Attention! It's Later Than You Think

Sooner than expected, it's time to begin.

First, an announcement:  I have registered the domain name FeathersOfHope.net with ICANN, and have instructed my web host to re-direct traffic for that URL to this site.

What that means is that anyone can now just enter FeathersOfHope.net into their browser search window and they'll be re-directed here.  There’s no need to use the more cumbersome jerryweiss.substack.com . Of course, you still can use it if you wish.

So anytime you're talking to your contacts, friends, family -- or anytime you're posting in the comment section of the Times or the Post, or some other online publication about our network and what we're doing -- you can say something like this: 

"To learn more, visit FeathersOfHope.net " = =  It’s simple, inviting, and easy to remember.

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For new readers, here are links to a few previous posts that will bring you up to date on what the Feathers of Hope network has been doing :

• Wait, Exactly How Will We Do This? (January 28)

• Replacing McCarthy - A Progress Report (February 16)

• Moderate Republicans? Really? (March 2)

• Moderate Republicans Found! (March 2)

The only feasible way to remove and replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, and thereby diminish the power and influence of MAGA extremists in the chamber, is for a cross-party alliance of moderate Republicans and Democrats to temporarily join forces and form a majority voting bloc. They can then “move to vacate the chair”, and elect a new Republican Speaker who owes nothing to the minority MAGA group.

In our January 28 post titled Wait, Exactly How Will We Do This? , we summarized the details of our plan for helping to bring this about. Here’s the first step:

Write to and call news media personalities in order to get the idea of a cross-party alliance into the national narrative. We’ll be contacting a broad range of outlets and personalities. Never-Trump conservatives will be included along with our natural allies. Once the moderate House Members sense that they have support from ordinary sensible voters, their reluctance to reach across the aisle will diminish.

We know that calling for the replacement of a Speaker of the House is likely to be ignored by most people unless it's associated with a news-making event or imminent threat.  So our plan had envisioned taking action during the expected "debt ceiling crisis", when MAGA extremists have promised to block approval of legislation needed to avoid the U.S. defaulting on its debt. 

A cross-party alliance will be necessary at that time in order to pass the debt ceiling increase.  And once in place, we would urge that alliance to hold together long enough to replace the Speaker, and thus mimize the damage from whatever radical MAGA members might do next. 

It's been widely reported that this "crisis" is likely to arise in late Spring or early Summer.  Most analysts have confidently predicted that there’ll likely be a lot of posturing and drama by House Members, but ultimately a compromise will emerge preventing any serious damage.  This could still happen as predicted.  But last week's bank failures have upset the underlying assumptions about that scenario.  

The initial failure of Silicon Valley Bank, a sort of big but not all that big a bank (16th largest), unexpectedly ricocheted around the world causing a series of collapses.  This indicates our banking system is far more fragile than we’d realized.  And that in turn makes any potential threat of a U.S. default far more dangerous to the world’s economy than it had appeared just a couple weeks ago. 

Our task is thus much more urgent. Rather than waiting for the debt crisis to envelope us, we should be striving to avoid it altogether.  In other words, we need to begin advocating removal and replacement of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker before the crisis develops in order to prevent any hint of a possible default.  We no longer have another 2 or 3 months to prepare. 

It’s not too soon to start contacting those political media personalities whose platforms can introduce this proposal into the national narrative.  Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be posting some of these names and their contact info, similar to the lists of moderate Republican House Members already posted.  But unlike last December, when we focused on just three media people, this time we should cast our net as widely as possible. 

In addition to big liberal names, there are several well-known Republican conservatives eager to rid the party of MAGA and all they represent, such as Steve Schmidt (steveschmidt@substack.com) and Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie; morningshots@substack.com). 

And crucially, there are less well-known but still important contributors to established media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and regional newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Denver Post, and so forth.  Then there are the dozens of independent bloggers, on-line analysts, substack writers, occasional and others who have significant but not necessarily massive followings. 

This is where our growing and diverse membership can be most effective. Each of you have your own favorite writers and broadcasters whom you can contact in addition to those names that will be posted here. The point is to spread the word, initiate conversations in as many forums as possible, spur interest in the idea and change its perception from “impractical fantasy” to a practical and doable proposition.    It’s now time to start doing that.

Practical and Doable

John Kasich is a Republican through and through.  He served 18 years in Congress, representing Ohio's "reliably Republican" 12th District (1983 - 2001).  He then hosted a show on Fox News from 2001 - 2007, and in 2010 was elected governor of Ohio.  Re-elected governor in 2014, he ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016.  He and Ted Cruz were the last two standing when Trump won the nomination.  

Unlike Cruz, Kasich did not support Trump for president in 2016 and did not even attend the Republican Convention that year, even though it was held in his home State of Ohio.   He wanted no part of Trumpism, and after completing his second term as governor John Kasich became a contributor to CNN as one of Trump's most prominent GOP critics.  In 2020,  he endorsed Joe Biden and appeared at the Democratic National Convention, while still declaring himself to be “a life-long Republican”.

I'm telling you all this about John Kasich because he said something notable during a TV interview a few days ago (3/20/23) while discussing the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last January. With his background, we can trust that what he says comes from a very well-connected person who knows whereof he speaks. It is not mere speculation. 

Recalling that he had twice tweeted at the time a suggestion that there should be a cross-party alliance that could marginalize the extremists, and noting that they had received literally millions of impressions, Mr. Kasich asked:

"Why didn’t the Democrats get together with moderate Republicans and elect a Speaker (other than McCarthy)?  They didn’t do it."  

The statement went unremarked upon by the interviewer (Ari Melbar) and the rest of the press.  But so far as I know, this is the most definitive confirmation yet that what we've been advocating is not only practical and doable, it could have already been done.   Whatever the reason (and I can think of a few), it just didn't happen in January.  But that's not because it's an unrealistic fantasy that no one would take seriously.  Clearly it was being discussed at the highest levels.

In fact, on the third day of balloting, progressive Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, the highly influential representative of California's 17th district (Silicon Valley) appeared on Fox News and suggested the proposal during a conversation with Neil Cavuto.  (Cavuto is one of the few respected news people still at that network.)  He even mentioned three names on our list as possible candidates.   It's worth noting that Mr. Khana's suggestion was made on Fox, not on MSNBC or CNN.  This was no random choice. The proposal was on the table, considered by those directly involved to be both practical and doable.

Now that we have a few months experience with a House of Representatives devoid of strong leadership and dominated by a radical extremist minority, the prospect of removing and replacing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker remains practical and doable, but more urgent than ever.