTS.

    Imagine the newsworthy discussion, even if it was ignored by mainstream media, as a result of each deposition transcript being released every 48 hours providing a detailed and documented, under oath, attestation to the activity that took place and is still taking place.  Imagine the scale of sunlight that simple process would provide.  Imagine the tremors in DC as each participant showed up to deliver their statements under oath.

    This is not a complicated process, but they want us to pretend it is.

    When Matt Gaetz articulated the simple process of putting each appropriations bill on the floor for a funding vote, it too is not a complicated process.  However, the Kevin McCarthy’s, Jim Jordan’s and Maria Bartiromo’s would like us to pretend that it is.

    I do not know if Matt Gaetz is the worthy Ty Cobb of Republican politics or not, but I do know he is currently one of the only people that is not pretending.  That elevates him in my view.   Oh sure, he’ll probably acquiesce to the pressures and sell out just like the rest of them, but right now – in his best form – Matt Gaetz has dropped the pretense, and that has sent the machinery of the DC Republican system into fits of apoplexy.  Good.

    I’m at the point of frustration with this nonsense where apoplexy, anger and visible ‘losing their shit’ makes me smile.

    Once you see the strings on the marionettes, you can never return to that moment in the performance when you did not see them.

    Here’s Bartiromo trying to hide the strings…

    https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1706326452130505084?s=20

    Posted: September 25, 2023 https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/09/25/maria-bartiromo-attempts-cleanup-saying-democracy-is-messy-matt-gaetz-has-hit-a-nerve/#more-251201

    Narrative Combat: Maria Bartiromo -vs- Matt Gaetz

    It was only a matter of time before we see why Rupert Murdoch kept Council on Foreign Relations member Maria Bartiromo on staff.  Today Ms. Bartiromo showed her GOPe bona fides with a full-throated defense of Kevin McCarthy and the effort to fund government by continuing resolution.

    As the combative interview takes place, pay *CLOSE* attention to the glimpses of Ms. Bartiromo’s ¹phone that appear in her screen shot.  I will bet you a donut Kevin McCarthy was texting her in real time with instructions on what to say to Matt Gaetz.  WATCH:

    Posted: September 24, 2023 https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/09/24/narrative-combat-maria-bartiromo-vs-matt-gaetz/