Kendall Stanley: Ego and chaos

As I write this Kevin McCarthy is out as Speaker of the House, Matt Gaetz is talking to any media outlets available and two reps, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, are offering themselves up to run the House of Representatives.

What a clown show, which indeed is an insult to clowns.

Trying to please everyone when he ran for the House leadership post by promising whatever it took to get a vote, it was inevitable that sooner or later challenges to McCarthy’s leadership would come to haunt him.

Enter Gaetz, a rep from Florida who led what could be best called the chaos caucus and who singlehandedly brought McCarthy down.

He was able to do that because one of the concessions McCarthy made to gain the speakership was to agree that just one — one — of the members of the House could call for a vote to challenge the speaker. Gaetz didn’t disappoint.

The chaos caucus wasn’t happy with McCarthy, claiming he made secret deals with the administration over continuing funding of the government (they wanted huge cutbacks in spending) and going back to raising the debt limit.

Because he didn’t have a solid grip on his caucus and wasn’t trusted by House Democrats, McCarthy couldn’t look there for votes that would have kept him in the Speaker’s seat.

And now where do we go?

Scalise and Jordan are to the right of much of the Republican House, especially Jordan, with his penchant for calling for Congressional hearings at the drop of a hat. Think Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, and Hunter Biden, and any other situation good ole Jimbo gets under his bonnet to investigate.

It is never good when Congress is rudderless and compromise is a quaint idea rather than a goal.

That wouldn’t be a problem except a budget to keep the government going is needed by mid-November and there is still an overall desire to provide additional funding to Ukraine in its effort to send Russia packing.

Columnists have suggested moderate Republicans in the House should step up and promote a moderate/centrist for the post, which may have the side effect of drawing some Democratic support for such a candidate.

When those moderates complain that Democrats should have voted to help keep McCarthy in the speakership the question should be to what end? McCarthy too often struggled with governing because of the far-right caucus he was stuck with and one of their primary goals was to have nothing to do with House Democrats.

McCarthy got voted out of office because eight Republicans refused to vote for him. With just a three-vote Republican majority in the House he needed all the votes he could get, and he couldn’t get them.

Remember, it took 15 ballots for McCarthy to be elected speaker in the first place.

So now we play wait-and-see as to who takes the speaker’s job. If it’s Jordan you can bet it will be just as ugly as it was with McCarthy.

Seasonal

There are any number of maples that are looking a little, how to say it, blah this fall.

Then again, BAM, there is some beautiful color out there. Golfing around Northern Michigan courses provides some special views, such as the one hole at Treetops near Gaylord where you can look out from the tee box and see a solid wall of fall color. Really, it’s spectacular.

And there is the Tunnel of Trees, with its massive traffic as it seems the whole world would like to get a peek of this national treasure.

All that beauty, however, portends the obvious — winter.

I’ll grant you that some winter scenes can be breathtakingly beautiful and winter activities have their own charms — snowshoeing, cross-country and downhill skiing, ice fishing, skating and sledding — it’s all good.

For some of us, however, the season means one thing — we aren’t called snowbirds for nothing!

The desert, soon enough, will beckon.

Or as a friend noted on Facebook recently, “the snowbirds are returning and they’re a year older!”

Yes, we are indeed.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kendall Stanley: Ego and chaos