Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Jan 7, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Kevin McCarthy finally won the position of the speaker to the detriment of the entire nation for we will see business as usual on Capitol Hill, which is probably needed by our model to ensure the decline and fall of the United States by 2044. Congressman Mike Rogers lunged to attack Matt Gaetz on the house floor after he refused to vote for McCarthy merely saying “Present.” Gaetz is actually fighting for something he believes in, Draining the Swamp. Rogers wants the status quo – politics as usual. Kevin McCarthy offers no change whatsoever and being from California, well I think they should just separate and declare their own republic. California is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave from the days of Ronald Reagan. They refuse even to define what is a woman. They started a national crime wave of shoplifting and their streets are overpopulated with illegal aliens. Friends I had in California are leaving all the time. Pelosi, who destroyed San Francisco, is looking to retire to Florida in Naples with John Boehner.

From virtually the beginning of the nation, there have been brawls in Congress. The first one to be widely noted was that of February 15, 1798, when Roger Griswold, a US House Representative from Connecticut, attacked Matthew Lyon and began to beat him with a stick. Griswold, a Federalist, walked up to Lyon’s desk hitting him on the head and shoulders with his hickory walking stick. Lyon, who was a Republican from Vermont, responded by grabbing a pair of fireplace tongs and defending himself beating Griswold in return.

They then began to just punch each other in a fistfight until they were pulled apart. That is how heated the arguments would get between the Federalists who demanded a central government with power over states and the Republicans who argued for State’s Rights. We are still plagued with this issue and it will ultimately lead to the collapse of the United States just as centralized control led to the collapse of Communism.

After State’s Rights came Slavery as the next major dividing issue. In a speech in May 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner spent five hours on the floor denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He said the compromise bill leaving slavery in those territories to be decided by local popular vote was outrageous. He called out Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, who was the chief architect of the act, a “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal.” He went on to describe Andrew Butler of South Carolina, who pushed the compromise, as “the harlot, Slavery,” that he “discharged the loose expectoration of his speech” at the very thought of embracing her. That was a personal dig for Butler was known to lisp and drool.

Two days later, on May 22nd, 1856, Sumner was sitting at his desk preparing copies of the speech he intended to distribute around the nation. A cousin of Butler’s who was also a member from South Carolina, Preston Brooks,  entered the Senate floor. Brooks approached Senator Sumner and told him that he had read his words with “as much impartiality as was possible,” and then began to beat him over the head with his walking stick. Sumner collapsed in a pool of blood and, in the days that followed, nearly died. The news of the confrontation can be found in countless newspapers around the nation.

Then on February 6th, 1858, perhaps the most infamous floor brawl in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives erupted again over the Kansas Territory’s pro-slavery. The debate continued late into the night of February 5-6. Then just before 2 a.m., Pennsylvania Republican Galusha Grow and South Carolina Democrat Laurence Keitt exchanged insults, which were then followed by physical blows.

“In an instant the House was in the greatest possible confusion,” was being reported by the press. Suddenly, over 30 Members jumped into the brawl turning it into a Western Style bar fight or melee.

Northern Republicans and Free Soilers banded together to attack the Southern Democrats. Then the Speaker James Orr was a leading national politician. Few of his fellow South Carolinians were still on speaking terms with northern Democrats, and Orr’s ability to strike deals nationally made him an ideal compromise candidate for Speaker. By the autumn, however, Orr followed South Carolina’s race toward disunion and did not stand for re-election to Congress, which led to the American Civil War.

Orr had gaveled furiously for order during the braw and then instructed Sergeant-at-Arms Adam J. Glossbrenner to arrest non-compliant Members. Wading into the “combatants,” Glossbrenner held the House Mace high to restore order. Wisconsin Republicans John “Bowie Knife” Potter and Cadwallader Washburn ripped the hairpiece from the head of William Barksdale, who was a Democrat from Mississippi.

The melee dissolved into a chorus of laughs and jeers after the toupee was ripped off of Barksdale, but the core of the issue symbolized the nation’s deep divisions. When the House reconvened two days later, a coalition of Northern Republicans and Free Soilers narrowly blocked the referral of the Lecompton Constitution to the House Territories Committee. Kansas entered the Union in 1861 as a free state.

We have reached such a moment in history and the election of Kevin McCarthy spells the doom that we face ahead for the nation is more than just the deep divide between left and right, we are looking at the absolute vile corruption of Republican forms of government. This is why Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Six Waves of 31.4 years from 1856 brings us squarely to our model’s forecast for the total collapse of republican governments – 2044.