Once speaker Kevin McCarthy made a deal with ‘Mayhem,’ outcome was never in doubt |Opinion
In my adult lifetime, the willingness to “work across the aisle” in Congress has gone from being a selling point to a firing offense on the GOP side.
Now Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has lost his job because he let Democrats help him keep the government open. Like so much else that has gone on in our country since anarchists took over the GOP, this has never happened before.
After a taste of the ambrosia that is a GOP speakership in the age of the chaos caucus, any sane person would have concluded some time ago that he’d be better off back selling sandwiches in Bakersfield.
McCarthy had two choices: He could let his craziest colleagues shut ‘er down, with absolute indifference to the suffering that would have caused, or let Democrats help him avoid needless economic pain for the entire country.
Sure, the former would have gladdened Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who reminds me of that character ‘Mayhem’ that Dean Winters plays in Allstate insurance commercials.
But it would only have satisfied him and his fellow nihilists for the five minutes it would have taken them to think of something even worse to try.
McCarthy is really out for ever thinking that Mayhem could be appeased.
It was Gaetz who made good on his threats and put forward the motion to remove McCarthy as speaker. And McCarthy, who won’t even try to keep the job he’s wanted all his political life, claims that the coup was personal. It was payback, as he sees it, for McCarthy’s failure to throw himself in front of the long-running ethics investigation into alleged sexual misconduct and misuse of funds by Gaetz.
Though Democrats were not behind the intraparty coup, they had a choice to make, too: Would they intervene to help McCarthy keep his job? Or would they let Republicans throw him out, knowing they could then give it to someone even more willing to be held hostage than the House elf that Donald Trump used to call “my Kevin”?
Without too much angst, they chose not to rescue someone so power-hungry that after furiously blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection, he turned right around and bowed to him.
Why, they decided, should they throw a lifeline to someone who double-crosses friend and foe alike?
Of course, if Mayhem continues to prevail, whoever follows McCarthy will make him look trustworthy by comparison. Or, the House could be without a speaker for some time.
The gamble here is that at some point, the public will tire of the dysfunction, of the GOP’s utter lack of interest in governing.
The hope is that Speaker Stefanik or someone similar might turn off even more Republicans than have already headed for the exits.
But as former Vice President Mike Pence, who also knows something about appeasement, said when he heard the news of McCarthy’s ouster, “let me say that chaos is never America’s friend.”
And he’s right about that, at least. Mayhem needs no further encouragement.
