Kevin McCarthy: Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

The Time for Politics Has Passed

Alkimson, iStock, Standard License

Audio Version

After 20 very long, very loud years of sermons on the dangers of terrorism, it seems the Republican party has no choice but to negotiate with 20 political suicide bombers just to operate a government. I’m overdosing on poetic justice, frothing at the mouth as I slip into elysium.

As I write, the American House of Representatives assembles for a third day of voting for Speaker. McCarthy has lost six seven eight consecutive rounds of Speaker confirmation votes and seems likely to lose a seventh eighth ninth. This is the funniest thing to happen to a Speaker in a hundred years, and the humiliation does not seem likely to end any time soon.

Here are the concessions McCarthy has made so far:

• If McCarthy wins, any single member of the House can initiate a “Motion to Vacate,” which forces a vote on whether to keep or remove the Speaker of the House. This means any member of the Freedom Caucus can force a repeat of this farce as often as they want to.
• A restoration of “open rules” on all major bills that allows rank-and-file members to propose amendments without committee approval. This means Boebert and Gaetz can force the house to vote on whatever amendments they think would be fun on any given day
• The creation of a House Select Committee (like the Church Committee) on “Weaponization of the Federal Government.” This will essentially recreate the Twitter Files on the floor of congress, but with every media outlet to the left of Fox News
• The Congressional Leadership Fund can no longer spend money in GOP open primaries to advance one (relatively sane) candidate over another (batshit) one.

Don’t cry for McCarthy. The minority leader made his bones pretending to be the thing Freedom Caucus members actually are: a hard-line government obstructionist, soldier in the war against the demon liquor of government spending and the evil libs who push it. The would-be Speaker is a sheep in wolf’s clothing and his fellow wolves, knowing this, are demanding that he howl. But he can only bleat pathetically, and so the wolves laugh and circle and lick their bloody chops.