Last Updated on August 6, 2023, 2:51 AM | Published: January 9, 2023
After an embarrassing week in which he fell short of the votes needed to become Speaker of the House 14 times, Donald Trump toady Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached the 216-vote benchmark shortly after midnight on Jan. 8.
But due to the number of concessions McCarthy made to the radical fringe of his party, he will likely be the weakest Speaker of the House in more than a century, ruled by the most insufferable clowns in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But upon accruing the necessary votes, McCarthy saved his most effusive thanks for the biggest clown.
Republished in partnership with Oklahoma Voice under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Oklahoma Voice is a part of States Newsroom which is a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: [email protected]. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and Twitter.
“I do want to especially thank President Trump. I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning … he was all-in,” McCarthy told reporters after the 15th vote.
“He would call me, and he would call others. He really was — I was just talking to him tonight — helping get those final votes,” McCarthy said. “What he’s really saying, really, for the party and the country, that we have to come together. We have to focus on the economy. We’ve got to focus, make our borders secure. We gotta do so much work to do, and he was a great influence to make that all happen. So thank you, President Trump.”
First of all, Trump is not president. Second, Trump’s support for McCarthy is lukewarm. He wanted the vote to end, but he hedged on McCarthy in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“I think it is a dangerous game, and, frankly, if they are not happy with him, they can do something about it at a later date,” he said.
Trump is loyal to only himself and the worst despots on earth. He will throw McCarthy under the bus at the first sign of weakness – or, the first sign since McCarthy’s weeklong weakness marathon.
But he is right on this point: one of the biggest concessions McCarthy made to grab the speaker’s gavel includes reducing the number of representatives required to make a motion to vacate the speaker position.
Now, all it takes is Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the equally odious Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) or another of the 18 insurrection supporters of the so-called “freedom caucus” to make that motion.
This could happen every week.
Elsewhere, McCarthy is letting lawmakers take up to 72 hours to review legislation before a bill reaches the House floor. That will sound reasonable until the inevitable pile-up of bills and the governmental logjam that will be its consequence.
Also, instead of an omnibus budget, Congress will vote on 12 separate appropriations bills, which means much of the government will be brought to a standstill while incoming Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) tries to cobble together some semblance of consensus.
McCarthy gave up many things to round up his clowns, and it is hard to decide which is the worst. Is it reinstating the Holman rule of 1876, which allows vengeful members of congress to amend appropriations and reduce salaries for government employees they want to punish, or is it the new rule requiring any raise of the debt ceiling to be accompanied by spending cuts?
That last one sounds like a shortcut to the U.S. getting mired in Thatcherite austerity.
If anything good came of McCarthy’s big, dumb week, it was the emergence of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as House Minority Leader.
If McCarthy falters and the 113th United States Congress falls into turmoil, he will likely be the next Democratic Speaker of the House. Jeffries warned of the implications of McCarthy’s weakness on “Meet the Press.”
“Well, our general concern is that the dysfunction that was historic that we saw this week is not at an end, it’s just the beginning,” Jeffries told Chuck Todd. “And while the Congress was held captive this particular time, what is going to be a problem is if the American people will be held captive over the next two years to the extreme ‘MAGA’ Republican agenda that apparently has been negotiated into the House rules and the functioning of the Congress.”
This, along with his servitude to Trump, is likely to be Kevin McCarthy’s legacy.
George Lang has worked as an award-winning professional journalist in Oklahoma City for over 25 years and is the professional opinion columnist for Free Press. His work has been published in a number of local publications covering a wide range of subjects including politics, media, entertainment and others. George lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and son.
