WHY GOVERN WHEN YOU CAN MESSAGE?

What Republicans want you to know is that being utterly incapable of electing a Speaker of the House when you're the majority party is actually a good thing. Tucker Carlson said so last night:

Now, the fact that this race has not been settled by now is being described, especially online by many, as embarrassing – and it is embarrassing if you prefer the Soviet-style consensus of the Democratic Party's internal elections, where votes are merely a formality and all the really big decisions, the meaningful ones, are made years in advance by donors. Oh, of course, everyone's on board. That's what they do.

But if you prefer democracy to oligarchy, if you prefer real debates about issues that actually matter, it's pretty refreshing to see it. Yes, it's a little chaotic, but this is what it's supposed to be.

Until this year, there'd only been one Speaker vote since 1859 that went to multiple ballots, so I guess all those House majorities were made of oligarchical communists.

Ted Cruz agrees with Carlson. He said so during his podcast yesterday:

"The Democrats are command-and-control. The Democrats are authoritarian, the Democrats follow orders. It's a strength of theirs, and it's a weakness of theirs," he said.

And did you know Democrats are the real racists? Never mind the fact that the new House Democratic leader is a Black man, Hakeem Jeffries -- Republicans, knowing that they're never going to elect a Speaker as long as Kevin McCarthy is still a candidate, and knowing that they probably won't manage to do so for many ballots even after McCarthy withdraws, have decided to nominate their own Black candidate, Byron Donalds of Florida. Go to the 5:00 mark in the video below and you'll see Donalds praised by Scott Perry, the chair of the Freedom Caucus. Why vote for Donalds? Because he's Black! says Perry. Because the first Black members of the House were Republicans! (That was in the nineteenth century.) Because Frederick Douglass was a Republican! (That was also in the nineteenth century.) And, um, oh yeah, Donalds is a swell guy -- a big guy too, Perry says.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry nominates Byron Donalds for House Speaker pic.twitter.com/1CaewUrRnM

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 4, 2023

And today Donalds got all the Republican votes that went to Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs and other non-McCarthy candidates yesterday, because messaging is everything.

And part of the message is that the anti-McCarthyites' decision to nominate Donalds was totally not about race:

Rep.-elect Chip Roy of Texas saw a standing ovation in honor of Reps.-elect Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., two Black congressmen nominated for speaker of the House.

Roy nominated Donalds on the House floor Wednesday....

While praising Donalds, Roy also tipped his hat to Jeffries, the Democratic minority's choice for Speaker.

"And for the first time in history, there have been two Black Americans placed into the nomination for speaker of the House," Roy said.

... However, Roy emphasized his belief that race itself was never a consideration in nominating Donalds.

"We do not seek to judge people by the color of their skin, but rather the content of their character," Roy said. "Byron Donalds is a good man — raised by a single mom, moved past diversity, became a Christian man at the age of 21, and has devoted his life to advancing the cause for his family and this country. And he has done it admirably."

Yes, citing The Only Martin Luther King Quote Any Republican Knows is totally what you'd do if you weren't considering race at all. (Also see "single mom," as well as "moved past diversity," whatever that means.)

Maybe this will go on for two years -- the gridlock and the messaging. The latter is clearly all these folks care about.