Kevin McCarthy waves the white flag after being ousted as Speaker
Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker of the House today because unraveling pariah Matt Gaetz was willing to get a small handful of his fellow bottom feeders to go along with a pointless plan to oust him. This means we’ll have a vote for a new Speaker. Now it turns out at least one name won’t be on the list: Kevin McCarthy.
After McCarthy’s ouster, he announced this evening that he won’t put his name in the ring to try to get reinstated as Speaker. This isn’t a surprise. If Gaetz and the Crazy Eight voted to oust McCarthy, they’re not going to turn around and vote for him as Speaker. All that McCarthy would accomplish by keeping his name in the running is to split the vote and keep Republicans from being able to elect any Speaker.
By waving the white flag, McCarthy has made it slightly easier for House Republicans to end up actually having a Speaker. But it’s still an uphill battle. All it’ll take is five House Republican “no” votes to kill any Speaker candidacy. So if Gaetz and the Crazy Eight want the Speakership to remain vacant for awhile, it will. At least until the House Republicans in toss-up districts start to worry about the blowback costing them reelection, and start thinking about working with House Democrats on a compromise Speaker.
But Kevin McCarthy will be watching that process from the cheap seats. He’s back to being just a regular member of Congress now. Given how horribly these nine months went for him and how humiliatingly he’s fallen, perhaps he’s secretly relieved that he’s no longer in charge of it. But hey, McCarthy went a long way to help Trump survive January 6th. So McCarthy deserves every bad thing that’s happening to him.
