We are in uncharted territory. I will note that ALL of the Democrats voted to oust McCarthy despite him dealing with the Democrat Senate and Democrat President. Republicans get no credit when they bend to Democrats.
Kevin McCarthy has been ousted in a right-wing revolt – the first time ever that a US House of Representatives’ Speaker has lost a no-confidence vote.
[…]
Eight Republicans voted to oust Mr McCarthy in Tuesday’s vote. Another 210 – all Republicans – voted to keep Mr McCarthy in the role.
But Democrats joined with the Speaker’s Republican critics to topple him.
Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries had said in a letter to colleagues that he would not provide the votes needed to rescue Mr McCarthy.
Democrats have known all along that McCarthy’s grip on the job was incredibly weak. So weak that his removal should come as no surprise to anyone, especially Republicans. McCarthy may have had the most conditional speakership in history. Those conditions were evidence of distrust. McCarthy agreed to them.
This is not a crisis. The process of electing a new Speaker is known. What we’re really looking at here is a case of accountability. McCarthy failed to soothe the distrust of enough of his peers and that’s on him. This process has certainly been ugly, but Republicans have another chance to get it right. If it’s the ugly that bothers you go back to bed. We all know the Dems reject the very concept of accountability. I’m eager to see how Republicans deal with it.
What bothers me about this is that 10 so called conservatives, most who are looking for bigger and betterjobs pulled this off without axplan B.
Was McCarthy perfect, no. Did he do good things, yes.
And these so called conservatives complained that McCarthy used the Democrats to pass the budget bill and yet these 10 did the exactly same thing.
So much stupidity.
The primary condition for the approval of McCarthy’s speakership was a return to regular order regarding spending. No more continuing resolutions ending in massive omnibus spending bills. McCarthy agreed to this condition to get the job. Nine months later McCarthy’s preference was to align with Democrats to pass another continuing resolution rather than honor his commitment to his own conference. McCarthy essentially told fiscal conservatives to piss off. McCarthy gambled, lost, and triggered his own removal. Gaetz was just the ego large enough to get it done.
McCarthy’s removal was absolutely a power play. But then, so was the conditioning of his speakership. It’s exactly the kind of influence over Republican politics that conservatives have dreamed of wielding since the tea party days. Colorful personality aside, Gaetz and the other seven are the ones who actually did their jobs. The lack of outrage from most of the rest of the conference tells its own story about how much support McCarthy did or didn’t have. The “plan” here is one of forcing accountability. McCarthy demonstrated an unwillingness to be part of a fiscal responsibility plan. Fine. Let’s see what the next guy’s commitment looks like.
Merlin is spot-on, as usual. Note well: McCarthy had ALL SUMMER LONG to run the spending bills through the House, one at a time, checked, re-checked, and approved. That’s “regular order.”
Instead, he called for sessions on some of the bills in September, knowing that he would jam through a CR because the bills could not be processed fast enough.
Not only a jerk, but a dumb one, too.
Well, well, well.
A conservative is now third in line for the throne and presumably in control of the House agenda. A Trump guy, no less. Put there by a unanimous conference vote. I’m not sure Gaetz ever had a plan beyond flushing McCarthy and trusting the process, but without that flush and the solid rejection of each of those weak RNC offerings we would be in a very different place.
Still can’t shake the feeling that Lucy’s gonna pull the football again, though.