I’ll repeat something I’ve said elsewhere. I think some moderate Democrats should cross the aisle and vote for McCarthy. The reasons:
- A Democratic Speaker isn’t going to happen, merely because any Republicans who pull that sort of move are not just dead men walking electorally, but complete pariahs. After all, there is a Republican majority. That’s the type of thing where you loose your job and friends over.
- It would reduce the number of concessions that McCarthy makes to the ultra-right populist wing of his party. I’ve read some of them, and they’re downright stupid.
- The moderate Democrats could use it as very legitimate bragging rights in a future general election, to point out that they actually care about good governance over playing politics.
- It would leave the schism in the Republican Party in place instead of giving them a chance to bury their differences with the far right in control. This could help Democrats and relatively moderate Republicans stand up to the far right.
- It would be a show of bipartisanship in an age of fierce partisanship.
Is it hilarious watching the chickens come home to roost for the House Republicans? Of course it is. But in the end, the government needs to be run competently without being beholden to the nutters on the right.
Right, both the core of the republican party and the democrats are basically the same party that votes for the same policies and represent the same interests. Whether somebody is a democrat or a republican is just branding. As Julius Nyerere put it, “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
Both the far left and far right love to say that the two major parties are basically the same. The far right wants to rip the social safety net to shreds and establish Christian nationalism. The far left wants to turn the US into a communist state. When you’re that much out of the mainstream, any policies that are palatable to the mainstream are going to look like they’re just the same party, even when there are significant policies differences between the two. This meme lacks perspective and needs to die.
You gotta learn about anchoring bias. US mainstream is a far right regime by any sane definition. You endorse this regime because it benefits you personally, and pretend it’s somehow a sensible default while any deviation from it is somehow extreme. What you consider mainstream is shrinking by the day.
Meanwhile, there are mountains of studies showing that there is little variation in either domestic or foreign policy pursued by both parties. Claiming that there is any significant difference in policy is a flat out lie. The claim you regurgitate here lacks perspective and needs to die. Educate yourself about the regime that runs your country.
