The USA: the state we're in!

Yesterday, Hillary regaled one and all with her 11 hour grilling by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The Committee Chairman, Trey Gowdy, is as Rottweiler as can be found in the House of Representatives and he has been preparing for months to grill Hillary on her role in the disaster.

 

A week or so prior to the date set for Hillary's testimony, another Congressman, Kevin McCarthy, totally undermined the Gowdy's plan by glibly announcing that the Select Committee was established as a partisan effort to attack Hillary. Why McCarthy did this is not known, but it totally blew his chances to win the coveted Speaker of the House job.

 

You may recall that this position is open because its present occupant, John Boehner suddenly resigned. McCarthy was a shoe in until he opened his mouth and in so doing gave Hillary all the ammunition she needed to credibly assert that the Committee was a Republican effort to discredit her and thereby diminish her chances of winning the presidential race.

 

Interestingly, McCarthy was said to have been popular among his peers because he allegedly kept a mistress. As a result, he was subject to being blackmailed whenever one of his peers needed the Speaker's support. Anyway, McCarthy is out. The extreme right in the House will shed no tears over him as he is considered far too moderate for their tastes. Indeed, most Congressmen are, even Paul Ryan who now looks like he will get the job.

 

Ryan is a Republican from Wisconsin who is a model politician. He is highly esteemed by one and all as an honest, dedicated, principled and family oriented man who happens to be very bright and somewhat of a whiz kid at numbers. He was Mitt Romney's running mate in the last election which did him no harm even though Romney lost.

 

Ryan was reluctant to accept the Speaker's position for two well-known reasons.

 

First, he is a dedicated family man and found it difficult to commit to spending his weekends and holidays in Washington whipping the Republican Congressmen into order when he could have been at home in Wisconsin with his family. The other reason was that he saw no future in the position given the intransigence of the extreme right wing Congressmen and their being largely responsible for forcing out Boehner.

 

Indeed, our right wing Congressmen have played hell with the American political system over the past eight or so years by steadfastly refusing to compromise. They delayed finance bills and increases in spending limits on several occasions and much to the disgruntlement of the President, the Democrats, civil servants and staff.

 

A deal was reached whereby the right wing would vote on whether they would endorse Ryan and if that vote was strong enough in his favor, Ryan would accept. It was and he did, but I am sure that is not the end of the story, although Ryan will most probably be our next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

 

If the Republicans maintain their power in the House in 2016, he will probably be legislating under Hillary Clinton as POTUS.

 

 

We shall see as there is many a slip between cup and lip.