What’s your function?
Hooking up two parties and making ’em run right.
…
In the evenings, when I’m usually feeling wonky,
I love to take a walk through the Mall and to a honky tonky,
Where I often see an elephant and a donkey,
And I wonder, as I walk by, just what they could do if they’d talk to each other,
Although I know that’s an absurd thought.

Oh.  Hi!  Sorry.  My mind drifted there.

As I’ve followed coverage of the U.S. House drama, I’ve been flashing on a much more intelligent cartoon series.  Could we perhaps reboot Schoolhouse Rock to teach the folks in D.C. how to do their jobs?  I’m thinking “217 is a Magic Number” would be great place to start.  [Fun Random Fact: “3 is a Magic Number” was the pilot episode of Schoolhouse Rock.]

This morning, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) went down in flames yet again in his latest bid to become the Speaker of the House.  217 votes are required to win the Speakership and Jordan could have lost no more than 5 GOP votes without Democratic support.  Jordon lost 20 GOP votes in the first round, 22 in the second round, and 25 in today’s third round.  Based on that trend, Jordon’s vote total would have been zero by the 13^rd round.

In a contentious closed-door intra-party meeting after the floor vote, the GOP apparently decided to (a) move on from Jordan and (b) not work with Democrats.  Okay.  Fine.  But now what?

The idea was apparently floated to empower the temporary speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), to fill the role in a limited capacity through the end of the year.  That would have been non-optimal all around, but it would have been better than nothing.  (Nothing, however, was far better than Jordan.)  Democratic votes would have likely been required, but I suspect that could have been easily negotiated.

Instead, it was reported that numerous far-right Republicans nixed the mere idea of talking to <ptui!> Democrats.  They were seen waving pocket copies of the Constitution, presumably claiming that selecting a bipartisan Speaker was tantamount to treason.  Perhaps they should have read the document before waving it.

The Constitution, in fact, barely mentions the Speaker.  Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 states only that “the House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other officers.”  [Yeah, it actually says “chuse”.]  The power of the role is completely defined by the rules of the House, which the House can change at will.  And the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties at all.

So the GOP’s next step was to pick another candidate.  Cool.  But rather than break out the sleeping bags and hunker down at the Capitol until they identified their fairy-tale Speaker candidate who can get to 217 votes without Democratic support, Republicans instead decided to just go home… at about 2pm on a Friday… until Monday evening… when they’ll throw a “candidate forum” to talk about it again.

WTF.

The world looks like a D&D game and the GOP can’t even decide on a Dungeon Master.  But, hey, I guess everyone’s tired and they need to go home and take a nap.  Damn.  Haven’t any of these people ever had a real job with deadlines?

Even after nap-time, it is highly unlikely that the entrenched Republican camps will be able to find anyone that can get to 217 GOP votes.

The far-right Republicans who ousted Kevin McCarthy from the Speakership will complain, with no trace of irony, that a larger group of slightly more centrist Republicans are blocking their picks.  The centrists will remain so enraged at the far-right’s tactics, that they will never reward their behavior.  And, even if a miracle candidate did manage to emerge, his or her margin would be so thin that the Speakership would be as useless as it was under McCarthy.

Thus, the only reasonable path forward seems to be something along the lines of my previous proposal.  Centrist Republicans need to cut a deal with centrist Democrats and elect a Republican Speaker who is acceptable to both sides.  The fringes of both parties would likely be very unhappy, but sanity might prevail and the House could get back to work.

The question is:  How much longer is this going to take?

Well, now I’m stuck in committee,
And I’ll sit here and wait,
While a few key Congressmen discuss and debate.

I opined just yesterday that a bipartisan approach to electing a Speaker of the House could have been a path forward.  Given the continuing implosion of House Republicans, the idea might not be as far-fetched as I thought.

First, a quick landscape summary:

Republicans do hold a majority of seats in the U.S. House.  Republicans have 221 seats; Democrats have 212 seats; 2 seats are currently vacant.  Given 433 voting members, a majority is 217 votes.  Thus, Republicans do have the numerical ability on paper to do anything they want with zero Democratic support – including electing a Speaker.  However, given their very thin majority, Republicans alone can afford to lose the votes of only 5 of their own members.  (The math can change if not everyone is present and voting, but you get the idea.)

That margin is, of course, the cause of the current dysfunction.  Any five idiots can tank anything they want and demand anything they want.  And, unfortunately, there are way more than five idiots in the U.S. House.

To break their hold, the still-sane members of both parties need to find a way to work together.

It won’t be easy.

One problem is that 84% of House Republicans and 70% of House Democrats were not in Congress prior to 2010.  None of these newer members have any experience whatsoever with bipartisanship.  (There wasn’t rampant Congressional bipartisanship prior to 2010, but it did exist.)  They will need to be convinced that a bipartisan approach can actually work to everyone’s benefit.  They will need to be reminded that, while this has never been formally attempted in the U.S. House, numerous state legislatures have made variations of a bipartisan structure work quite well.

Here’s my brief outline of one possible bipartisan approach in the U.S. House:

• The bipartisan Speaker would be a Republican.  (See below.)  As noted, Republican hold a House majority and the Speaker should be a member of their party.  Democrats would just need to accept this.
• The bipartisan Speaker would need the support of 60% of House members.  That’s 260 votes.  This margin would force the selection of someone who is acceptable to a significant subset of both parties.  It would also negate the impact of both the far-right and the far-left fringes.  Finally, the possibility of another successful motion to vacate the Speakership would be greatly reduced.
• Republicans would retain a majority of seats in most House committees, perhaps even keeping the current memberships intact.  Changing things too much would be disruptive and a complete reorganization would take way too long.  Congress has work to do.  It’s also highly unlikely that enough Republicans would back any effort that would greatly reduce their committee power.  However, Democrats would need to be granted the same subpoena power as Republicans within each committee.
• Democratic would have some independent ability to force select measures directly to the House floor to be voted up or down by a cross-party majority.  While there are various ways to accomplish this, Democrats could be granted the ability bring bills out of the various committees without Republican votes and bypass both the Rules committee and the Speaker to bring such bills to the House floor for debate, amendments, and votes.  Some modification and streamlining of the current discharge petition might be appropriate, but that process would need to be stripped of its numerous partisan roadblocks.  A majority would still rule, but it would be majority of individuals… not simply the majority party’s leadership.
• Many Democrats may want the impeachment hearings halted, but they’ll frankly be better off just letting Republicans fumble that ball.

The first test of bipartisanship in the House would be the selection of a Speaker and none of the names currently in-play would be able to get any significant Democratic support.  My personal choice would be Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE).

Bacon is a retired Brigadier General, having served 30 years in the Air Force with several combat deployments.  He earned the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, two Legion of Merit awards, and two Bronze Stars. While often considered a moderate Republican, winning his seat in a competitive district, Bacon is still most definitely a conservative with “A” ratings from the Susan B. Anthony List and the NRA.  However, he tends to focus mostly on national defense, veterans, and agricultural issues, serving on the Agriculture and Armed Services committees in the House.  Most importantly in my book, Bacon did not support the 2020 Republican efforts to overthrow the presidential election and voted to certify the results.

Bacon is a conservative Republican and, given some of his positions, I likely wouldn’t vote for him if I lived in his Nebraska district.  However, I recognize that he seems to be an American first.  He’s a proven leader with a military background from a breadbasket state who has shown a willingness to work across the aisle to get things done.  We could do worse for a position that is second in line for the Presidency.  Much worse.  Think Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).  God help us if that happens.

A bipartisan solution to the current Speaker dilemma could not only be good in the near-term, it could be an institutional savior for the U.S. House.

The status quo isn’t working.  Maybe we should try something different.

The Orange Guy was indicted today by a federal grand jury on four felony counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

I’m getting on a plane in a few hours and don’t have the time to read the full indictment beforehand.  Thus, I’ll take the 45-page indictment with me as my travel entertainment.

I had planned to listen to a few NPR podcast episodes of “Wait, Wait, … Don’t Tell Me!” on the plane, but the indictment should be just as interesting.

For those of you who may not follow WWDTM (and I highly recommend it), it’s a smart comedic take on real news where you can test your news IQ against the panelists.  A recurring bit relays three news stories – none of which seems at all likely to be real.  Listeners try to pick the one weird story that is actually real news.

A former President of the United States has just been indicted for attempting a coup.

A few short years ago, I’d have never picked that as the true story.

Unfortunately, I started this post quite a while back.  Since February, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has been single-handedly blocking all senior military promotions.

The details of the “senatorial hold” that Tuberville is using aren’t all that important.  Suffice it to say that the rules of the Senate give enormous power to every individual Senator – power that is seldom used by either party and power that has NEVER been used to block the historically bipartisan approvals of senior military promotions as requested by the Pentagon.

Tuberville disagrees with the military’s policy of granting leave and covering travel expenses for military personnel who cannot legally obtain an abortion in the state where they are stationed.  He strongly opposes abortion under any circumstances.  Others of us strongly believe that government should play no role in restricting a woman’s right to control her own body.  The Supreme Court weighed in to make it a state-level issue and, regardless of how either side feels about that decision, that’s the law.

The problem is that military personnel can’t control where they and their families are stationed.

My father was a career Army officer who served in WWII and in Korea.  As an Army Brat (using the term we proudly use to describe ourselves), I always understood that my family and I were as much in the Army as my father.  While we received benefits from that service, they came with obligations and sacrifices.  We moved often; sometimes to wonderful places, sometimes to places not so wonderful.  We moved where we were told.  Are military personnel to be penalized for being where they are told to be?

Beyond the political arguments, however, is the damage that is being done to the military.  There are currently over 270 personnel actions being blocked by Tuberville and numerous senior posts are unfilled.  For example, we don’t have a Marine Commandant, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the first time since the Civil War.  Soon, we won’t have a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  Less experienced personnel are being forced to assume the duties of senior positions.  Military readiness is suffering, and military lives are being used to score political points.

Promotions are often necessary for personnel to assume certain leadership posts and those moves are also on hold.  Importantly, their family’s lives are on hold as well.  The military tries to move personnel between school years so as to not disrupt their children’s education.  So much for that.  A man who never served a day in the military is comfortable screwing over military personnel and their families for a political stunt.  There is simply no excuse for this crap.

So, what can be done?  Well, not much.  Procedural tools to get around Tuberville do exist, but they simply aren’t practical.

Alternatively, here’s a thought.

President Biden just this week reversed a decision made in the previous administration that would have moved the U.S. Space Command Headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama from its current location in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Tuberville is, of course, positively apoplectic about the decision to deprive his state of the HQ.  While I truly believe that keeping Space Command in Colorado was independently the correct choice, I’ll admit to being awash in schadenfreude… and I think we should take things even further.

Huntsville is currently the home of the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.  It includes the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, which falls under Space Command.  It’s also the place where the U.S. dumped a ton of WWII chemical agents (both Allied and Axis), and considerable groundwater and soil contamination is still a problem.

So, I propose that Space Command leaves the contaminated base to Alabama and moves the Redstone Arsenal to Fort Carson, Colorado.  That puts it in close proximity to Peterson Space Force Base – the home of Space Command.  It also means that Army personnel at the relocated Redstone Arsenal would then be subject to Colorado law.

Let’s see how Alabama likes losing the money that comes with hosting a major military base.  Maybe they can influence their Senator.

I keep getting asked why I’ve been silent about the Orange Guy’s federal indictment.  If I had anything new or clever to add to the conversation, I’d certainly speak up.  However, I can’t do much more than repeat what everyone already knows:

Yes, the indictment is more than damning.  But we already knew that he purposely took classified national security documents to his home and refused to return them when asked multiple times by various authorities.  He repeatedly admitted those facts in televised interviews.  That’s the prosecution’s case.  Period.  He himself signed the law that made such acts felonies and his own administration successfully prosecuted Espionage Act cases with those exact same facts.  The associated conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction charges also look provable, but the basic case is simply undeniable.  He’s guilty.

Yes, there is now a criminal case against him in federal court.  But it will drag on for a very long time – well past the 2024 elections. The judge running the show is the same judge that genuflected to him with respect to the documents retrieved via a valid search warrant.  It took a higher GOP-led court to definitively overrule her legally baseless decisions.  Once again, though, she’ll bend the law as much as she possibly can to try to help out.

No, the indictment didn’t hurt him with his base.  In fact, it helped.  Of course it did.  A slam dunk case for felony prosecution under the Espionage Act is now the center issue of his political campaign.  His cult is stronger than ever.

No, the indictment didn’t hurt him with many other Republican politicians.  In fact, it helped.  Of course it did.  Afraid of alienating OG’s base, people that know better are contorting themselves to ignore the facts and kiss his ass.  So much for the party of law and order.

Most of you have noticed that I haven’t used the Orange Guy’s name on this blog for over a year.  I’ll also note that the initial usage of OG was as an abbreviation of Original Gangster – which seems wildly appropriate for my usage.

My reason for avoiding the use of his name?  I’m just tired of hearing it.  So, so tired.  OG wants to be the center of attention and I’m loathe to contribute at all to that desire.  I’ll continue to reference OG herein as an unavoidable political construct, but I have no use at all for the individual.

To others who are still wasting their oxygen, might I suggest…

Stop it.  Just stop.  Stop.  STOP.  Just.  Stop.