Republican Crazies Forcing Government Shutdown
The House is in recess as the exasperated GOP leadership tries to figure a way out.
For the umpteenth time since I began my current job a little over a decade ago, we are devoting considerable time planning for a government shutdown. By all accounts, this one is inevitable.
WaPo (“House Republicans falter on funding plans, as shutdown inches closer“):
House Republicans for the second week in a row failed to move forward on any legislation related to funding the government, stunning many in their ranks as a government shutdown looms next week.
The status of negotiations on both a short-term funding solution and long-term appropriations legislation declined so severely Thursday that lawmakers began to return home, with no votes scheduled for the rest of the week.
Republicans’ inability to pass a single funding provision since returning to Washington last week — including twice failing to start debate on a Defense Department appropriations bill — is the latest embarrassment for the conference whose direction is being dictated not by leaders but a handful of stubborn holdouts.
Unable to overcome the opposition, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has scrapped discussion of a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open after the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, significantly increasing the already high chances of a government shutdown.
In an attempt to appease the demands of the far-right members who vowed to oppose any stopgap measure — called a continuing resolution and colloquially referred to as a “CR” — until there is progress on long-term appropriations bills, McCarthy and his leadership team will focus on passing the 11 remaining individual bills.
“The CR is dead,” said one Republican aide who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly.
If there is enough progress on the individual funding bills to satisfy the demands of the holdouts, Republicans could resume discussions on how to keep the government open in the short term.
“I came up here to be responsible. We’re gonna be responsible,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who is part of a group that would block a short-term funding bill and is demanding the passage of a budget and individual funding bills. “I’m going to hold firm.”
But with just more than a week until the end of the fiscal year and no votes expected in the House until Tuesday, a shutdown seems likely.
“Obviously, the timetable is very short,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.). “And you know, getting stuff out of the House and then getting agreement in the Senate and so forth doesn’t seem highly likely. But there’s a number of options that are out there.”
The Senate has been preparing to have to move first on a short-term funding plan should the House fail to act. Senators have a continuing resolution bill written, according to two people familiar with the internal workings of the chamber, but it’s not clear if or when that bill would move.
The Senate had been waiting on the House to move first to avoid any parliamentary challenges since spending bills are constitutionally required to originate in the House.
After several setbacks over the past two weeks, a majority of House Republicans believed their luck would change early Thursday after finding a solution hours earlier to end a blockade that prevented them from advancing the Defense Department appropriations bill. But in a stunning defeat that McCarthy admitted he did not foresee, two new objectors emerged and caused the typically noncontroversial procedural hurdle to fail for the second time this week.
“It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy said leaving the House chamber after the failed vote. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”
Lawmakers immediately huddled in McCarthy’s office to find a path forward that would appease numerous holdouts. Many of those holdouts said they would never vote for a short-term spending deal in protest of Republicans not passing the remaining 11 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government for a full year — which in part includes the legislation they blocked Thursday.
McCarthy may need to relent on his insistence to pass funding measures with only Republican votes, a demand made by many in the far-right HouseFreedom Caucus who say they will introduce a motion to remove him from the speakership if he relies on Democrats to pass legislation. With only a four-vote margin, House Republicans have been — and will continue to be — tested throughout the fiscal fight.
POLITICO (“House GOP erupts as conservatives block defense bill again“) adds:
Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered yet another stinging defeat Thursday, as a handful of conservatives tanked a key vote that was supposed to signal the way out of days of intraparty bickering.
Instead, GOP hardliners again blockaded the floor for the second time in three days — leaving McCarthy unable to call the party’s own defense spending bill to the floor. This time, though, it came as a shock to many GOP leaders, who believed they won over enough holdouts to finally bring up the Pentagon funding bill.
Perhaps more ominously, the ultraconservatives’ gambit proved what many in the GOP had already suspected: That McCarthy is essentially powerless to avert a government closure that could begin Oct. 1.
Across the conference, House Republicans erupted in fury.
“This is painful. It gives me a headache. This is a very difficult series of missteps by our conference,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told POLITICO. “If you can’t do [the defense bill], what can you do?”
Walking down the steps of the Capitol after the failed vote, battleground Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), too, vented about the hardliners.
“At this point, it seems like there are some people playing policy warfare, and I think we need to move our country forward,” he said. “We’re pretty frustrated.”
NYT (“Right-Wing Rebels Block Defense Bill Again, Rebuking McCarthy on Spending“) adds:
Right-wing House Republicans dealt another stunning rebuke to Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday, blocking a Pentagon funding bill for the second time this week in a vivid display of G.O.P. disunity on federal spending that threatens to lead to a government shutdown in nine days.
[…]
It was a major black eye for Mr. McCarthy, who has on multiple occasions admonished his members in private for taking the rare step of bringing down such measures, known as rules, proposed by their own party — a previously unheard-of tactic. And it signaled continuing right-wing resistance to funding the government, even after the speaker had capitulated Wednesday night to demands from hard-right Republicans for deeper spending cuts as part of any bill to prevent a shutdown on Oct. 1.
[…]
Democrats were left shocked at the level of dysfunction across the aisle.
“Just really a collapse,” declared Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “There really isn’t any leadership.”
Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of Democratic leadership, said he had never before seen a speaker lose a rule vote so many times — three times in four months, and twice this week alone — something that had not happened for two decades before Mr. McCarthy assumed the post.
“I don’t quite understand this,” Mr. Clyburn said of Mr. McCarthy’s strategy, before suggesting he consider cutting a deal with the top House Democrat that could pass both chambers and keep the government open. “My advice is, ‘Go sit down with Hakeem Jeffries.’ If he’s got a solid majority of his caucus, why wouldn’t he? This is the tail wagging the dog. That’s not the way to do it.”
But Mr. McCarthy is keenly aware that if he were to turn to Democrats for help funding the government, he would face a right-wing effort to remove him from his post.
Given that McCarthy is unable to lead this caucus, anyway, giving up the Speakership arguably isn’t even a big sacrifice. But it’s not at all clear a replacement wouldn’t be even worse.
While I understand that “right-wing” and “ultraconservative” are serving as a shorthand here, it’s really misleading in that it frames as ideological something that’s something else entirely. There’s no policy dispute here. Those are solvable. McCarthy is right: there is a faction happy just to burn the whole thing down. I suppose “hardliners” works as a description but even that suggests that they’re holding firm on an actual belief system. I went with “crazies” in the headline but that’s not exactly a political science term.
That’s not to say there aren’t policy disputes. But there’s no unity among the defectors in terms of goals.
In a sign of the complex and confounding resistance Mr. McCarthy is facing within his own party, the group of defectors on Thursday was slightly different from the five who broke with the G.O.P. to oppose the same measure two days earlier.
Ms. Greene, who has emerged as a McCarthy ally in this Congress and supported the debt ceiling bill he negotiated with President Biden, on Tuesday had voted with her party on the rule. But she said online that she voted against it on Thursday because it contained funding for the war in Ukraine.
“Our Defense bill should not fund our DOD for blood money for the Ukraine war, that’s why I’m a NO,” she wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Ms. Greene was also aligned with hard-right Republicans who made it clear they planned to stand in opposition to Mr. McCarthy’s latest stopgap funding proposal, even after he bowed to their demands for steep spending cuts that stood little chance of surviving in the Senate. The group, which included at least seven Republicans, appeared to be large enough to defeat it given the party’s tiny majority, which allows for no more than four defections if all Democrats vote in opposition.
This is a very small group. Alas, when there’s a four-vote majority and the attempts to appease this group have made the bill toxic for Democrats, seven votes is huge.
Does this mean that there will be no funding for the pension and for Secret Service protection of the Supreme Leader of the Republican Party Kim Jong Trump?
Republicans will not follow McCarthy and will not agree on a replacement and would submarine any replacement anyway. They may be a majority but they are not currently a party.
What really gets me is there’s this weird cycle of the crazies going “we demand x concessions, but we won’t vote for it anyways” and getting them, and then the GOP leadership being shocked they’re no closer to the bill passing.
How do you get to be a national level politician without understanding the basics of how negotiations work?
A year ago we were talking about the two Democratic holdouts in the Senate who were frustrating us. That’s just peanuts to this situation.
Legislators will continue to get paid during the shutdown.
House Democrat files MCCARTHY Shutdown Act seeking to suspend member pay
Congressional Staffers on the other hand:
Capitol Hill Staffers Fret About Missing Paychecks in a Shutdown
@Stormy Dragon:
This is the inherent problem with “Reaganism”. The GOP and their funders have spent the last 40 odd years demonizing governing in their attempt to exempt the rich from the rules, and install a white supremacist, dominionist government. The cycles started with Regan (a truly evil human) and his paying lip service drowning the government in the bathtub and then it accelerates as they need an ever increasing crazies to win.
My guess is they have roughly reached the peak of the number of people the can count on for support but they have lost control of the crazy machine. The only person who thinks McCarthy is up to the task is McCarthy. I bet his parents even thought he was a dumb dumb.
I’m convinced that the ONLY thing holding the Senate back from turning into the house on the GOP side is McConnell’s wits and willpower. Once he finally blips and doesn’t come back, that whole caucus is going down in flames in a three way battle between Thune, Cruz and Tuberville. They need to hope that Mitch doesn’t fade out before all the primary deadlines pass. Otherwise the rich crazies will fund a whole lot of Blake Masters clones.
I know no one here likes my idea of letting the nihilists burning it all down, but I think we’re about to get that anyway.
Anybody want to speculate how many corporations that are defense contractors won’t be getting paid? I’m thinking more than a few, at least.
All McCarthy ever really wanted was the title of speaker, not the actual job and – God forbid – the duties and responsibilities. He should take the suicide option, negotiate with the Dems and bring forward a bill that will prevent the apocalypse. He’ll get dumped, and he can dine out the rest of his life as “the former Speaker” and put “Speaker” in front of his name. After all, Gingrich was referred to as speaker 30 years after he put down the gavel. So congrats, Kev, you’ll get your immortality and lose the headaches along the way.
PS: it would be interesting to see who the big industry recipients of federal government moolah are in Gaetz’s district, and how they feel about the representation the district is getting.
This is what happens when we elect idiots.
James, it astounds me that you have any residual respect for Gingrich. The path to this latest shutdown traces directly to him, and I’m not talking about his own disastrous attempt at a shut down. Rather, his conscious and deliberate decision to end bipartisanship. He decided that it would better serve his personal ambitions if he acted only to advance what he saw as the interests of the Republican Party, and country be damned. He started the metastization of the Hastert Rule. Hastert’s policy was never to advance a bill that didn’t have at least a majority of Republican support. Gingrich raised the stakes radically on this with his “50% plus one vote” strategy, wherein he loaded up every bill with amendments toxic to Democrats until it barely passed. If his whip told him that he had even one more Democrat than he needed, he would add more amendments until he drove another one away. Once this was started the outcome was inevitable: at this point the party in power has to pass any significant legislation with only their own members. Younger political reporters write stories that simply accept this as the way it has to be, whereas prior to Gingrich voting across party lines was extremely common. Heck, there were no hard and fast party lines to begin with.
During the Obama ACA negotiations the Dems finally realized bipartisanship was truly and completely dead, when they spent months negotiating with Romney and other Republicans, making significant changes to the bill to win them over, and then not a single one voted for it.
@Mister Bluster: Those people are presumably “essential personnel” who will be required to work without pay but under promise of being paid once the shutdown ends.
@Jay L Gischer: Yup. While one can question the motives of both Manchin and Sinema, they were making actual policy demands. Those can be negotiated.
@MarkedMan: Gingrich had many flaws and definitely made part of this possible. But the “Hastert Rule” actually makes some sense. It’s not the problem here, though: there are zero Democratic votes to be had and there’s an overwhelming number of Republican votes—way more than half.
@Not the IT Dept.:
They are afraid of the MAGA base, precludes R’s working with Dems. (2nd amendment).
Few R’s can afford the $5,000/day Mitt Romney pays for private security.
They’ve been happy to burn the whole thing down since Obama got elected, let’s be honest. People like McCarthy have either been willfully blind or just incredibly stupid.
And forgive me for my naivete, but how does the Hastert Rule do anything but discourage bipartisanship?
@James Joyner:..essential personnel…
Thank you for the reply.
@James Joyner:
I don’t disagree and think you misread my comments. The actual Hastert Rule is only harmful at some obscure corner cases and even then it can be argued it is more harmful to one’s own party than the opposition or to the government itself. Ex: I remember when I was younger there would occasionally be a bill passed with minority majority, sometimes significantly. This was because it was a must pass bill but had something in it that was anathema to significant majority party regions or interest groups. Prior to the Hastert rule it was feasible to allow their own members to say they voted against it while still getting the country’s work done. After the Hastert rule, sometimes the whip had to twist arms to ensure Hastert wasn’t seen as going back on his rule.
Which is exactly why I said Gingrich’s fault was in deliberately metastisizing the Hastert Rule. His 50% plus one vote strategy ensured we would end up where we are.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Would that were the problem.
A high office confers a great deal of prestige. People like McCarthy aren’t in it for that, or not only that, but for the power.
That’s where Kevin miscalculated. The power resides largely in the little gang of crazies.
And his prestige is getting tarnished, It’s not a good look for the most powerful representative in the House to march to someone else’s tune all the time.
@Blue Galangal: The Hastert Rule, as I understand it is that Hastert, as Speaker, would not bring any measure up for vote that didn’t have majority support within the Republican House Caucus. That would be a very low bar to pass in the current situation. All the measures under consideration have majority support – it is reported that there are 7 holdouts.
The problem is not the Hastert Rule, but that the measures are so unpalatable to Democrats that they will get no votes from the Democrats to pass. This magnifies the power of the holdouts, which is why they are staging the whole thing.
I can easily imagine measures that would get 80 percent R support and get some D votes to pass. That would conform to the Hastert Rule, but we have a much more severe situation.
@Not the IT Dept.: Most defense contractors with existing contracts already have money placed (obligated in Fed contract speak) on their contracts (FY2022, FY2023 appropriations). As they perform work, the contractors send in bills and the Fed contract officers pay them. They don’t stop work. They may face a cashflow issue if the government contract officers are not working and processing those payments but it is usually not a big deal. The contractor (whether defense or otherwise) are those that are waiting for a contract award or FY2024 appropriations. There is no work occurring in those situations.
When I worked as a defense contractor in an Air Force facility and the government shutdown occurs, I still went to work as normal because the contract already had money on it and was not waiting for the next years appropriation. The only hitch was that we were required to be “supervised”. That job was usually handed to a military member since they were deemed essential and had to show up for work also.
Sounds like ‘moderate’ Republican members of the house with have to vote in a Democratic speaker in order to get anything done.
@Jay L Gischer:
As I said above, the Hastert Rule of Denny Hastert is dead and buried. Newt Gingrich put it on steroids, injected it with meth, and gave it a monster truck. The effect of all this is the modern “Hastert Rule” is, “Significant bills must pass with only one party’s votes”.
@MarkedMan:
Just a friendly reminder that Denny Hastert, Republican was an actual convicted pedophile.
The other thing about Gingrich is that he actively worked to drive out the actual liberals and moderates from the GOP. The Dems haven’t done anything like that as much as we bitch about Manchin. That has as much to do with what we are dealing with today as the Pedo Hastert rule.
Personal pet peeve, I hate that conservative Dems call themselves “moderates”. They aren’t and it drives me nuts. I despise the idea of the feckless problem solvers buttholes gaining any more power out of this.
The difference between the leadership situation for Boehner and Ryan and the situation for McCarthy is that they knew when to pack it in, but he doesn’t seem to.
That he should never have been willing to take the job in the first place is intriguing but fruitless. Ambitious people seem to always believe themselves exceptional, too.
I would argue that ideology is not always about policy. I think this is very much an ideological dispute.
@MarkedMan:
Hastert came after Gingrich.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Of course you are right. But I so clearly remember Gingrich deliberately amplifying the rule with the 50%+1 vote strategy. Did I unintentionally retcon that? A little googling showed where I went wrong: even though it’s called the Hastert rule it actually originated with Gingrich. From Wiki:
@Blue Galangal: There can be bipartisanship with the Hastert Rule in place. All it demands is that bills have a majority (i.e., 50% +1) support of the majority caucus. That’s perfectly reasonable and would still allow bills that don’t appeal to more radical elements to pass with Democratic support.
@Steven L. Taylor: It’s not altogether obvious what the 7 naysayers want, aside from a shutdown. I’m not inherently opposed to hardball tactics—but they should be used in order to leverage particular policy outcomes.
@MarkedMan: It’s interesting the way a mind can hold two contradictory things at once. I both retconned Denny Hastert and didn’t. If I were to think about it in terms of “when was Hastert Speaker?”, I would have thought about the things I associated with his era and concluded it was after Gingrich. But since I knew that Gingrich had started out with the Hastert rule and then made it much worse, I simultaneously had it in my head that he came before Gingrich. In reality, when Gingrich first became Speaker, it was called the “majority of majority” rule or practice and was only called the Hastert rule later.
@James Joyner:
Absolutely. For example, I was just reading that Boehner followed it except for a handful of exceptions. Some had to do with funding the government and I suspect fell into the “let the Dems pass it so my guys can say they voted against it” category, but at least one seemed to involve personal priorities: He allowed an extension of the Violence Against Women act to come to a vote and only 38% of Republicans voted for it.
What I remember about Gingrich was that he viewed it as a weapon to beat Dems with and was part and parcel of his grabbing power away from Committee chairs. He very clearly was putting the interests of himself as leader of the Republicans above the interests of the country. And the proof of his ill will and bad faith is that he quickly metastasized it into the 50%+1 rule, and there is nothing good about that.
@de stijl:
No, this is what happens when idiots elect idiots.
I have two homes: FL and CO.
Colorado is functional. Shit gets done.
FL, on the local level gets by as well. But I am in the district that elected Matt Gaetz as their representative. So that makes for difficult conversations. Because idiots.
@James Joyner: Nihilism and reactionary politics are ideological positions, or so I would argue.
I have very little problem with legislative compromise. Everybody gets a bit of what they want.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the parties decided the best way forward was to war with the other. Gingrich is the obvious example. Wedge politics is more lucrative than finding a slice of common ground.
Also, no one wants to hit a single anymore. Every bit of legislation has to be a grand slam home run for their party. No one wants to take a walk or HBP. No one seemingly wants incremental improvement. It’s always all or nothing, all in, which I think is a big mistake. Government by small steps is severely underappreciated.
(I know this sounds a bit both-sideristic. I know that Rs have been the disproportionate offenders.)
@James Joyner:
The shutdown.
They may not have thought past it.
@Not the IT Dept.: Pensacola Naval Air Station and Eglin Air Force Base are both in Gaetz’s district. Lots of Federal moolah.
Senators ingesting some good drugs on a Friday afternoon:
Senators seek to stop shutdowns forever, after McCarthy’s spending stumbles
Prediction: This will go nowhere.
@de stijl:
I wouldn’t call any of Biden’s legislative successful a grand slam for Democrats, in terms of fulfilling the liberal wish list. It’s because these policies were incremental and compromised that Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer were able to muscle through so much legislation in such a short time dith such small majorities.
The PACT Act (veterans healthcare) and the bipartisan gun safety passed under Pelosi, Schumer and Biden were small ball compared to what liberals preferred. As were the IRA’s still-historic climate provisions and insulin caps.
Democrats also wanted childcare tax credits and long overdue paid family leave provisions in the legislation that became the IRA, but they settled for, and voted for, much less — behind arguments that 45% is better than 0%.
Biden’s team bet the party would eventually see the sum total value of small steps. Unlike spending two year’s of political capital pushing one big bill like the Affordable Care Act — which gives the opposition one big boogeyman to attack.
@SC_Birdflyte: Yes, but as noted in one comment above (Scott?), not the sort of Fed moolah that will be impacted by the shutdown immediately.*
*Please feel free to contradict me on this. My inner dirty-peacenik hippie would abs0lutely love to know that the “army” will have to shut down with the rest of teh gubmint.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In Gaetz’ case I would argue his nihilism is not ideological. He’s blindly ambitious, wants to be governor of FL, and thinks getting his name in the papers is his way forward. He’s not so much nihilist as indifferent to the consequences of his actions.
I was going to to over to FOX and collect a couple of “they just waste our money”, “shut it all down forever” sort of comments on this shutdown story. The sort of thing that’s typical of Gaetz’ base. But the FOX website didn’t mention the shutdown. I tried a few other places that are RW, not paywalled, and host comments. None of them seem to be even mentioning an impending shutdown.
@James Joyner:
I think that very much depends on “votes to be had for what”.
A clean CR would have enormous Democratic support. McCarthy would need to find 4 Republicans, including himself. There are other deals to be had that would bring in fewer Democrats, and more Republicans.
The leverage against the Freedom/Q caucus is that they will be sidelined, even if it means losing the speakership.
The Big Lebowski had it wrong — nihilism is an ethos.
Yeah. 7. Wow.
eta: my bad, 9
@DK: Pelosi, Schumer and Biden did an amazing job with what they had to work with. I don’t think they left anything achievable on the table.
I am baffled that the expanded child tax credit was not achievable, but Manchin is gonna Manchin. (Manchin being the man who wanted to add a work requirement on the existing Earned Income Tax Credit… demonstrating a profound lack of understanding. Not one of the great thinkers of his century, but the best Democrat we could get from West Virginia)
Speaking of crazy (and abysmally stupid and vulgar), here is Margie Taylor Greene’s response to Biden’s comment about banning assault weapons: “Whatever, you old fart.”
Class. Pure class.
@CSK: Whatever else you say about MTQ*, you have to admit that she represents her voters** faithfully.
* I am delighted to have learned the epithet “Marjorie Trailer Queen”.
** As opposed to her district.
@Gustopher:
One of the ironies of The Big Lebowski is that The Nihilists are the only characters in the movie who aren’t actual nihilists. It’s basically a study of how different characters deal with the lack of real meaning in their lives.
Hint: the bowling is a metaphor for Sisyphus
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s hard to imagine the group in question raising this ruckus if Trump were POTUS right now, so I would call it political, not ideological. Nihilism can be pursued as a COA. As in: “Destroy the economy and blame it on Biden.”
@DrDaveT: Is it not Marjorie Taylor QAnon?
@CSK:
Wasn’t Rep. Jewish Space Lasers banging on this week about how relaxing the Senate dress code was a huge breach of decorum?
@DK:
I believe she was. But calling the president an old fart is apparently okay in Marge’s book.
@Stormy Dragon: Bowling being a metaphor for Sisyphus seems over the heads of the target audience, but I’ve never watched the movie, so I might be mistaken.
@Stormy Dragon:
Simple. You get your start twenty years ago as an anti-government activist, in something the Tea Party or the antiabortion movement. Once they have made their bones, these people who have made it into national politics are great at media skills, great at fundraising, and great at opposing and breaking things. They do not know how to compromise, or negotiate, or create legislation.
@dazedandconfused:
Of course not. The right did not care about deficits and spending when they were helping Trump cut taxes for billionaires and shovel billions in corporate welfare and loan forgiveness to Republican farmers and the greedy rich.
They never do. “It’s only fiscally irresponsible and unfair and socialism when people making less than six figures need help” is a boilerplate conservative belief.
@just nutha:
It’s a Coen Brothers comedy movie. Deeply philosophical movies masquerading as a much simpler movie is pretty much how they do comedy.
@Bokonon:
I completely agree. But Gaetz is not some naïf. Politics is his family business. His father was president of the FL Senate for a few years.
In verifying that I stumbled over a huge coincidence. I was raised in a town of 3,000 people in ND, Rugby. Nobody famous came from Rugby. My family left when I was twelve. WIKI says Gaetz’ grandfather was mayor of Rugby right about then. My father would have known him. Gaetz grandfather later died at the ND Republican convention while running for Lt. Governor.
I really can’t understand why so many Americans continue to express bewilderment at the antics of the extremists in the Republican Party. It’s not as if their mentality was a secret.
Here’s Trump in 2014:
Here’s his 2016 campaign manager, White House “Chief Strategist” and still influential voice Steve Bannon in 2017:
There has never been any reason to think they didn’t mean what they said.
@Beth:
I agree that’s been something I’ve mentioned many times in the past. McConnell is a major source of funding for the republican party which combined with his political acumen gives him complete power. Once McConnell is gone I fully expect the senate GOP to follow a similar path to the house. I’m not sure if will be a good thing or bad thing for the country as a whole =/
@dazedandconfused:
TBH, I question the purity of that distinction.
And sure, the general political context matters.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I think in general parlance, “ideological” is when you do things because of what you believe in, and “political” is when you do things based on what is expedient. When those things align, there’s no issue. (And if you don’t actually believe in anything except expedience, there is likewise no potential for dissonance.) The distinction only matters when the two are in conflict.