The Dispatch Podcast - Creatures of Capitol Hill

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

As the House enters a third day of its parade of pettiness, Sarah, Steve, and Jonah discuss Kevin McCarthy’s slow, tortuous slug of concessions towards becoming a speaker in name only. Also on the agenda: Biden’s 2024 vision, Mayor Pete’s carpetbagging, and the online right’s grotesque response to Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. Out of context: “That is a trifecta of wrongness.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Look, I have the record for the longest speech ever on the floor. I don't have a problem getting a record for the most votes for speaker, too. Thank you all. Welcome to a new year of the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. Well, there's plenty of drama happening on the Hill this week. We'll talk a little bit more big picture, how we got here, and what it maybe says about the next two years of Congress,

the next two years of the Republican Party heading into. to 2024. And we'll see if we hit a few other topics along the way. Let's dive right in. Steve, it is Thursday morning. There is no speaker of the house. How did we get here? where do you want me to start well see back in 2015 the sky ran for president um no we won't do that um you know this has been an interesting few days we've had um now six votes on Kevin McCarthy's bid to become speaker and he has stagnated um actually lost a couple votes um and it appears appeared as of evening news time yesterday

that we were at an impasse and that the people supporting Kevin McCarthy were losing patience with his continued efforts to be speaker and certainly tiring of the objections of the 20 folks fighting McCarthy then late Wednesday evening, there were additional negotiations in a series of concessions that the McCarthy

side made, some of them on process in the house, nearly all of which would empower the folks that Jonah has called the nihilists, the 20 people objecting to Kevin McCarthy, and might also have the effect of empowering some centrists, but I think the goal obviously is to empower the Freedom Caucus types. And then also a very important and interesting political concession, which the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is Kevin McCarthy's PAC, has agreed not to compete in open primaries, not to fund McCarthy preferred or establishment preferred candidates in open primaries, a deal that they struck with the club for growth, which was at one time a free market sort of movement conservative outside funding group and has now become a super Trumpy MAGA

world America first kind of radical funding group. I think the long and short of this, where we are now is the kinds of things that Kevin McCarthy is doing to become speaker, make it more likely, effectively give power on both process and policy to the nihilist supermega crowd and in political concessions make it more likely that there will be more of those kinds of Republican members in the future. Just one clarification. Can I just make one clarification? I don't think they're all nihilists.

As Sarah and I discussed on the dispatch live, I think the sort of the Chipproy crowd, I think are wrong on some tactical and strategic things, but they actually are sincere in what they want. They're not asking, they're not just being performative, but like the Mack Gates fringe and Andrew Biggs fridge, I think are in fact, nihilists. But Steve, fine, let's accept all of that is true for a second.

it certainly seems like everyone is happy to have Steve Scalise's speaker. McCarthy's number two guy from Louisiana, pretty conservative, isn't seen as sort of this establishment flip-flopping boogeyman who nobody can trust, which is what, you know, many of the critics say about McCarthy, right? He comes in as a Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor guy, then he's a Trump guy, then he criticizes Trump after January 6th, then he goes down to Mar-a-Lago. So why not step aside and have Steve Scalise do this job? Well, I mean, I think it's a good question.

I'd say the easy and short answer is Kevin McCarthy has worked his entire life to get to this moment. And he's not going to give it up. You saw the kinds of things that McCarthy did in the two years preceding this moment to set himself up to be this guy. You know, his, we've talked about it here before, but his trip down. down to Mar-a-Lago within just a few weeks of Donald Trump inciting the violence on Capitol Hill and McCarthy holding Trump responsible for inciting the violence on Capitol Hill was certainly the first step and I think what turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. So I think that's the short and easy answer is McCarthy just wants this too bad.

But I mean, at some point he's given away the whole farm. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. And it's not about running the house. It's about Kevin McCarthy being speaker. I mean, it is the ultimate I need to get to the destination objective than more than I think, really more than anything else. I mean, Kevin McCarthy talked to people, talk to virtually any House Republican, including people who support Kevin McCarthy. And they will tell you he just really doesn't believe anything. This is not somebody who has deep principles. It's not somebody who's guided

by strong policy views. He's bored by policy. If you talk to him about policy, doesn't care. This is a guy who's, who's, I think, all about power and who wants the title, wants the chair. And if it means- No matter how weak the position will be, no matter how short the 10-year will be. One of the, one of the, reportedly, one of the most recent concessions was in effect that any single member of the house could, uh, could offer a motion to vacate, basically like, boot the speaker. It, the, the, the previous threat. threshold had been five. And according to a lot of reporting, McCarthy had sort of said, that's a red line. We're not going below five no matter what. And now, again, reportedly,

they are at one. I mean, that really has the effect of weakening the speaker at any moment, at any person could call them back. So I think that's the first part of the answer. The second part of the answer is, I do think you're right that Scalise is viewed more of a consensus candidate. And it's certainly not the case that despite their public display of unity, Scalise and McCarthy are not that tight. Scalise is deep, deep skepticism of McCarthy, I would say, has been known to criticize them in the harshest possible ways in private conversations. And, you know, interesting, couple interesting tidbits about that. When McCarthy put out a list of 54 House Republicans who supported his bid for speaker, Steve Scalise was not on the list.

And this was at a time when he was being publicly floated as a potential alternative. Scalise did not sign this list of supporters for Kevin McCarthy. And then when Scalise gave a nominating speech for McCarthy earlier in this process, the speech was very heavy. the reasons that Republicans should get together and move beyond this difficult moment and very light to the point of almost not having any language extolling the virtues of Kevin McCarthy or praising Kevin McCarthy as a leader.

And it was one of those moments where he said more by what he didn't say than by what he actually said. The final point is, I think, if you're a Republican, Scalise comes with his own baggage. Remember, this is somebody who reportedly said, he's from Louisiana, said a couple decades ago, I'm David Duke without the baggage. So on a policy side, if you're a Republican party...

But he doesn't have the baggage, Steve, so it's good. Well, if you're a, if you're a moderate or a, you know, a sane conservative in the House of Representatives, and you look back at what just happened in the 2022 midterms, you know, is that, is that what you're looking for? Hard to make an argument that it is. But then again, none of this is what you're looking for if you actually are processing the lessons of 2022. All right, Jonah.

I want to rehash a bit of our conversation from Dispatch Live on Tuesday night. As you said, first of all, this group of 20-21, if you count the present voter, Congresswoman from Indiana, who is potentially looking at that open Senate seat in 2020, 24, which I mentioned because it's interesting to me that if you believe you're about to run in a Republican primary in Indiana, you see this as a defining vote potentially, although

voting present is a vote against McCarthy, if you're on the Republican side, if you're on the Democratic side, interestingly, it's a vote for McCarthy. So of those, let's call them 21, A, there's not a clear ideological through line. You have Lauren Bobert, Matt Gates in the never Kevin crowd, but you have Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Jordan, voting for Kevin McCarthy. It's not just Trump or not Trump or more conservative or less conservative. And I think even within the 21, there's a lot of different animating principles. As you said, Chip Roy stands out as sort of having an intellectual or principle bent, I guess is a better term, behind the movement that he's leading on this that's

different maybe than some of the nihilists. And I thought that the point that you made about the overall changes and what it means to be a junior or relatively junior member of Congress in 2023. And how different that is than what it was to be a junior member of Congress in 1993 or even a senior member of Congress is part of what gets us here. And it's worth diving into that. we can think more deeply about, it's not just Trump that causes this revolt to happen. There's other factors. Is that the question? Yes.

Put question mark here. Where to begin on this? I just wrote a G-file about how I've actually made peace with this whole thing. I think this is actually what democracy looks like. And this is every bit as much as a presidential inauguration, the peaceful transnational, of power. And so here you have even people who were trying, who were complicit in an attempted non-peaceful overthrow of power in a certain sense, obeying the rules to try and figure out how to, you know, appoint someone from a different party than the current one that runs it

in Congress. And if it's really the thing that runs Congress, is the chief, is the first branch of government and it's more powerful branch of government. And as if anything, the real source of political authority in this country. So I kind of like the spectacle. I like the arguments that Chip Roy and those guys are making. I think they're strategically ill-informed. But the reason why this is such a mess is because Congress is weak. And Congress is weak in part because it has been run dictatorially by speakers for the last 20 years,

particularly Nancy Pelosi. And this is where I kind of disagree with Steve a little bit. I mean, I get the argument that McCarthy is agreeing to weaken the speaker. ship, I just couldn't give a rat's ass. And I think that in some ways, if it strengthens committees and brings back process, then I think that's a good thing.

I don't think this distinction between one and five votes to vacate the chair matters, because if you can get, like, those five Never Kevins would vote as a group anyway, and you could always get to, five hotheads and morons on almost anything. So who cares? It's like one is as good as five.

And it doesn't mean you ought to get, one person gets to get to topple the speaker. It means one person gets to vote to topple the speaker. And so like maybe all of a sudden giving rank and file members responsibility will make them act more responsibly. It's a pipe dream. Anyway, to get to your actual question, if I understand it correctly, because Congress is so unbelievably dysfunctional,

it attracts people who want to be performative. It attracts people who want to leap into the limelight and say, look at me, look at me. And because there's not a real legislative agenda that you can accomplish as a member of Congress anymore. There's not a real legislative process, right? I mean, that's where those guys are totally right about omnibus stuff, right? I mean, like, they're only like four times in the last 20 years

as Congress actually proposed and voted on a real budget. There is no coherence to the legislative process the way it was once understood. You know, as we were saying the other night, there was a time in this country where, like, when I first came to Washington, you could have an argument about whether Dan and were Austin Kowski, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was more powerful than Tip O'Neill, the Speaker, the House.

I'm not saying that was necessarily all a good thing, but, you know, Paul Ryan used to at least make the point that committee chairs are actually experts in legislation because they study it all week long and they work on it all week long. And the idea that you're going to replace committee chairs with 28-year-old staffers in the Speaker's office is just really stupid.

And it's undemocratic and it's unaccountable. And it breeds this kind of dysfunction. where I think McCarthy in that crowd have made are making a colossal blunder is this, if I understand it correctly, this deal about the Congressional Leadership Fund and Club for Growth where they're basically going to give a free pass

or make it much easier for more morons, gibbons, poltroons, and maroons to come into Congress in the form of, you know, more Lauren Roberts and more Marjorie Taylor Greens by saying that leadership will no longer try to encourage electable good candidates

they will let a thousand magas bloom and I think that is insane I think this is you know I'm a broken record on part of the problem this country is a big part of the problems this country has is weak parties it's funny last night I'm on CNN we're all talking about oh my god the club of growth

has weighed in oh my god the congressional leadership super PAC has weighed in and like no one's talking about the Republican Party weighing it. Like if there was an actual GOP establishment, they'd be working phone banks to muster support for McCarthy and all the got. There's no party. There's no establishment. And so this is the kind of Congress you get when there's no one willing to assert

institutional authority for the long-term interests of various institutions like Congress or the Republican Party. So, Steve, seeing this as a symptom rather than the problem itself, what does it mean for the next two years of Congress? I don't think it changes a ton. I mean, depending, you know, a lot of this depends on the details, like how does this actually work out. But let's say for the sake of discussion that these concessions work that Kevin McCarthy can bring over enough of the... never, Kevin, or at least the 20 folks who had voted to block him repeatedly so that Kevin McCarthy ends up being speaker. I don't, by the way, think that's the likeliest outcome here still. But let's say for the sake of discussion that it is, I don't know that it has a,

that it makes a tremendous amount of difference in what happens over the next couple of years because I think we were going to see chaos no matter what, right? I mean, To Jonah's point, it is the case that a small number of obstreperous Republicans can block anything, get together and create havoc. That was the case before, that's the case now. I think lowering the threshold, either on the motion to vacate or on some of these other things that, at least in my view, seems to empower them more, just makes it easier,

makes the process easier for them. There was a comment from someone in an Axios piece this morning. We're recording this mid-Thursday morning about how typically the vote for speaker is literally the easiest vote in any particular Congress. That still may be true. And it doesn't bode well for actually getting. getting anything done, because you can imagine if these are the kinds of fights on issues like this, what happens with the debt ceiling boat, for instance?

That's what this seems to be all about to me. I mean, when you hear Chip Roy explain his reservations about Kevin McCarthy, all I hear is debt ceiling, debt ceiling, debt ceiling. And in some ways, it's like a direct line from the Tea Party movement, which Chip really came up during, you know, in terms of his political career, that this is actually going back to 2009. And the problem is that it keeps falling off the cliff at the debt ceiling talks instead of dealing with it at any time before that. And I think that's part of the beef with McCarthy is that you had all this time to deal with it and to make a strong line or to have solutions.

And instead, we're going to come up on the debt ceiling. And once again, everyone's going to be pressured to vote to increase it because we don't. have a choice, and at least that's what you're going to tell everyone, when we did have a choice before the day the debt ceiling needed to be raised. So I think, I mean, I think both of your points about Chip, I think you're right. I mean, I think he's acting out of more conviction and principle than most of the people who are doing the same way. You can disagree with that conviction and that principle, by the way. Right. And look, and he's been, he's been a lot more maga than I would say, I would have expected at beginning of this as somebody who thinks that

that he really cares about limiting the size and scope of government. But if he's making those arguments on the debt ceiling stuff for the purposes of limiting government, fair enough. I mean, I'm pretty sympathetic to doing as much as we can to limit the size and scope of government. I don't think that's what's happening with virtually every other Republican or to the extent that it is happening with other Republicans in the House. They were silent about the size and scope of government throughout the Trump years.

And now they're suddenly concerned about it when they're. They think they can use it as a political issue under Joe Biden. Now, look, there's a lot to criticize. Regardless, we're going to be, we're hurtling toward that debt ceiling vote. And if this is the speakership vote, I mean, should we all be pretty concerned about the debt ceiling vote? We should be. And look, the way that we've done the debt ceiling over the past 15 years has been stupid.

Raising the debt ceiling, as we've talked about here before, raising the debt ceiling, allows the U.S. government to make good on obligations, it's already undertaken. So if you want to have a fight about limiting the size of government, have a fight on the front end. You can't do it on the back end. And the potential consequences, once you get past these extra measures the U.S. government can take,

I think are catastrophic. I think the people who are worried about, you know, real calamity if we were to default, I think they're right. But at the same time, just continuing to spend like there are no limits on our spending is pretty silly. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is, the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious.

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fractures and this is what happens is instead of you know small tectonic bumps you have an earthquake and this earthquake happened to fall in the speakership boat does that mean they are dealing with it right now and everyone's going to work it out and hold hands and sing kumbaya however this may end on the back end because some of the things that these colleagues are saying about each other don't feel very collegial and i'm not sure if a week from now and this has all been resolved one way or the other, those hard feelings are going to be better rather than worse. Yeah, I don't see Dan Crenshaw and Lauren Boer going out, you know, playing to play pool anytime soon.

First of all, I suspect that this whole drama will be another one of these things that seemed hugely important in the moment that two weeks later were like, oh, yeah, that happened. which is not to dismiss it entirely because it's politically very significant. It's just like I'm rebelling against all of the people talking about the people's business can't get done. You know, like you hear all of this sort of verbiage

as if like the house hasn't convened on January 8th instead of January 3rd before. and like nothing can get done anyway because the Senate isn't even in session yet. I mean, it just... Also, they're really eager to get those Hunter Biden investigations underway? Exactly. You know, there's so much sort of...

It's like... One of the things that's been very interesting to me about this is the way in which people are trying to make this event more important than it is and to see how they frame it to make it seem more important. Like Newt Gingrich has literally said... The war on Kevin McCarthy is a war on conservatism on the Republican Party and really on the country. And, like, that is a trifecta of wrongness.

And anyway, so, like, I think that this is one of these things where, in terms of the functioning of the house, there is going to be, there's probably going to be a, it's not a kumbaya moment. It is going to be a sort of, let's restock the shells with ammo moment that looks like a, kumbaya moment where everyone is sort of like you know that sort of anchorman fight scene was fun but we need to cool things down for a little while

and seem like we're all on the same page but there are going to be long memories long after this I have a question for you guys though I think it's a small indication of liberal media bias which is not the point I want to get at but when ever the issue of should Democrats do something constructive

that will be perceived as letting the Republicans out of the trap everyone thinks that that's just insane and I get the argument that it's politically insane right? I get it and I think it's probably correct that it's politically insane. The Democrats are loving this

and their bases loving this and all the rest but I can make a case for even a cynical maneuver by the Democrats that would look more like responsible governing which is to say why can't the Democrats offer some sort of power sharing thing sort of like McConnell and Schumer had one for the Senate where they offer something that seems entirely

reasonable to a normal person maybe not to me maybe not to the base of the Republican Party or maybe not the basis of the Democratic Party, but to a normal person who will always say to you when you run into them in the airport, why can't those guys in Washington just do their jobs? Make that kind of offer and then let the Republicans reject it, right? Because then you get the word, we took the high road, cred,

and Republicans look even pettier. and I just don't see the downside of it. And moreover, I don't see what the calamity would be if the Democrats did actually did a serious, if there actually was a serious effort. Like Nancy Pelosi says, this is leadership. Let the Republicans figure out their own thing.

That's not leadership. I mean, like, if a bunch of crazy, if a bunch of goofball kids are behaving like idiots, it's not leadership to say, well, just let them run their course. us, right? You intervene and you do something. And I sincerely think that, like, I'm a very conservative dude, but I would rather work with a Tim Ryan-like Democrat than Lauren Bobert who thinks, like, if only, it was

literally said, if only Jesus had an AK-40, had an AR-15 to defend his rights, everything would have worked out better. I mean, like, what is wrong with this idea of actually proposing some sort of bipartisan? partisan thing, either on merits or on some sort of cynical level. See, what I find fascinating is at some point, if the 2021 hold in their no votes, Kevin McCarthy ends up against a wall. Now, we saw last night, he is, I mean, I think at this point he's given away everything he has.

There's nothing left in terms of their demands. At some point, this isn't about demand. They just don't want Kevin McCarthy a speaker. Okay. So at that point, Kevin McCarthy's up against the wall. And he has said he would not work with Democrats in order to get the speakership. But as Steve said, this is like all he's ever wanted since, you know, third grade staring up at his bedroom ceiling or whatever. And if it's a choice between Kevin McCarthy having the title speaker while cutting a deal with 20 Democrats to vote present to lower the overall bar needed to win the speakership.

And in order to get that deal, as you said, maybe there's some sort of power sharing agreement, some committee chairmanship that go to Democrats, whatever that may look like. I mean, is there anything more catastrophic when the alternative is a Steve Scalese speakership that all the Republicans are on board with no deal with Democrats needed? I mean, doesn't that just make it the ultimate? This was only about Kevin McCarthy having the title speaker for however short a period that may last with however little. actual accomplishment may go along with that. So I don't see any world in which that can happen because at some point he loses way more than 20 votes after he cuts that deal

because the alternative is so easy and it's right there. The only way at this point I think you end up with Kevin McCarthy is a speaker is because he gives away everything. They know he won't be speaker for long. I mean, I actually don't see it really working out very well. He offered a one-term term term limit for his speakership in one of these negotiations, which is, I mean, it's... He wants to be a sino, a speaker in name only. But the Republican caucus has to reject that at some point, don't they, Steve?

I don't know. I'm not going to answer your question because I want to ask you guys a question. Oh, my God. At some point, would it make sense? Jonah just did that, whatever. You're a hijacker or two. Jonah's a hijacker to the Kevin McCarthy of hosts. You already have your own pod.

You already have your own podcast. You're taking over this one, too. So at some point, my question to you is, at some point, would it make sense for Democrats? Again, setting aside what the right thing to do is, but for political purposes, wouldn't it make sense for Democrats, let's say on the seventh or eighth vote if McCarthy doesn't remove himself? There's no progress. For Democrats to just say, maybe using some of the arguments, that Jonah just suggested

to release, for Democratic leadership, to release some of their members, to vote to make Kevin McCarthy speaker. Because if they do that, he's so damaged right now because of this process, and nobody has any expectation

that he's going to be able to do anything anyway. Right. Wouldn't they rather have a weak speaker? A weak speaker and a speaker that they know the MAGA crowd would say for everything he says and does for two years this is a Democrat-aided speaker and Kevin McCarthy

he's doing the bidding of liberals he's I mean isn't there at some point do they get to that point so I know Steve hasn't seen this movie but Jonah do you remember the movie election with Reese Witherspoon back in the 90s Tracy Flick

yeah they're making a sequel by the way with Reese Witherspoon yeah yeah at some point Kevin McCarthy has become Tracy Flick I think the Democrats can't stand him. So, like, even though that makes political, rational sense in some ways, like, what happens when you just really don't like the guy?

Yeah, no, I mean, to just compound Steve's lostness in pop culture, there's a certain bit of, like, Seinfeld returning the code for spite thing because a big chunk of the people who are against McCarthy, they won't take yes for an answer, right? And, like, it's very difficult, to negotiate with people who won't take yes for an answer

and particularly who came in with no conception of what yes is or what victory looks like and they're still not willing to take yes for an answer and so like the reality is they want to get rid of Kevin McCarthy for spite. I have friends a couple friends who work on the Hill and you know

they just tell me that people just don't like Kevin McCarthy. It's like they don't trust him. He tells people what they want to hear and then he doesn't follow through and promises. And I think, you know, there are only two ways to sort of be a speaker that people want are three. One is being like really effective, which implies that you keep your word and you, you know, you execute and all that kind of stuff. Two is to actually, it also implies being someone that you fear. No one fears them. And then the other thing is to be ideologically committed because then,

even if you can't get concessions out of the guy, you know where his, you know, his go no farther points are. McGovern McCarthy has none of those things. It's very much like, at least he's perceived not to. It's like there's always been this debate about people who want to be president to be president and people want to be president to do things as president. And Kevin McCarthy sort of has this kind of like he needs this on his resume because he's such a creature of Capitol Hill

that he just, it's like it's his MacGuffin. You know, it's just like the thing that his character needs to, it's his ring of power and he's Golem. All right, I'm taking it back, the hostship. I have two questions on this, and then I want to move on to some other topics.

The first question is, is there a world in which Democrats all start voting for where Don Bacon or some sort of extreme centrist Republican extreme centrist I love it raging moderates

let me rephrase that is is there a possibility that the next speaker of the House is someone who hasn't who we haven't talked about who hasn't been on the nomination names yet yes yeah I think so I think

jumping in first I think it's less likely to be that kind of an arrangement and more likely to be sort of an alternative to McCarthy who Republicans, if Republicans get to the point where they tire of this process and sort of feel like they need to move forward, is there somebody who Republicans can turn to who's not Kevin McCarthy, maybe who's not Steve Scalise, and say, you know, be a caretaker speaker, help us get through this. You know, names like Patrick McHenry come up.

up. I've heard Drew Ferguson, you know, I think there are a handful of other people who are sort of well respected within the conference. Mike Gallagher, I saw somebody mention Mike Gallagher today. I think it would be a thankless job. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of those people who are smart decide that it's a total loser and they didn't want to do it. But it seems to me entirely possible that that's where this ends up. All right. Last question on this. We haven't talked about Donald Trump. Donald Trump, after the first day of failed voting, comes out sort of late in the evening with a full endorsement of Kevin McCarthy, doesn't move a single vote, and in fact, McCarthy loses an additional vote the next day.

What is that, does it say anything about Donald Trump's changing sway within Republican Party? I mean, these are the House Republicans, 20 of whom at least weren't interested in what Donald Trump said, at least not enough to change their vote. At the same time, Donald Trump also didn't spend the last three months exactly, you know, Lyndon Johnson-style twisting arms to try to help Kevin McCarthy. Is it just that nobody thinks Donald Trump really means it? Jonah. I think yes to all the above.

I think you can overread how bad this is for Trump. I think it's bad. I mean, this has been a bad week for Trump. I mean, I don't actually believe that Trump cares whether Kevin McCarthy is speaker. Oh, of course not. Yeah. Of course not. But I think this has definitely been a bad week for Trump for big long-term historical reasons

and also just sort of practical politics reasons. First of all, this whole mess is the result of him screwing up the 2022 midterms. if Kevin McCarthy and Mitch Daniel and Mitch McConnell could have just simply picked the candidates they wanted to run from primary straight through to general they would have enough extra seats to both be in power today this is you know this is the vengeance

on the of the of the Maga detritus that is visiting upon Kevin McCarthy and but moreover though, I think you hit on the reason why it's not as bad as some people claim it is or want it to be for Trump, which is that I don't think anybody believes Trump cared. And this is not really, in much the same way that like he doesn't get, he gets blame from political professionals, but not from the sort of rank and file people as much as he should for how much he screwed up the 2022 midterms.

but because they just they don't see it as his fault in some bizarre way and I think that like this is one of these things where because it's not really about Donald Trump and Donald Trump doesn't stake his ego on it it kind of just sort of evaporates a little bit but that said what we're seeing now

is what Trumpism without Trump looks like right because this has all been MAGA on MAGA violence half the House Freedom Caucus are voting from McCarthy half aren't I don't know if those are exact numbers, but it's close. You know, Marjorie Taylor Green versus Lauren Bobert is, you know, it's Iran-Iraq war for people like me.

And I think that this is just simply a sign that while Trumpism as a psychological phenomenon and a populist approach to politics will outlive Trump, we are in the sort of like Trump is in the rearview mirror stage for a lot of it because if you're willing to sort of if Bobert is willing to call Trump and say screw you I'm sticking to my guns that means he's just not the Trump he was three years ago so I want to put a pin in this discussion

because I think we need to talk about it more next week hopefully we'll have a speaker by that point but more importantly we'll know what the rules for the next Congress are because McCarthy's making all these deals that could have actually an enormous impact to Jonah's point about the last 20 years of the House really being consolidated into basically just the speaker and taking away a lot of the legislative function

of the other 434 folks and that's led to then the types of people who want to run for Congress in the first place and changed the whole body. If some of these changes actually do come to pass, It'll be fascinating to see whether we go back to that pre-Newt Gingrich-ish shift and whether the result of that

is actually in a house this closely divided as our own Haley Bird was writing, whether in fact it's going to empower Democrats a lot more or, to put it differently, like empower Democrats this time, but it empower the minority party if they can just scoop up a few members from the other side. So I want to talk about that next time. But with our time remaining, Steve, you wanted to talk potentially about Biden re-election prospects. This has been a great week

for Joe Biden because there have been no headlines about Joe Biden. Right. And the headlines that there have been, or at least the articles that have been written, have Joe Biden just quietly performing the duties of president. It's been an interesting three months for Joe Biden. you know, Sarah, you and I have this bet that neither Trump nor Biden will be the nominees of their respective parties. I feel very good about the Trump side of that bet. I feel less good about the Biden side of that bet than I did when I made it. And I think he was in some ways, if you go back to the summer of 2022, the weaker of the two prospective nominees, given where he was and given the course of the country.

But I don't think, I think there was an open question before the 2020 terms in Biden's own mind about whether he was going to run. I think there were, he was hearing from some advisors that he should take a deep breath and think hard about running, both because of his age and because criticism that he's taken, but also because of the polling numbers suggested that he could well. lose. Those numbers have shifted a bit. His approvals are slightly higher. The direction of the country numbers are very slightly higher, not much higher. But I think Biden, particularly in the context of the Democratic Party, is in a much stronger position today because he presided over these midterm elections. And a lot of the conversation that you heard from Democratic strategists and office holders who were frustrated with him, who, you know, were concerned that if he stepped aside,

Kamala Harris wasn't up to the job, that there could be a real free-for-all in a Democratic primary. You don't hear that very much talking to them these days. And I think it's a pretty interesting change. I happen to think that Biden will be a weak nominee and a weak presidential candidate. A lot can happen between now and November 2024, of course.

But some of those fundamentals haven't changed much. And I think the prospect that we could be headed into a recession in 2023 could weaken his hand considerably. But he seems to be in a much stronger position today than he was shortly before the election in November and certainly than he was last summer. I agree with you if you're looking, if you're holding Biden as the as the, constant, right? If you're isolating him as the variable. But I think that Biden's prospects to run for re-election have always been sort of paired with the covariant, which is or covariable, which is Trump, right? Trump looks really bad for re-election right now. Like, no one cares that he announced. No one cares that he's the only one who announced. He's looking

pretty impotent and kind of pathetic. And if the reporting is right, Biden has always said, that if Trump runs, he runs, because he thinks it's like his mission on earth to keep Trump from ever returning to the presidency, and he's convinced himself based on a data sample of one that he's the only person that can stop Trump from being president. And maybe he is. I mean, I think it would be kind of hilarious if for the second time or third time in the decade, we, you know, like in 2016, you had the most unpopular political person in the country running against the second most unpopular political person in the country

and it would be interesting to see us and terrifying to see us nominate two essentially octogenarians or near octogenarians who will have the only chance of losing to the other because I think that if Trump is not the nominee if it's a DeSantis and you know inshalla it's Mitch Daniels or whatever I think Biden losing loses pretty badly. I think Biden needs Donald Trump

to be the nominee to be reelected. And he may know that. And his wife may be like, hey, look, you're old. You're kind of having a rough time. I understand if it's to stop Donald Trump from winning, it's worth running again. But otherwise, maybe you should pass the torch. And so I don't know.

I kind of think this just makes the whole game theory a lot more complicated to figure out. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.

slash Yannex. I've got another question for you, which is Debbie Stabenow, the senator from Michigan, just announced that she won't be seeking re-election, opening up. a Senate seat in Michigan, I'm curious, is Pete Buttigieg, who moved from Indiana to Michigan recently, is he Hillary Clinton goes to Chappaqua? Or do, is there still some politics of carpetbagging? Or are we past that? That everyone's national now.

I didn't know. I missed this entirely that you moved to Michigan. I think the carpet bagging thing is real in some places and not in other places. Like, it didn't hurt Hillary at all that she was a carpet breaker in New York because New York has got such a cosmopolitan globalist vote in ethos. But, like, we know it hurt Dr. Oz terribly that he was from New Jersey and running for Senate and Pennsylvania. I just don't know enough about Michigan to have a good insight on that.

Buttigieg presumably would handle the carpet bagging to a little better than Dr. Oz did. He made really every mistake you could possibly be mistake on that issue specifically going in. Look, I think that's it. First of all, it's interesting that Debbie Stabenow would decide

not to run for re-election in that political environment. There are many, many reasons that she would make such a decision. But the political environment in Democrats in 2024, when she was an incumbent, I think,

she had every reason to believe that she could be re-elected. But we didn't see Democratic retirements in 2022. And it's one of the reasons that Democrats overperformed. It will be interesting to see if she is the first of several. There are really difficult races for Democrats on the Senate side. Republicans have a very nice landscape, as Sarah, as you've written about in the sweep. So it'd be interesting to see if she's sort of the beginning of a trend.

I should say an open seat will make it much more attractive to some prospective Republican candidates as well. Peter Meyer, who lost his reelect bid for the House when he was beaten in a primary by a Supermaga candidate who then went on to lose in a general election, I would think has lots of cross-party appeal. He's sort of sane, common sense, Midwesterner, probably reasonable name ID in the state. I would imagine that he would give it a pretty close look.

And then John James, who just elected to the House, but somebody that Republicans have been touting for several years as a potential sort of face of a new Republican Party. And previous candidate. Yes, previous candidate. Yep, previous candidate. Again, pretty high name ID. I would imagine that he would get some encouragement to run. I can say I'll read a tweet from someone who will soon be announced as a new dispatch staffer.

David Drucker is tweeting. I asked John James if he has any interest in the third Michigan Senate bid in 2024 given the open seat and he said look I haven't even been sworn into Congress yet so here's my plan get sworn in and get to work serving the people of michigan's 10th district um so that sounds like running this for senate to me sounds like running for senate to me uh i did bury the news there we are we are excited to have uh david drucker author of in trump's shadow incredibly well sourced uh reporter has been with the Washington Examiner for several years. We're very excited to be adding him to our political reporting team

here in the next few weeks as we continue to beef up and build out so that we can do a good job of covering exactly these kinds of things over the next couple of years and that lead up to 2024. All right. Last, we've changed our last topic instead of not worth your time to not worth your time, question mark. So here's my question to you both. In the last week, you know, Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field

at an NFL game, cardiac arrest. ABC, we lost a family member, our executive producer, for this week. 37 years old, cardiac arrest. And online, You know, in sort of the Twitter sphere, there's this, you know, raging, deeply unpleasant thing going on where the conversation immediately turns to vaccines and that somehow if you go through someone's old Instagram,

you can prove that they went to a place that required vaccine. Therefore, they had the vaccine and this is what caused the cardiac arrest in a, you know, otherwise healthy 37-year-old, male, I mean, according to, again, people who've never met him and know nothing about his medical history, is this just a conversation happening on Twitter? And I really need you to say yes. The rest of the country, like, has everyone just memory hold every time famous, not famous athletes, young people used to have cardiac arrest in sporting events on and off the field.

Really? Is this the conversation we're having every time some family experiences just an unspeakable tragedy now? I think it's, I think it's mostly just a Twitter thing. Okay, that makes me happen. I think it's,

um, it's Alex Berenson and Charlie Kirk and a few other grotesquely irresponsible, ghoulish people, um, going around trying to, make spurious arguments where they make anecdotes into data. And it works on Twitter because Twitter doesn't require an argument.

And you can't do it in an op-ed because you'd have to actually Marshall Facts. You can't do it on TV because you'd have to be, at least on a lot of TV shows, have be questioned about what you're saying. And have some background and some health? Yeah. So I think it's just one of the sicker. sadly not the sickest, but one of the sicker parts

of the social media Twitter universe. And I thought you were going to talk about what this means for football and all that kind of stuff. But like I'm disgusted by the desire to scare people out of taking vaccines.

I wish that if it was going to still be a thing, it would be a thing of the left like it was prior to COVID or largely a thing I left. But yeah, I just, you know, I don't, I just I don't think it's something that has real traction in real life. I just think it's so weird, even if you didn't know the person. And I get it that that's, you know, I did know Dax.

But the first thing you see when you see that a mother and her two children under two years old don't have a father is to think, aha, finally. I have a good talking point for my. I mean, like literally, yes, I've got my, yeah, it's gross. Yeah, and I'm going to get on Twitter and talk about it. And this isn't an area that I've studied with any sort of academic background. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a epidemiologist.

Like, nothing. I just really want this to work out for me. Anyway, but Steve, if you have thoughts about the NFL and what DeMar Hamlin means more broadly, but again, I think until you actually know what happened, it's a little hard to say that this means anything for the NFL because, again, sadly, tragically, horribly, this actually does happen with relative frequency. It's obviously very rare overall, but sometimes young people have cardiac arrest. Yeah, I mean, just briefly first on the question of Twitter and vaccines,

I mean, as most people who listen to this podcast regularly or read our work in text, no, we generally try to avoid questioning or making assumptions about motives and largely try to avoid, name calling except when Jonah, what did you say, Maltruins and Maroons and Poultrunes and and Gibbons and scumbags. But I think it's totally appropriate here. I mean, these people are the lowest form of humanity and they deserve every, every, everything we can pile on them.

I do think it's worth spending a minute just maybe to, to, to, on motives for, for a second, because I think it could be, uh, it could be helpful. In this game where Twitter is, you know, the main medium or one of the main media for expanding your outreach or your influence, so little of what these actors do is about actually telling the truth or communicating what they really believe. It is about getting engagement. It is about getting other people to either read. retweet them favorably spread their message or I think just as effective from their

standpoint getting people to attack them because then they're at the center of the conversation their name is out there and they can build an audience among their people and then try to monetize that audience. I think that's what we've seen. I think that's part of what we're seeing on Capitol Hill with some of the shenanigans here. I mean, Matt Gates has been sending out fundraising emails. I stood up to Kevin McCarthy. I mean, so much of what we see is this performative politics. But it really reaches its most grotesque form on something like this, where there's just

bad and irresponsible. It's not even speculation. I don't even know what to call it. Thinking out loud. Just the really important point to make about the anti-vax heart attack thing is, that it would be just as evil and irresponsible and ghoulish if they turned out to be correct that this was somehow tied to have in the vaccine

because they don't know, right? They just want it to be true and they want you to be afraid of the vaccine. It doesn't, like, I know one of these times I'm going to mock or criticize somebody who does this and then six months from now it's going to turn out after an autopsy that, hey, it turns out it was true. And they're going to say, ah, I've been vindicated.

No, because it was, you had to wait, six months to have any idea of what the truth was, which makes you still a jackass. Well, on that note, interesting 2023 so far, huh? Interesting is one way to put it. This isn't quite what I was expecting for the first few days. We have David French going to the New York Times, David Drucker coming to us. We have no speaker of the house. Huh.

David French, by the way, will still continue with advisory opinions. And you're still going to hear him here from time to time as well. He's actually just not on today because he is traveling per usual. But he'll be back next week on this podcast. So, and in the meantime, super fun for him. Sad for us. Sad for us, but if I can add it, it's definitely sad for us. We should be clear about that.

We wish you were staying. We'd like to have him. But the quality of our pop culture takes is going on. up one standard devi? I mean, for sure, and I don't even know anything about pop culture, but I'm certain that that's true. But I have to say, I mean, this is something I was thinking about yesterday, and I hate to give Jonah credit for this.

But when we first, I mean, when I say first, I mean, when we really, really first had conversations about trying to launch this thing and build a company, I think one of the things that Jonah said that stuck with me then was I'm really interested in building an institution. and building a place that, you know, has some staying power and that can amplify good arguments well beyond what's happening inside the confines of the institution itself. And I would say what we're seeing with David is certainly a vindication, at least to some degree, of that vision.

Now, that's not to say that the New York Times wouldn't have been interested in David if he hadn't spent the last three plus years helping us build this and doing all of it. terrific work for us, but I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a pretty, well, I'm mixed metaphors, pretty significant silver lining that the kinds of arguments that David has been making, you know, for us, with us for three years, National Review before that, are now going to get an audience of 11 million people on the pages in New York Times. We're going to hear from a thoughtful, sane, smart, conservative. So. And also there's something listeners don't know, which is that after every podcast, as soon as the recording stops, David looks at me and goes, good pod, no matter what. Like, it could be the worst pod. I have the flu and 102 fever

and was incoherent. He will always be like, that was a really good pod. And it's like this deeply annoying thing that he does. And so now, like, done. No more of that. He never, he never does it not at the end of this podcast. I will know. It's just, just A.O. literally has never, I've never done that other than for the obscure legal podcast. All right. I'm going to leave everyone with one thing, a great reporter Ariel Edwards Levy over at CNN. I have to give her credit for this.

But she said, can't believe we've gotten this far into the speakership negotiations without calling Chip Roy a quote, bargaining chip. Wow. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Happy New Year, everyone. I still don't understand why they didn't for the first round

all wear go bigs or go home t-shirts but That was a good one too. Although I think my favorite meme, Jonah, was the one you put in to our Slack channel where it had the, you know, where you verify that you're not a robot and you have to pick every picture of a speaker and it's a bunch of, you know,

audio speakers and two pictures of Kevin McCarthy that aren't checked. If you can't have fun doing this, guys, I mean, what's the point? All right. We will talk to you next week. Thank you for your support. Hope you're having a wonderful start to your new year. Give us a rating wherever you're listening to this. It helps other people find the podcast and become a member of the dispatch so you can hop in the comments section with your own hilarious speaker puns. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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