Kevin McCarthy has been removed as House Speaker on a little-used technicality by fellow Republican Matt Gaetz on a personal-spite and attention-grabbing mission. Gaetz is so disliked within the GOP that even Newt Gingrich thinks he should be expelled. The short-sighted Democrats, gleeful about McCarthy’s downfall, hastened his exit by voting with Gaetz, ignoring the possibility they may end up with worse.
Gaetz, 7 May 1982 Hollywood, Florida, is a Sun Taurus with a self-aggrandising, arrogant yod of Venus sextile Mercury in Gemini inconjunct Jupiter in Scorpio; with Venus in an insensitive opposition to Mars in Libra. His Mars is catching the transiting Pluto trine in 2023/24 which will be blocked and frustrating. Alongside that, he does have a bullish tr Pluto square his Jupiter/Pluto so he won’t disappear down a foxhole without a fight. He’ll zip up in confidence and luck in 2025/26 with tr Pluto square his yod focal point Jupiter but that could bring poor judgement and self-defeating actions through his overwheening confidence. Self-doubt is not in his repertoire.
He certain dislikes McCarthy with a vengeance with their relationship chart having a composite Sun Mercury opposition Mars square Saturn which will bring extreme aggravation and hostility.
McCarthy, 26 January 1965 12.40 pm Bakersfield, CA, only emerged as Speaker after multiple rounds, so was never regarded by either side as inspiring. He is a Sun Aquarius with a Boris-Johnson-type scandal-prone Jupiter in Taurus opposition Neptune which is the driving rod of an Earth Grand Trine. Gaetz Taurus Sun is exactly conjunct his Jupiter and opposition his Neptune – bringing about his downfall.
What next? ‘It is not clear who in the House G.O.P. can earn the majority of votes needed to win a speaker’s race. Until someone can win 218 votes or more, the House will continue to hold elections in an ongoing speaker’s race. In the meantime, essentially all other action in the House will be halted.
One deadline is looming. The government will shut down in mid-November after the expiration of a temporary funding measure that Congress approved over the weekend. That’s unless Congress can pass all 12 of its yearlong spending bills or another stopgap funding bill — a tall task made even more challenging by the chaos of a speaker’s race.’
don’t vote for anyone House, senate White House over 65 ! see what happens.
I love Marjorie’s news site I learn a lot and enjoy reading all the different views. Politics brings out the best and worse in all of us. But you lot seem to be shouting at each other. Is this a foretaste of the October eclipses, I wonder. Breathe deeply and relax (just long enough not to pull the trigger). Best Wishes to you all.
An explanation of the dynamic between Dems and Republicans:
https://www.salon.com/2023/10/05/holy-entitlement-batman-are-furious-democrats-didnt-save-kevin-mccarthy-from-himself/
In looking at the US Chart, Pluto is now exact on what looks to be its final return at 27 degrees Capricorn. This is quite historic, coinciding with a lot of significant firsts in US politics. It is the first time in U.S. history that a speaker of the House has been voted out of office. And then, what can be said about a twice-impeached former president running for office? Under four criminal investigations including trying to overturn an election? And also the constant war over funding the government. Those are some big firsts.
Next week we will see Mars square that Pluto, putting even more pressure on a degree point that seems to be turning into a make or break moment for democracy in the US.
Just read this analysis talkingpointmemo.com and thought it was salient:
What’s This Mean For Democracy?
This isn’t normal. Not normal at all. Let me repeat …
“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” said Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University, told the WaPo. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”
This isn’t a violent assault on the rule of law. This is a different category of anti-democratic impulses, the same minority extortion tactics that we’ve seen from Republicans on the Hill since at least 2010.
Super damaging. No end in sight. It may seem like they’re mostly hurting themselves. They’re not.
“… many so-called Independents seem to be people who can’t deal with reality…”
Where is the astrological evidance in this allegation?
yet…it is your website, Marjorie.
The increase of independents (defined as people who will vote independant of party for the right person), could be do to Pluto’s influence, and lead to a new party out of the Replublicans dumpster fire. The last time i looked, there were 0 independants in the house, so independents had nothing to do with this. As I see it the comment was typical bubble think of the “democratic tribe” without consideration diffrences of opinion. Unforunately there are real issues why a grifter like trump came to power, and at the very least we need two viable parties. I do think Marjorie can spend her time working on new comments rather then be policeperson on some throwaway comment.
I agree that the we’re likely to end up with something worse than McCarthy. However, I wouldn’t necessarily use the word gleeful to describe how we Democrats feel about Kevin McCarthy. Our party was just sick and tired of habitually bailing him – he was unreliable and broke many of the promises me made. Also, McCarthy totally disrespected Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy by refusing to even meet with him when he visited the U.S. and he jumped onto the ridiculous sham impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden (which the Republicans have made complete fools of themselves for even opening that can of worms – their own witnesses and experts even admitted they see no evidence of impeachment).
In other words, the Democratic Party owes Kevin McCarthy absolutely nothing. Perhaps if McCarthy had played his cards right and was intelligent enough to know that siding with the minority far-right Freedom Caucasus wasn’t going to be advantageous for him (he needed to work with with the more center-right, classically conservative, and swing-district Republicans as well as the moderate and center-left Democrats), then Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate would have crashed and burned (because center-left Democrats and the “normie” Republicans would have helped McCarthy).
But no, Kevin McCarthy wanted to have his cake and eat it too….so, his two-faced, egregious behavior didn’t win him many allies….nor hasn’t garnered him much sympathy.
With regards to the next House Speaker, the dynamics won’t change. The next House Speaker will likely only side with the Freedom Caucasus….thus alienating the “normie” Republicans and all of the Democrats. As a result, they’ll be ineffective too.
Thank you, Chris. Well said. McCarthy bailed on every bipartisan “deal” he promised. The dysfunction belongs with the GOP, not with the Democrats.
Well they are just irresponsible people aren’t they, the Republicans, putting that Trump in power.
@Anita provides a good summary. Also, @Troy is right on: many so-called Independents seem to be people who can’t deal with reality, and so try to hold out for some perfect balance that only exists in their imaginations. They need to either a) grow up and get behind the only party interested in governance, i.e., the Democrats, or b) take themselves out of the equation entirely. The entire constitutional framework is expressly designed to force compromise; in order to get anything done, everyone must make concessions, and accept that they can’t get everything on their wish list.
Also, I think it’s wrong to fault Democrats for failing to save McCarthy from his own troops; he demonstrated repeatedly that his word was meaningless and his ethics were malleable. This was most strongly in evidence after January 6th, when he condemned Trump on the House floor, but within days was flying down to Mar-a-Lago to apologize and kiss the ring, so to speak. (Much good it did him in the long run; Trump could have saved McCarthy’s speakership with a few phone calls, but didn’t bother.) The final straw was when the Democratic caucus saved McCarthy’s bacon over the weekend with the vote to prevent the shutdown, and McCarthy turned around and lied–again–by attempting to blame the Democrats for the near-miss on one of the Sunday morning news shows. (It was such a nakedly partisan, bald-faced lie that, I understand, the anchor actually laughed in his face.)
And all this prediction that Dems will now potentially face “someone worse” in the speakership is silly. Who might that someone be? The worst of the worst–e.g., Gaetz, Gosar, and the rest of the risibly named “Freedom Caucus”–are too disliked by their own conference to have a hope of winning the speakership. The other possible replacements on the Republican side (e.g., Steve Scalise, if his health permits) are no worse than McCarthy, and may actually be marginally better. They’re at least smart enough not to think they can get away with blatantly, repeatedly breaking deals with their fellow legislators.
Then there’s the other possibility, which admittedly would require a minor miracle–that all the Dems and 5 sane Republicans would get behind the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and vote him in as the next speaker. Dare to dream. …
@AI22
It’s also possible the republicans fail to unify behind any speaker altogether which will leave the country and the economy in a lurch unless they can convince democrats to join in selecting a moderate. It’s it’s unlikely that they would support someone like Scalise. But that would force compromise and that seems pretty unlikely. The reality is nothing will improve until the GOP cuts ties with Trump who is running the show in Congress. The showdown for the next 45 stop gap days will likely have disastrous consequences for the country and the war in Ukraine. While there are arguments to be made about gerrymandering etc., in the end voters made their choice in selecting house republicans in the 2022 midterms and, although slim, they did give the majority back to the GOP. Maybe the voters will finally wise up.
I think we’ll look back and see that Obama’s second administration was the beginning of the end, of the 50 United States of America. His second administration went too far by packing the government with identity extremists. That’s why Trump got elected and the rest is history.
– Down we go.
These seeds have been sown for a long, long time. In my lifetime the key culprit I point to is Newt Gingrich, who resorted to a kind of scorched earth rhetoric that mainstream American politicians had avoided. He demonized democrats as un- and even anti-American. It’s been a steady roll downhill ever since.
Brigitte,
Obama was hardly an extremist, nor did he pack his administration full of them. He was actually quite pragmatic and Conservative by contemporary UK & Euro political standards.
Bear in mind the US doesn’t actually have a Liberal Party. Other than lip service, the Democrats have reliably tacked to the Center since the end of the Civil Rights era and the rise of the Conservative Counter-Revolution in the 1980s—Reagan’s rise in Carter’s wake. On the other side of the pond they would actually be a Center-Right party—and more in line with the Tories than Labour.
The problem you fail to see is the racist Far-Right Reactionaryism rooted deep in the Republican Party that saw Obama, the first ever black US President, as an affront and anathema to their foundational concept of America as a White Christian-dominated nation. The Republicans from day one sought to undermine Obama’s presidency to validate their own collective white racial narcissism and to cope with their collective narcissistic injury sustained.
The malignant narcissist and egomaniacal charlatan Trump accordingly emerged in 2016 as an opportunist champion for the GOP’s cause. The rest as they say, is history. But you can’t move forward by clinging tight to the past, which is the story of the 2020 US election and the point of the drama playing out today in America’s politics. This is Trump and the Republican Party’s existential problem and crisis now at the the end of Pluto sojourn through Capricorn, and why their ill-informed ideological missteps will only continue to rack up profound and perplexing losses for them.
@ Clarence, exactly.
Obama governed to the right of Reagan. He even wore a tan suit that got him in trouble with Fox News.
@Brigitte, please name at least five of those so-called identity extremists. (BTW define identity extremists).
I bet you can’t.
An interesting dynamic amongst Dems that I’ve observed. Pelosi had a more herding of the rebellious cats approach that was necessary due to both the far left(AOC) types, and centrists(Elissa Slotkin) types challenging her. Yet Jefferies had one major meeting about McCarthy and got the cats in order without fuss.
So Pelosi the Aries is more like controlled fire works, and Jefferies the Leo is like a nicely lit fireplace that keeps them warm and fuzzy. Lol
I heard that was a long meeting, and it was the conservative / centrist democrats who wanted McCarthy out. They were allowed to speak at length. I think McCarthy making a deal with Joe Biden on Budget in May, and then going back on his word this past month, really did him in. That was why the Democrats did not save him – he did not keep his promises. Pelosi controlled the squad when they were acting up like the crazy right is now, and the squad has not had time to grow up and learn how to govern. The Republicans have got to learn to bring their crazies to heel, and that is another reason the democrats did this. They want the Republicans to get control of their people. Hakeem is balanced and measured. He was a good choice.
Mistype. The squad has grown up, and is learning how to govern.
@Liz: Yes the “Squad” was just passionate and immature, but the far right are wretched people who cannot be bargained or reasoned with. They are bullies who either get their way or they’ll torch the entire thing. “Agents of chaos” to quote the Joker. There’s no controlling them.
So Democrats are not trying get the GOP to control their extremists, they’re just allowing them to implode and biding their time till the election.
In many ways, not surprising – as Pluto prepares to resume its 20+ year journey through Aquarius. Something that you and your colleagues have been flagging up for several years. The last occasion Pluto was in this position (in the 18th century) it brought revolution and change across the World.
So apparently the first order of business for the temporary Speaker was to kick Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their offices. I didn’t even know this was so easily possible. How petty and foolish.
If the GOP think it stings now just wait till November next year! 🙂
As it turns out, McCarthy was behind this move to kick Pelosi out of her office. Shocker! And who is moving into said office? Kevin McCarthy. #Retribution.
Such petty stuff sums up where the GOP is at.
Agreed that the possibility exists the Democrats may end up with worse, but you can’t actually blame the democrats for not saving McCarthy’s speakership because he is not to be trusted. He went “back on his word” by abandoning the funding levels he agreed to when he and President Biden struck a deal to raise the debt limit back in May and to make matters worse he went on National TV over the weekend accusing democrats of pushing for a government shutdown even though the last minute stopgap funding bill he put forth passed with overwhelming Democratic support, in fact far more than republican support.The bi-partisan 45 day stop gap bill only came about because McCarthy decided to back down at the 11th hour after his party’s hardliners demanded a partisan bill and blocked his efforts.
That said, the hardliners led by Gaetz, at the bidding of Trump who was pushing for a shutdown, were going to get rid of McCarthy sooner or later. He basically dug his own grave by giving in to the ultra right members who tried to stop him from becoming speaker in January in the first place and he only managed to become speaker after 15 rounds by making a series of huge concessions to the most conservative members. A Speaker may be removed at the will of the House, however in order to appease his right wingers, McCarty changed the rules in January to allow one member to file a motion to remove the speaker. McCarthy has repeatedly claimed Gaetz has held a grudge against him for refusing his demand that McCarthy intervene in an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Gaetz was part of a scheme that led to the sex-trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.
One thing is for sure, the whole debt ceiling debacle, budget fiasco negotiations and government shutdown in the US is a disaster compared to other countries and needs to be changed.
@Anita, the worse people were already pulling McCarthy puppet strings so now they will be out in the open.
I mean these clowns want Trump to be the Speaker but he was already calling the shots along with Boebert, Gaertz and MTG and the rest of the so-called Freedom caucus.
I could elaborate on why Dem. politicians by n large are not “gleeful” but satisfied that McCarthy got what he deserved, instead I suffice to say he brought this on himself and Dems had zero incentive to save him. Independents need to stop this old thinking of split governance and wake to the reality that only one side is behaving sensibly. So now when you split it, you end up with chaos.
The GOP is not the party of Cheney or McCain or Romney anymore; accept this and vote accordingly or suffer the consequences!