Kevin McCarthy is a terrible Speaker of the House. I can’t go so far as to say he’s the worst of all time because, you know, Dennis Hastert is a convicted pedophile, but he’s very bad, and has no redeeming qualities as a leader and most likely as a person. So it is with glee in my heart and indifference towards McCarthy’s feelings in my soul that I share with you the delightful news that someone in the Republican party has left a motion behind in the bathroom underneath the House Floor demanding that he vacate the Speakership. Here’s a Tweet with photo evidence:
So we have two options, and both are kind of great: 1. Someone is thoughtless enough to have left that lying around and it was never supposed to see the light of day. (That’s good because it just reinforces the belief Republicans are incompetent and can’t govern, which we already knew.) The second option, which I am leaning towards, is that this was a Mean Girls-esque stunt designed to let McCarthy know that he can’t sit with the ultra-right (and thus, ultra-awful) contingent of the GOP.
If you’re wondering what this is all about, McCarthy is facing a government shutdown that will entirely be his fault because he can’t get the GOP to agree on a budget bill that could pass both the Democrat-led Senate and be signed into law by President Biden, who is also a Democrat. Couple this with the fact he sold his soul to Matt Gaetz, an even worse person, in order to get elected to the Speakership in the first place, and McCarthy basically can’t win right now. He simply does not have the votes unless he crosses the aisle to work with the Dems, and then that will really tick off the Ghoulie Gaetzies (I just made that term up, but I think it’s appropriate here.)
Then, as an extra reminder, McCarthy had to agree that just one person could call for a vote on his ouster as Speaker in order to get elected as Speaker (and it still took 15 tries!) and, well, you see what we’re working with now.
However, Intelligencer has even more insight into how truly ridiculous this whole thing is:
The discarded draft, first reported by independent journalist Matt Laslo, looks to be from September 15 — three days after Gaetz threatened to vote to remove McCarthy. (Gaetz and others in the far-right wing of the GOP wanted to vote on individual appropriations bills ahead of the September 30 deadline, rather than pass them all as one big piece of legislation, as is standard.) Because McCarthy probably has enough votes to survive any coup attempt, Gaetz’s threat is probably empty. But the method of the leak here is worth noting — either a brilliant or extremely dumb way to pass off information in Congress.
Imagine being in one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and you spend your time engaging in the pettiest of moves that will most likely amount to nothing other than antagonizing someone you don’t like. I love it.
To the Republicans, I say: Keep engaging in internal warfare. Channel Mean Girls more, get a Burn Book! Release it into the wild. Let everyone know just what you think about how Jim Jordan looks like a human thumb. (I can’t be the only one who thinks that.)
When the Republicans are eating their own, they’re not working together to systematically strip more rights away from the rest of us. This is a real “let them fight” type of situation. I say we let them.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Paramount Pictures)
