This is a sub post from the article about our recent trip to Washington, D.C.
We hadn’t expected the vacate vote to take place while we were in D.C., so we hadn’t tried to get passes to the visitors gallery. But while it took some effort — thanx, Brian & Mario for helping putting us in touch with Kevin Mullin’s office! — we were able to get access. Capitol rules don’t allow visitors to bring cameras or cell phones into the visitors gallery so verbal pictures are going to have to suffice.
As the House filled with representatives, we started noticing a number of things.
- From the gallery, the Republicans were almost all on the right side while the Democrats were on the left. Don’t know if that’s deliberate, but it was interesting. Not to mention convenient.
- The Republican side was a sea of mostly dark business attire, suits for men and dresses for women. There were occasional grays and tans — Marjorie Taylor Greene was seated right below us, and she wore a tan, sleeveless cocktail dress1 — but the overall view was pretty drab.
- In contrast, the Democratic side of the chamber was a sea of colors and dress styles, although once again business attire predominated. The same held true for skin colors, too: there were far more people of color — and women — on the Democratic side than the Republican side.
The overall process involved a number of motions and votes, the earliest of which showcased a lot of old-fashioned, manual voting — handing in a card to a clerk — by Democrats. Votes can be cast electronically, using ID cards. In fact, you can cast votes for your colleagues using their cards2. We saw Marjorie Taylor Greene do that several times.
But why use the old-fashioned, slow way? We were sitting next to a Congressional page (who worked for one of the senators from Mississippi), and he explained manual votes, being slower, give more time for members to get to the chamber and vote. Apparently, there’s a House rule which says you can’t close a vote when anyone is waiting in line to turn in a manual voting card. Ah, tradition!
By the way, while there were plenty of ordinary people in the gallery, it was mostly filled with Congressional pages and aides. Apparently, senators gather intelligence on their House colleagues this way during major votes (the reverse is probably also true).
The House has two “speaking tables”, on each side of the chamber, from which members can make addresses. There are also a pair of podiums just below the Speaker’s dais which can be used when someone wants to show up better on the TV cameras. Gaetz’ Republican colleagues refused to let him use the “Republican” speaking table, so he and his supporters were forced to make their addresses from the Democratic side of the House.
Watching Gaetz in action was interesting. My previous impression of him was that he’s not too bright and has little or no interest beyond elevating Matt Gaetz to the highest level possible3.
Now…well, I still don’t think he’s particularly bright. Nor does he have any obvious principles. But he is very cunning, and very quick on his feet. I was impressed — for certain values of impress — by his snappy comebacks to the attacks his Republican colleagues directed at him. He is, sadly, someone to watch. If we’re lucky he’ll flame out before he does too much damage.
Numerous talking heads pontificated before and after the vote to vacate that the Democrats should’ve thrown McCarthy a lifeline. Aside from Democratic umbrage at McCarthy launching an impeachment process without any real evidence4, the complaints about Democrats made by virtually every Republican who stood up to support McCarthy kind of made that idea a non-starter :). Free advice to the GOP: if you really want bipartisan support for something, don’t crap all over the people you’re asking for help.
Once McCarthy got put on vacation things wrapped up pretty quickly. When McHenry, McCarthy’s designated interim successor, gaveled the House closed, he struck the sound block so hard I swear I thought the gavel would shatter. No doubt he was visualizing the sound block to be Gaetz’ head…
snide sexist comment: Greene sometimes looks to me like she’s trying to amp up her sex appeal by the way she dresses. If so, she needs to do some upper body work to tighten up her arms. And also lose about 20 pounds. A couple of terms representing a California district would probably do her a lot of good in that regard :). ↩
assuming you trust them 🙂 ↩
As an aside, there’s nothing wrong with ambition per se. It takes a lot of time and effort to be an elected politician, so ambition is a requirement. But ambition needs to be tempered with a desire to protect and improve the community. ↩
To be clear, I don’t have a problem with the Republicans holding impeachment hearings. It is, after all, one of the duties of the House to keep a check on the President. I just wish they wouldn’t waste so much time desperately trying to find something, anything, to justify impeaching Biden while there are so many other real problems the nation is facing. ↩
