Thirteen months of revenge. That's how one pundit summarized the plan Republicans have for Democrats for the rest of this Congress. The pettiness started within MINUTES of Patrick McHenry being designated Speaker pro temp when one of his first directives was to Nancy Pelosi to immediately vacate her "hideway" office in the Capital. Space within the Capital is limited but until now, it has been common for the House majority party to allocate a couple of offices inside the Capital near the House chamber to the prior-majority / now-minority leadership team, presumably to make it easier to whip votes, communicate with opposing leadership, etc.
McHenry decided to evict Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their "hideaway" offices... IMMEDIATELY. As in "get your stuff out, NOW." McHenry stated he needed Pelosi's office while acting as Speaker pro temp. Well, the SPEAKER'S office is now vacant, why not just camp in there for the next few days / weeks? Because that wouldn't allow him to publicly act as a jerk to the opposition and especially to a member of the opposition HATED by his base, Nancy Pelosi. Extra bonus points for making a demand for IMMEDIATE action from someone who he already knew was away from the Capital attending a funeral.
Office arrangements are small stakes however. The retribution demanded by fringe Republicans will likely have much more disastrous impacts. Among all of the names already appearing as possible Speaker candidates, NONE are believed to be in support of funding of military funding in Ukraine. ANY funding. None are even thought to be willing to allow any funding proposal to reach the floor for a vote by the entire House.
Republicans are claiming that Democrats promised to "protect" Kevin McCarthy from his one-vote-to-vacate self-inflicted sword of Damocles that was the price he paid for "winning" the Speaker seat in January by agreeing they would provide enough votes to put him back in if a nut on the Republican fringe exercised that power. Now that they refused and he lost power and Republicans have (again) been exposed as the party of chaos and incompetence, they plan on doing everything possible to harm pretty much anything favored by Democrats in the absence of being able to pass ANY legislation that will satisfy their base.
Of course, Democrats had little choice. With the one-vote-to-vacate threat constantly looming AND McCarthy not dealing honestly with Democrats on budget issues, impeachment issues or anything else, Democrats had no legitimate partner to any deal that might have been struck and Republicans were going to do this on their own regardless of what Democrats did.
The consequence is that things will likely get MUCH worse, not only for politicians but for the American people, the people of Ukraine and the entire world. The only person smiling at what's happening now? Vladimir Putin, who likely thinks his enemy has now been financially cut off, allowing him to avoid a total defeat and simply hunker down into an extended seige that won't expose his total failure, allowing him to cling to power a little while longer.
WTH
