There were supposed to be three big political stories this week, but in the end two of them turned out to be duds. Donald Trump testified at his New York fraud trial, but without video or audio recordings of him answering questions under oath, the impact was significantly lessened. The other Republican presidential candidates (the five who qualified, at any rate) met for their third Republican debate, but it mostly turned out to be a snoozefest.

Tuesday night, however, more than lived up to expectations. The off-year elections which were held ended up as a big night for Democrats almost across the board. Put quite simply: abortion rights won. Big time. Everywhere.

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Republicans are in disarray. Let's start with that this week, shall we?

This week in the Senate, Republicans spent five whole hours ripping into one of their own. A group of GOP senators tried to force the hand of Senator Tommy Tuberville over his petulant hold on fast-tracking all military promotions, but to no avail.

The House, meanwhile, voted for an Israel military aid bill that is going nowhere in the Senate because (among other reasons) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is diametrically opposed to the strategy.

The House also took the time to vote down a censure of a Democrat that drew Marjorie Taylor Greene's wrath, but also voted to let George Santos keep his seat. On both votes, there were significant numbers of Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.

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After three weeks of junior-high-school levels of adolescent slap-fighting, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally (!) chose a speaker. Was this largely due to fatigue at how tawdry the whole clown show was, or was it the fear that some moderate members were actually considering working with Democrats to come up with a solution? We'll never know, but we certainly are glad it's over. For now, that is. The rule on the "motion to vacate" hasn't changed, so while Speaker Mike Johnson seems to be enjoying something of a honeymoon period with even the furthest-right of his caucus, things could always go south for him, since all it would take would be five disgruntled Republicans to kick him out too. And disgruntled is what MAGA extremists do best, so we'll have to see whether this comes to pass or not in the weeks ahead.

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Today, Republicans crossed the Jordan. That would be Jim Jordan, and enough of them crossed him in a third House speaker vote that the party as a whole has now completely crossed him off the list. Jordan is no longer the Republican "speaker-designee," instead he's just "Representative Jordan" again. And yet the Republicans are still nowhere near their Promised Land (to complete that metaphor) -- they're still out there somewhere, wandering in the wilderness.

Where do House Republicans go next? They don't have a clue. They'll think about it over the weekend and then get back together Monday night to hold another closed-door meeting to nominate another poor sap to try to become speaker. Maybe it'll be one of the previous selections? Kevin McCarthy or Steve Scalise certainly don't seem far-fetched, at least at this point. But it could be someone new as well. Lots of people could run, who knows?

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Personally, we could not think of a better day to elect the next speaker of the House, it being Friday the 13th and all. But the way things are going, that doesn't exactly seem like it's going to happen. As we all sit and watch the center ring of the Republican circus, just when you thought that tiny little clown car couldn't possibly have any more clowns in it... another one emerges!

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We've finally gotten to the point where even the headline-writers in the mainstream media had to admit the reality -- which runs 180 degrees counter to their propensity to magnify every little squabble among Democrats -- and finally write a few: "Republicans In Disarray" headlines. Because this was the week it became unavoidable. The Republican civil war broke out into the open in a big way, as they made history by deposing a speaker of the House of Representatives for the first time ever. From this point forward, we will be referring to just Representative Kevin McCarthy, since that's all he now is. And maybe not even that, if the rumors he's thinking about stepping down entirely turn out to be true.

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Welcome back once again to the Shutdown Follies! Today's entertainment will be provided by the House Republicans, who will all be driving clown cars in a demolition derby, for your enjoyment.

That's what it feels like, at any rate. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Jellyfish) is caught in a vortex of political posturing, from which there is no apparent escape. No escape for the country, as we all get sucked into a completely pointless government shutdown in its wake, and no escape for Kevin McCarthy, whose only way out is to commit political hara-kiri (or, if you prefer, seppuku). The "Chaos Caucus" of MAGA lunatics is in full control of the House now, and they are content to head the ship of state at full speed directly into a gigantic (and eminently avoidable) iceberg. And there's nothing anyone can do but sit back and watch the disaster unfold, it seems.

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Program Note: As I mentioned last week, I am playing hooky today. So I went looking for a column to re-run and came across this one, from almost exactly eight years ago. It's stunning in the sense of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, since it wouldn't take much more than changing a few names to be almost perfectly relevant today. It was written the week that John Boehner announced he was stepping down from being speaker and retiring from politics. At the time (as you'll see), Kevin McCarthy's name was being bandied about as a replacement, but ultimately Paul Ryan was chosen as a sort of sacrificial lamb instead.

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No, wait... that can't be right...?

Sorry for opening with some snark, but we felt that was the appropriate tone for addressing this week's legal developments. Republicans have been swearing up and down for years now that President Joe Biden's son Hunter somehow bribed his father to use his position as vice president to do... well, something nefarious... and that all they really needed to do was dig into it all and the evidence would then appear.

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We hate to do this (as we suspect we'll be doing it recurringly for the next year or so), but once again the biggest political news of the week came from the legal system. Almost all the news was from the Republican side of the aisle, because of course it was. (And we promise that our subhead this week will be explained in due time, too... but not until the very end of the column.)

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