House GOP abandons plan to empower temp speaker House Republicans are abandoning a push to empower a temporary speaker, Rep. Patrick McHenry, after it faced fierce pushback within the party on Thursday. As they left a nearly four-hour internal meeting about the idea, multiple Republicans said there was no virtually no path forward. The proposal, which may still come back for a vote at some point, would have allowed McHenry and the GOP to reopen the House after 16 days without a speaker. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/10/19/congress/empower-mchenry-dead-00122543 Talk about watching a slow motion train wreck. All the superlatives have already been used to describe this mess, which stopped being amusing days ago. It was bad enough when we became the laughing stock of the world by electing an unqualified reality TV star with a penchant for groping women and lying. But at least we were able to govern ourselves. Now Trumpery has ended that too. The decline of the US is unfolding, if not accelerating, in front of our eyes. The first order of biz is unified Dem control of government so we can get something done to address our substantial problems.
