Coalition Government

Mike Johnson suddenly got it.

The accidental Speaker of the House was, shall we say, reluctant to provide military aid for Ukraine. Then two things happened.  The first thing is that Johnson saw intelligence that showed that Ukraine would end likely end up as a republic in the Russian Federation if it didn't get U.S. aid and that Poland or Lithuania might be next.  The second thing is that one of Johnson's sns has been accepted at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, and the possibility of this son getting into a war in Eastern Europe suddenly got real.  He placed the billon the floor and it passed with the votes of anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats.  

Thus the Democrats and the non-MAGA Republican wing have formed a coalition government in the House of Representatives.

The U.S. constitutional system, of course, isn't meant to support coalition governments, at least not in the European sense. In European countries, multiple parties win seats in Parliament and there is usually no clear-cut majority, so likeminded parties have to form a coalition to pick a prime minister to present his or her credentials to the head of state.  Here, two parties win seats in the House and the Senate and partisan majorities run the shows.  The President - both the head of government and the head of state - is separately elected.   But it is possible for  two of a minimum of three parties to win enough seats in either House of Congress to deny the party that gets the most seats a majority.  That happened in the 34th Congress of 1855 and 1856, when the Democrats lost control of the House in the 1854 midterms and the Whig Party was ceding the role of opposition to the Democrats to the new Republican Party and the American, or Know-Nothing, Party.  The Republicans got the most House seats but not a majority, so the Republicans and the Know-Nothings, along with Whigs and other minor parties, formed a coalition to run the House.

Such deal-making is normal when ther eare three or more parties, but the fact that we're seeing something similar in the 118th Congress when there are only two parties and the Democratic minority is united says a lot about how fractured the Republican Party is.

And the problem is not Mike Johnson.

Mr. Zelensky Goes To Washington

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States last week to confer with President Biden and address a joint session of Congress.  In his speech to Congress, in which he wore army fatigues he extolled the virtues of freedom and vividly illustrated how the people of Ukraine have fought the Russians to preserve Ukrainian national sovereignty and how continued American support for Ukraine would benefit not just Ukraine and the United States but Europe and the entire world, as it would strengthen democracy in the world and also the global order.

"Your money is not charity.  It's an investment," Zelensky said.

You know, this guy can really communicate to people.  If he hadn't gotten into politics, he might have had a good future in show biz. 😉

The speech was well-received by members of Congress, even many Republicans.  But Republicans such as Lauren Boebert - who wanted to know what the money the U.S .was giving to Ukraine was going to and why we couldn't spend the same money to keep migrants out of the U.S. - and Matt Goetz were too busy checking their cell phones for orders from Trump - or Putin.  As far as they were concerned, Zelensky might as well have been reading  a chapter "The Crying of Lot 49."  

Remember, they're part of the incoming House Republican majority that's going to be deciding on future aid to Ukraine.

Putin is licking his chops. 😢