#yakety sax at the house of representatives

[princesssarcastia]

not steve scalise dropping out of the race for speaker of the house tonight....lmao. every hour that passes we come closer to achieving the funniest possible outcome (kevin mccarthy is re-elected speaker of the house)

[princesssarcastia]

following congressional politics in the U.S. for the past couple years has been insane. it makes you feel insane. i feel like i'm losing my mind whenever I think about it for too long or too critically.

i want to take tom cotton and kevin mccarthy and jim jordan and shake them by their shoulders so I can determine whether they remember that donald trump and the republican base tried!! to kill them!! they tried to KILL them!! they constructed a gallows on the steps of the capitol and called for politicians to be hanged—and then then broke!! into!! the capitol!! and tried to find you!!! they tried to hunt you down!!!

what do you and your colleagues imagine would have happened if they succeeded in either breaking into the house chambers while members were still present, or in happening upon congresspeople as they were evacuating, or in finding members in the undisclosed locations they were evacuated to. look me in the eyes. look me in the eyes, mr. republican congressman, and tell me what you think would have happened to you if the rioters, the insurrectionists, the trump voters, had gotten ahold of you on january 6th, 2021.

i'll tell you what would have happened: they would have killed you. you would be dead, instead of standing here being shaken vigorously by a woman you've since driven insane.

maybe telling them you were a republican would have saved you—but i doubt it. maybe trying to explain that no, you were perfectly willing to overturn the election, if you very nice people would simply let us do that, would have saved you—but i doubt that, too. i think they would have just attacked you on sight, like dogs fighting over a bone. I think that guy with the military grade zip-ties on his belt would have come for you and killed you.

but they didn't succeed, there but for the grace of god. you live, still, and in doing so, have created the exact circumstances necessary for the SAME THING TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

what do you think is going to happen in january of 2025? what do you think is going to happen, after four years of telling the republican base that the 2020 election was stolen, and elections are vulnerable to fraud, and you can't trust the results of the elections—

what do you think is going to happen after, voters and fate willing, fingers crossed, donald trump loses the presidential election in november 2024? what do you think is going to happen to YOU, mr. republican congressman?

do you think donald trump is going to concede? do you think he's going to quietly fade into obscurity?

or do you know, like I do, that he's going to try it again? one attempted insurrection already under his belt, all the kinks worked out, maybe he even publishes some maps of the capitol so the next round of rioters can find you in your little hidey-holes.

how many hundred of people who were involved in january 6th do you think are still out there? how many proud boys and other white supremacist groups are still out there? how many of them do you think will be calm and reasonable enough to spare you when the time comes?

tl:dr, tonight the republican conference nominated Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to be their next Speaker-Elect. Johnson being one of the major architects behind the 2021 efforts to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election in Congress. And when a reporter tried to ask him about his election denial-ism, he laughed, and the other republicans booed, and he refused to answer the question.

because it doesn't matter to them, not now. not while there's still power to grab.

I wonder if it will matter to them the next time the insurrectionists come knocking at the chamber doors.

Probably not.

[princesssarcastia]

jim jordan isn't going to win the first round vote for house speaker.

and so it begins....