The Republican Speaker of the House. By the Z-Man.
Republican Kevin McCarthy has now suffered defeat six times in his bid to become House Speaker. The House cannot begin business until it has a Speaker, so the voting will go on until someone gets a majority.
About 20 conservative Republicans are refusing to vote for McCarthy, possibly with hopes of extracting concessions such as releasing ALL J6 material, or setting up a committee to investigate the intel community’s activities in domestic politics.
Kevin McCarthy is a swamp monster, a plaything of the donor class. It’s been good for his career, and he is good at politics. But he is a man of the Uniparty.
One of the truths of democratic politics is that enemies tend to be forever, while friends tend to be temporary. The reason is politics is personal. When someone does something to harm you in politics, you take it personally. You remember it long after the harm has been forgotten. When someone does you a favor, in contrast, it tends to be transactional, as the person doing the favor is acting from self-interest. Favors are impersonal, while harms are always personal.
This is something Kevin McCarthy is learning right now. His climb to the speaker’s chair has been sidetracked by a small group of malcontents. They oppose him becoming the next Speaker of the House because they do not like him. More important, they think he is a shameless liar, so they do not trust him. The reason they think this is that Kevin McCarthy is a shameless liar. To get where he is he had to knife people in the back, because he has no other qualifications for the job.
It will never be said publicly, but his role in knifing Congressman Steve King in the back, at the behest of the donor class, burned up his capital. If he is willing to work with the New York Times to ruin a Steve King, how can anyone in the caucus be sure he will not do the same trick to them? Politics is a sleazy business, but the reason to be in a party is to have the protection of the party. McCarthy broke an important rule so he is a man with few friends, only money to spread around.
Another truth of politics is that when you take a shot at the king you better not miss, which is where the anti-McCarthy forces are right now. They have to hang together or they will hang alone. Just in case that is not clear, the self-aggrandizing sociopath from Texas, Dan Crenshaw, gave one of his typical tantrums to the press, calling the holdouts forever enemies of the uniparty. …
The unspoken truth of this fiasco is that this would not be possible if the FBI had allowed the Republicans to sweep the midterms. If it had been a red wave, McCarthy would have had no trouble getting the votes from all of those newly minted House members excited to be in Washington. Instead, the FBI only allowed the GOP to gain a small majority to keep up appearances. That gives this small band of holdouts the chance to throw a wrench in the works of the uniparty.
This brings up the question that no one in the media dares ask. That is, why is it just fifteen members of the party opposing this oleaginous snake? For a long time, we have been told that most of the party is conservative, but the leadership is the problem, always cutting deals with the Democrats. If the conservatives could get control of the leadership, then things would change. It turns out that conservatives are as rare as hen’s teeth in the Republican Party.
The truth is, George Washington was right. No man is so virtuous as to resist the highest bidder and that is axiomatically true in politics. Marjorie Taylor Greene switched teams for the promise of some legitimacy. The party promised to let her pretend to be a serious person in exchange for her support of the uniparty. It turns out that those stories about old Marge being a cheap date were true. It is a good reminder that character is your best guide, even in the sleazy world of politics.
The right wing versus the uniparty.
