She might “have a voice,” but she doesn’t seem to have much understanding of her job.
Delegate Stacey Plaskett, who represents the U.S. territory of the Virgin Islands, had her microphone cut in the middle of a tirade Friday over the voting rights for U.S. territories in Congress when it comes to the House speaker.
As it turns out, they have none — something a U.S. delegate should probably be aware of, if she understood at all how the House works.
During the dramatics that ended with the election of House Speaker Mike Johnson by a squeaking 218-215 vote, Plaskett demanded to know why she and other members of Congress from U.S. territories had not been called upon.
“I note that the names of the representatives from the American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana, Puerto Rico Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia were not called, representing collectively 4 million Americans,” Plaskett said, to raucous, standing-ovation applause from her fellow Democrats.
“I ask why they were not called.”
House Clerk Kevin McCumber had an answer: They weren’t called because they don’t have a vote. Only representatives from the states have a vote.
“Delegates-elect and the resident commissioner-elect are not qualified to vote. Representatives-elect are the only individuals qualified to vote in the election of a speaker,” he said, citing House rules.
“The speaker is elected by a majority of representatives-elect, voting by surname.”
Of course, any American who’s experienced what Democrats have become in the 21st century would know that citing “rules” doesn’t really matter to any Democrat with a bee in her bonnet. They’re the party of anarchy in American politics, a group with a fundamental disrespect — a seething contempt actually — for laws and rules that don’t suit their agenda.
And Plaskett proved she had more than that when she used McCumber’s answer to launch into a rant about a “colonies problem” supposedly faced by the United States.
It was a rant she continued until her microphone was unceremoniously cut off.
Check out the video here. The key moment comes about the 1:55 mark, when Plaskett declares “I have a voice” — just when the mic goes fortuitously silent.
Now, Americans of good faith can have good faith arguments over the status of U.S. territories and the voting rights of their representatives in Congress.
Americans of good faith can also debate the merits of statehood for the territories or the District of Columbia (though the Constitution is pretty clear that D.C. can’t be a state).
But what Americans — particularly Americans in positions of power — should not be debating is whether the rules of the game apply in every circumstance.
The rules for selecting the speakership are not new. And every member of Congress, whether representing a state or a territory should be aware of them.
There’s a time and place for making changes if they’re considered necessary, but those times are not on the day the speaker is chosen.
Now, Plaskett is a progressive Democrat — she was part of the team of managers of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, according to her congressional biography — so she can’t be trusted. But she’s also no dummy.
She might be expected to know how the House works. She might be expected to know that the rules were when she rose in House on Friday. She might be expected to know she had no business casting a vote any more than the representatives of other territories did.
But she rose anyway, ostensibly to make a point, but more likely to make headlines, and push an agenda.
When Democrats can’t win by the rules, their solution is to change the rules — which explains their fetish for maneuvers like giving non-citizens the right to vote, or periodically proposing packing the Supreme Court to make sure they win every legal case.
Plaskett’s job is to represent her territory’s voters in the United States Congress, to contribute to the work of the whole. And if changes are considered necessary, she has all the time in the world to convince her fellow members of Congress to implement them.
Her job is not to throw hissy fits on the House floor, no matter how much her fellow Democrats might approve.
And if she does, her voice deserves to be silenced.
On Friday, she got what she deserved.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: Dem. Delegate’s Hissy Fit Ends in Mic Being Cut After She Proves She Has No Idea How House Actually Works appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.