Just days after ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the top leadership position, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) signaled he’d be willing to raise the threshold for a future motion to vacate — but only if Republicans agree to vote on a number of political reforms.
Uhh, WTF?
Right??
Noted MAGA Republican Matt Gaetz, who just ousted Conservative Speaker for daring to work with Democrats, is now demanding…
Ban money from lobbyists and political actions committees to congressional candidates
Ban members of Congress from trading stocks and from ever becoming lobbyists
Term limits for members of Congress
Term limits for Supreme Court justices
An ethics code for Supreme Court justices
What in the actual fuck?
Listed out like that, it’s not completely out of left field. The MAGA wing has been advocating for a few of those items on the list. It’s just bizarre that it’s being brought up as a bargaining chip /now/. You know - after obliterating the last R that worked with Dems. Like…what…?
he’s running the populist playbook.
Ah, yea that makes sense. It doesn’t seem inconsistent if I think about it that way.
Populism over party has a few positives. These are the sort of things Trump advocated for in his campaign that got him so much support on the right and from people who traditionally we’re “fed up” with politics in America.
His biggest rivals in the house right now are senior GOP members, not Dems. So if he can use the Dems to force his rivals out of office… well it just looks good for him.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day or something like that… still feel really awkward when I find myself agreeing with him. He’s gotta a couple of other things right too. Don’t like the man at all but I can give credit where/when it’s due.
Out of curiosity, what else has he gotten right?
Saw elsewhere here that he wanted to delist Marijuana. Though to be fair that is a pretty common MAGA position.
The irony here is Gaetz and several other junior GOP members have pissed off the GOP seniority. So they are going to shut him down at every turn while he is trying to build steam and reputation for a '26 governor run in Florida.
So with GOP leadership locking him out, he needs to do the cardinal GOP sin of working with Democrats and actually legislate and govern to get his name on anything, and if he somehow gets term limits passed then suddenly a lot of that GOP leadership trying to control him suddenly will be out of office after 2024 and then he can really pander to his GOP base.
He rapes, but he saves.
But he rapes more than he saves
If he knows he’s toast with the GOP & is defecting, we don’t want him.
Hes not defecting hes just taking advantage of the chaos. If he can term limits put through then suddenly about half or more of thr GOP in the house are not eligible to run in 2024 and he suddenly gets to be in a position of seniority and will use that freedom to prep for a 2026 Florida Governor election
Good and necessary, doable. But it might get struck down since the courts seem to think money = the most important form of protected speech.
Good, necessary, and doable.
I don’t personally think this is actually a good thing, but that’s debatable. However, it requires a Constitutional amendment to do, not just legislation.
Requires a Constitutional amendment to do, not just legislation.
Good, necessary, but the Supreme Court is very likely to just ignore it, rule Congress doesn’t have the power, etc
It’s almost like these maga goofballs are starting to realize most of the corruption in Washington is in their own party. Although most of the stuff on his list is pretty equally distributed between the 2 parties. It’s all universal corruption. It’s actually kind of cool that people in the 2 parties who hate each other are starting to realize they’re both complaining about a lot of the same things. It’s pretty bizarre, too.