This is the part where Kevin McCarthy gets squeezed
Kevin McCarthy was always going to end up caving and agreeing to a budget deal that gave President Biden most of what he wanted. The House Republicans in toss up districts were always going to force McCarthy to do this, because they feared that a default would ruin their personal reelection prospects. And McCarthy was always going to have to cave to them, because he knew they’d have ousted him if necessary in order to get a deal done and avoid a default.
All of the above was easily predictable. Whenever any of today’s Republicans are in danger of losing reelection, they’re always going to end up doing whatever they think gives them the best chance of reelection. Right thing? Wrong thing? Doesn’t matter. It’s only ever about the selfish thing. So of course they were going to cave. But now comes the unpredictable part.
The insurrectionist House Republicans, who helped make McCarthy the Speaker to begin with, are clearly unhappy about this outcome. It makes them look weak. It has the right wing base asking why these insurrectionists couldn’t control McCarthy and force a better deal (or a default).
These insurrectionist House Republicans are generally in far right districts where their reelection is merely dependent on behaving in the kinds of horribly destructive ways that the right wing base loves. So they’re left feeling like they have to do something to punish or humiliate McCarthy for daring to cut a reasonable budget deal.
Of course the insurrectionists aren’t even close to having enough votes to elect one of their own as Speaker. It’s plainly obvious that the House Republicans in toss up districts aren’t going to support some insurrectionist like Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker – especially after they just caved to Biden in order to avoid casting their lot with the insurrectionists on a default.
So if the insurrectionists do oust McCarthy over this, they’ll be stuck having to swallow yet another Speaker that the House Republicans in toss up districts can tolerate – in other words, another McCarthy. For that matter, if McCarthy is ousted, Republicans may not be able to replace him with anyone. After all, he was the closest thing they had to a consensus pick, and it took them fifteen rounds of voting just to elect him by a one vote margin.
That’s why it’s tricky to try to predict what the insurrectionist House Republicans will do. Ousting McCarthy will get them a few days’ worth of headlines that their base will love. But once that’s over, they won’t have gained anything from his ouster, and they might actually lose power over it. If nothing else, at least McCarthy is letting them run wild with House committee hearings.
We’ll see what happens. The insurrectionist House Republicans can oust Kevin McCarthy or not oust him. That’s going to be up to them. Either way, they’ve lost this battle. Of course they were always going to lose this battle. They simply weren’t going to have the numbers. Now we’ll find out if they’re willing to weaken their own position just to briefly make themselves look strong in the eyes of their own base.
