Kevin McCarthy, the briefly former and permanently disgraced Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has announced he will be retiring at the end of this year.
What an embarrassing legacy McCarthy leaves behind. It took a humiliating and record-setting number of votes (15!) for him to get elected to the position of House Speaker, and he only eventually succeeded by selling his soul to a small faction of extremist MAGA Republicans. He spent his brief tenure as speaker engaging in petty revenge and trading schoolyard insults with Democrats, nearly crashing the country into the debt ceiling, and being forced to act as those MAGAites’ puppet in trying to impeach Joe Biden over nothing—all before finally being removed by that same faction just a few months later.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, McCarthy says he’s “leaving the House, but not the fight.” He lists off some of his proudest accomplishments as speaker, bragging that he helped “achieve energy independence” (meaning he increased profits for fossil fuel companies), “establish a Parents’ Bill of Rights” (a.k.a. a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill with no chance of passing in the Senate), and “restor[e] the Intelligence Committee to its original charter” (that would be the “petty revenge” I mentioned earlier).
He also says he “reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion” and “kept our government operating.” (LOL congrats on saving the government from yourself, I guess.)
McCarthy is leaving office at the end of this year, meaning in just a few weeks, a full year before the slated end of his current term. Coming on the heels of George Santos’ ousting and the announced retirements of several other Republicans, the party’s slim majority is steadily being winnowed down.
It’s hard to know what will happen to McCarthy’s seat in California’s 20th District, a Republican (and disproportionately white) stronghold in the state’s Central Valley. We’ll be keeping a close eye on that situation as it develops.
So long, Kevin, you will absolutely not be missed!
(featured image: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images/TMS)
