Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy is a political animal -- a totally political animal. Michelle Cottle writes:
Last week, he set heads shaking by announcing his opposition to the bill establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 sacking of the U.S. Capitol. The legislative negotiations had been led on the Republican side, reportedly at Mr. McCarthy’s explicit request, by Representative John Katko of New York. But Mr. McCarthy and his leadership team urged members to reject the deal, leaving Mr. Katko twisting in the wind. The plan passed on Wednesday. Thirty-five Republicans supported it, in what was viewed as a rebuke of Mr. McCarthy.
But one shouldn't be too quick to write McCarthy off:
What he really, really wants now is the speaker’s gavel, which hovers just a few precious seats beyond his grasp. If Mitch McConnell, the ruthless, calculating Senate Republican leader, is a shark, Mr. McCarthy is a jellyfish, carried spinelessly along by the political currents.
These days, such inchoate non-leadership is the best that House Republicans can hope for. In fact, that’s what they demand. In a conference increasingly dominated by Trumpian trolls (See: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks…), maintaining serious order is out of the question. Forestalling total anarchy requires a leader with an extraordinary gift for abject appeasement. It’s equal parts feeding the base the unhinged grievance it craves, while still keeping members from less Trumpy districts on board.
Mr. McCarthy has shown himself to be that leader, and he deserves recognition for rising — or rather sinking — to meet the moment.
Sometimes being a jellyfish will get you what you want.
Image: vanityfair.com
10 comments:
All bets are off on what happens next in the failed States just south of us. McCarthy is the new norm and I feel will get that gavel next year. For a nation that can elevate a life long con man of the worst order like Donald Trump to its highest office, these cretins in Congress and the Senate are merely the afterglow and prep for the next Trump. I don't think he'll be in any shape in 2024 to get reelected but there are equally ambitious wannabes waiting in the wings for the chance. If Democrats don't soon quash all the nonsense, January 6th will look like child's play. BC Waterboy
McCarthy is in the same position his predecessor John Boehner was in. Once among the most far-right members of his party, McCarthy is stunned to see himself outflanked by crazies with even fewer principles than he has. In sure we'll get a memoir one of these days in which McCarthy bemoans the new generation of GOP lunatics and asks plaintively "how did it all go so wrong?" Screw him.
Cap
I don't think I've ever seen a public figure in any occupation so transparently of no value to any purpose but to serve his personal ambition. He's the poster child for the type of politician most responsible for the growth of public cynicism toward the process.
I agree, waterboy. a nation whose leaders are full of ambition but who lack backbone can only slide into chaos.
I always marvel that what is so obvious to so many, Owen, is also lost on so many others. To see craven hypocrites like McCarthy get away with their nonsense and be seen as anything other than self-serving speaks ill of the American capacity for critical thought. So many of them seem to be driven only by primitive impulse and reaction, exactly the way many of our lower animal species are, no disrespect to other animals intended.
Republicans have claimed for a long time that they are victims, Cap. You will hear more of the same from McCarthy.
George Bush's former speechwriter, Michael Gerson, calls McCarthy a "sniveling non-entity," John. That describes him precisely.
We used to believe in evolution, Lorne. It seems to me that you can make a case for devolution -- those with reptilian brains have risen to the highest pinnacles of power.
McCarthy wants to be President at some future date, in my opinion. He wants power and more power and more power. That is how the GOP got to where they are today. Many left politics to avoid the downward slide of the GOP. its too bad. they might have been better off to stay and fight
some of these Republicans are just bad shit crazy, but then they are reflective of the American population. People eventually say they were not getting ahead in the U.S.A. and became angry and latched onto whatever looked like it/they would advance their position, and then they had the tea party and it was all downhill from there. Americans have always been about individualism. Now they have it and they're killing each other left and right, mass shootings every day,. Racism abounds, tribalism abounds.
Expect to see more nut jobs in Congress and State assemblies.
I think you're right, e.a.f. More nutjobs are on the way.
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