Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're gonna participate, you should probably be clear about what kind of blood orgy you're going to. Oh, sure, sure, you might think it's a run-of-the-mill, "here's some pig's blood to pour on our naked bodies" blood orgy. Or it could be a little more hardcore, the let's-sacrifice-this-goat-to-Baal thing where you end up balling in warm blood and viscera with more than a few people who are incredibly serious about this whole thing bringing one dark lord or another into being.
You wanna be clear about what the hosts are up to because you don't wanna find yourself in the middle of a human sacrifice because, let's face it, it's just awkward. As some poor virgin's throat is slit, you realize that you didn't sign up for this, but what the hell are you gonna do? Leave? You're surrounded by murderers. You gotta either risk your own life to flee or you gotta suck it up, rub your nipples with virgin blood, and start fucking.
So it was that the House Republicans gathered in conference yesterday to anoint a new Speaker. Most were expecting a basic goat killing before the blood orgy, but what they got was a full-on human sacrifice. And none of them knew what the hell to do once Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy decided to tell everyone to fuck off with their ungovernable caucus and drop out of running for Speaker.
There is a significant percentage of the Rude Pundit's brain that wants to think that this was John Boehner's strategy all along. In this scenario (which Josh Marshall also thinks is plausible) Boehner decided to ratfuck the conservatives in his party, especially the stupidly named "Freedom Caucus." It's no secret that Boehner fucking hates the crazies who are opposed to the act of governing, but they were causing him to lose control of the House. So he announced he was stepping down, a moment that led to no tears from the notoriously over-emotional Ohio congressman, but it was just a gambit. He knew that McCarthy had skeletons that would prevent him from being able to ascend to the Speaker's chair. He knew that Paul Ryan had no interest in running. And he knew that far right conservatives like weasel-puss Jason Chaffetz could not put together enough votes.
So Boehner remains speaker for up to another 18 months, this time as the savior of a party that is imploding under the weight of its own bullshit. Now, who is gonna be able to rationally fuck with him? Boehner could have a Corleone-like purge of ultra-conservatives in key committee positions. He could make deals with Democrats to hike the debt ceiling and pass a transportation bill. Until the House Republicans can come up with a plausible new Speaker, Boehner has said he will stay. As Marshall says, "Boehner 2.0 would be basically the Man of Steel and indestructible for almost 18 months."
Of course, the other thing this debacle reveals is, once again, the true dysfunction in Congress belongs to Republicans. They are divided between the people who want to get shit done, even if it means compromising, and the nutzoids who love the chaos and just want to watch the world burn. The dishonesty required to say that there are such problems in both parties is stunning, so, obviously, some idiot is going to say that "extremists" in both parties are to blame for the failures of governance.
Goddamn, the Rude Pundit hopes that Boehner was the host of the blood orgy who put the goat and the pig's blood away and said, "Let's make this one special." It'd be such an old school power play, the kind of thing that the deranged mutants of the Tea Party couldn't even begin to comprehend, like sending the Hills Have Eyes family to Yale.
By the way, it's always better to be a voyeur rather than a participant at a blood orgy. You stay cleaner, and you get to touch yourself while you watch the filthy, heaving supplicants attempt to fuck like their lives depend on it but mostly just slipping in the blood.
