It looks like a storm in a tea cup, but Congressman Matt Gaetz’s unexpected ousting of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives could be a harbinger of things to come.
Last week Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, the leader of the Freedom Caucus group of Republican Congressmen in Washington, unexpectedly orchestrated the removal of their own Speaker of the House (of Representatives) the Republican Kevin McCarthy.
This may seem a perfect topic for politics nerds, of no interest to normal people. But in the whole history of the American Republic, this has never happened. The Speaker is a more important figure than the official of the same name in the British Parliament. He controls the management of business in the House of Representatives, and therefore indirectly in the US Senate, and can choose not to put a measure before the House if a majority of the majority (Republican) party does not support it.
There are currently 212 Democratic Congressmen and 221 Republicans (there are two vacancies) in the US House of Representatives. The House has had a Republican majority since the midterm elections in late 2022. If a majority of the Republicans, at least 111 of them, don’t want to support sending money to Ukraine, for example, then that measure need not be considered by the House. Even though the other 324 Representatives could be in favour.
Now that Ukraine is nearly on its last legs, quite a few politicians in the US are wondering if it isn’t time to cut it loose ahead of the all-important 2024 US elections. Hence the downright panic in Ukraine. Not to mention in the political classes of the faltering Collective West who ‘led’ their publics into a complete fiasco. If the money stops flowing to the Ukraine government – it needs around $100bn annually to pay all government costs and continue the war – then capitulation must follow within weeks. I doubt that the US or the Europeans will cut Zelensky off from all funds. But the writing is clearly on the wall.
McCarthy was elected after several iterations with the support of the Uni-party comprising Democrats and ‘Republicans in Name Only’ (‘RINOS’). These are the same kind of big-state, donor-driven servants of vested interests, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), the UN/WHO, WEF and Neocon Globalists, who run the Labour/Tory Uni-party in Britain.
McCarthy showed himself determined to make sure that US payments to Ukraine continued. Remember, payments to Ukraine are also payments to leading American politicians. The Bidens are dirty in Ukraine. According to emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, his father ‘The Big Guy’ or ‘Paedo Pete’, expected a 10% cut on Ukraine contracts. Romney, Pelosi and many others have had offspring strategically placed near Ukrainian cash spigots. Plus, the Uni-party’s MIC paymasters get more cash to replace expensive, if often ineffective, NATO equipment. Nearly nobody, after all, leaves Congress a poor man.
Ukraine is the third rail where all the issues coming to a head in the West meet.
Gaetz put the US Uni-party into a cleft stick by calling for McCarthy to be sacked, accusing him of making ‘a secret side deal’ with Democrat President Biden on continuing Ukraine aid.
Either, (the likely outcome) RINOS and the Democrats would unite to keep McCarthy in place as Speaker. The RINOs would then be identified or ‘outed’ as crypto-Democrats in favour of sending money to Ukraine, a policy opposed by most Republican voters, and as supporters of more tax and spending (ditto). They would then be targeted during the forthcoming primary season by Freedom Caucus/MAGA voters.
Or, (the actual outcome) the Democrats would ditch McCarthy, and the RINOS, thus proving that he had been a dependent servant of the Democratic Party all along. They would also undermine the illusion of ‘bipartisanship’ in American politics.
The newly bereft RINOS would then have to choose between supporting the Freedom Caucus (and Trump) candidate for Speaker, Jim Jordan, or supporting the RINO Uni-party candidate Steve Scalise (currently being treated for cancer, unluckily) and being blamed by MAGA and Freedom Caucus voters for igniting party infighting ahead of the elections.
In the event, McCarthy and the RINOS were unexpectedly ditched by the Democrats in Congress. The RINOS now have either to bite the bullet with Jordan, or support unpopular ‘business as usual’ with Scalise. A decision should emerge within a week or so. If they go with Jordan the Uni-party’s control over congressional business will be much diminished.
Meanwhile, I attach a link to a two-minute video of Matt Gaetz in Congress attacking the entire edifice of the donor led Uni-party. ‘Boo all you want’, he says to Representatives, including fellow Republicans as well as Democrats. But we can see you, he implies, sucking up to donors who pay you handsomely to neglect the Republic’s business: