House Republicans dug their own grave on this one

| 12:01 pm EDT October 14, 2023
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How deep of a hole are House Republicans in right now? Over the past twelve days they’ve gone from ousting their own Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, to nominating Steve Scalise for Speaker, only for him to withdraw, to nominating Jim Jordan for Speaker, only for him to apparently not have the votes either. It’s becoming a master class in self-humiliation. At this rate the Republicans might have no chance of keeping the House majority in 2024 at all. And it all comes down to one thing.

It was Matt Gaetz who caused all of this trouble. Gaetz was the one who introduced the motion to vacate and pulled together just enough votes to make it happen. It didn’t matter that 97% of House Republicans voted to keep McCarthy on the job and wanted no part of Gaetz’s antics. Gaetz got his way, by taking advantage of the narrow nature of his party’s majority. And yet none of it had to happen.

When it was revealed that Matt Gaetz was under federal criminal investigation for alleged underage sex trafficking and a boatload of other alleged crimes, it was clear that whether Gaetz ended up being indicted or not, there was plenty of evidence against him. House Republicans could have decided to expel him at that point. Gaetz represents a far right district, so he’d have been safely replaced by another Republican in the next election, meaning the GOP wouldn’t have even lost a seat. And Gaetz wouldn’t have been around to force McCarthy out two weeks ago.

So House Republicans 100% put themselves in this mess. The vast majority of them were opposed to ousting Kevin McCarthy. But they didn’t get their way on that because they didn’t oust Matt Gaetz back when they could and should have. Now they’re being held hostage by this clown. And they’re going to end up having to expel Gaetz once this debacle is over anyway.

This all comes to a complete and total lack of leadership on the part of anyone in the Republican House. The Matt Gaetz crisis was a long time in coming, easily foreseeable, and could have been very simply fixed a year or two ago. Instead House Republicans have no Speaker and can’t elect one, all because they let an alleged underage sex trafficker stick around in Congress. House Republicans deserve to lose their majority in 2024 a thousand times over.