I give the new rat pack their title because they like to chew things up and leave behind a bunch of crap wherever they go, which in this case is in the House of Representatives.
Most GOP House members want to tear things apart for profit. There are several, though, that seem to want to destroy America just for fun. Even calls from Trump could not persuade six Tea Party RINOs to consider sticking together with the ideology of obstruction and insulation that Kevin McCarthy would offer to people who may need pardons like him and them. Those six got McCarthy elected by voting "present" so that their votes would not be counted as cast, making the 216 votes McCarthy had sufficient to be a majority of the votes cast.
The first issue to resolve after McCarthy was elected was to approve the rules for the 118th Congress. Those, too, required a majority of 218 votes for approval, and were passed with 220 votes. One member of the GOP broke with party lines and voted against the rules. His reason for voting against the rules was the freeze on military spending because the rules freeze all spending at current levels. That simply means he is more bent on destroying America for profit than for fun.
That one vote against party lines didn't mean much when it came to passing the rules. However, that one vote is likely to be joined by other votes as disputes arise between those who prefer to destroy America through oligarchy and those who think anarchy better serve their purposes.
The potential defectors do not include the radical element of the Tea Party RINOs. They are the ones who held the noose that McCarthy put his neck into so they would, in essence, not vote. They also made it so that McCarthy gets to pull the lever that sets his gallows in motion. However, the political suicide that McCarthy committed occurred over the last few weeks when he became beholden to these rats who used the opportunity to push for compromises that pissed off some of the rats in the controlled group.
The six in the rat pack can't be dismissed as election-denying Trump supporters. That would describe most of the GOP members in the House. They continued their obstinance despite personal calls from Trump. One way to tell that you are out of control is when Trump pleads with you to maintain decorum. Their preference for anarchy over oligarchy is also likely to be their Achilles heel.
Presuming the GOP doesn't lose control of the House as the result of DOJ indictments, McCarthy is likely to lose his speakership when some major issues for the oligarchy conflict with the desire for power by some of the most immature members of Congress that America has ever seen. Those six don't need to align the GOP to remove McCarthy if he tries to rescind any of his deals with them. There are a built-in 212 votes against McCarthy from a united Democratic party that the rats can rely upon to get McCarthy removed as speaker. They won't be voting against McCarthy for the same reasons as the Democrats, but no Democrat is going to vote in favor of McCarthy just to break up the dumpster fire burning across the aisle. Therefore, their six votes along with all the votes from Democrats give them power over McCarthy because 218 votes are the majority needed to remove him.
If those six rats take advantage of the Democrats to remove McCarthy and disable the House again, then some coalition of six members of the GOP might approach the Democrats to see if a compromise agreement for rules can be reached in exchange for giving the Democrats the speakership. I don't know if that would happen, but I imagine that the sponsors of more than six GOP House members who supported McCarthy want their investments in government protected. I also can imagine that the Democrats might be amenable to a compromised set of rules if it means retaining America's credit and the continued operation of the government.
It is one thing for the GOP to submit to this delusional pack of rats to get the party platform of obstructionism going, but it will be another thing for the party to stay united behind the brain power of people like Lauren Boebert who claims that America saves money when the government shuts down. Comments like that do not show off her intellectual equivalency to a high school graduate so much as they show us why it took her three tries to guess enough correct answers to get her GED.
The behavior of these six holdouts, and the losses suffered by candidates that Trump endorsed, show that he is losing his influence in the party on both ends of the spectrum in the GOP. He cannot corral the rats who want to destroy America for fun, and those who support the hypocrisy that Ron DeSantis spews have moved on. That group continues to grow, and the Democrats have recent video of DeSantis praising Biden for dealing with Florida's woes over a hurricane without making it political. When combining those who don't want to slow the growth of the military industrial complex with those who don't want FEMA payments to stop, it is imaginable that enough of the more intellectual members of the party would figure out that they can use the same odd bedfellows in keeping the government meeting its obligations and operating.
I don't think the rat pack will be able to run the House, but I hope it is due to resignations and indictments rather than through odd alignments. I still wonder why it is taking the DOJ so long to bring action against politicians involved in planning or executing the insurrection. I also wonder why, if people who got their cell phones taken into evidence and those who asked for pardons are ultimately indicted, did the DOJ not bring actions against them before the midterm elections. I don't know what the DOJ is waiting for, but I also know that I don't know what I don't know, and they do.
It's a guessing game for us all. Some are better informed guesses than others, but, as Lauren Boebert proved on her third try for her GED, a correct guess is sometimes as good as knowing the answer!
