House Republicans have apparently grown tired of stabbing President Biden, congressional Democrats, and the American people in the back and have at long last turned the knives squarely on themselves. Their latest genius move was ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy and paving the way for someone who’s even less palatable to swing voters, like former Ohio State coach Jim Jordan, who wrestles with his conscience every night before tossing it over the top rope and pile-driving it into sweet oblivion.
The other option appears to be Rep. Steve Scalise, who’s just a jigger of ipecac compared to Jordan’s frosty Big Gulp. As a branding exercise, this is a little like Dreyer’s nixing the Eskimo Pie because of its racist overtones and replacing it with a brand-new line of Chocolate Hitler Pops.
Well, some mainstream (i.e., still marginally lucid) House Republicans have noticed the total destruction Matt Gaetz, et al., have wrought, and they’re unhappy enough to speak out about it on the record.
Among the discontented is Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who spoke with The Atlantic’s Russell Berman about the the Republicans’—legal this time—coup. And while Berman doesn’t explicitly say there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, you can pretty much read between the lines.
The Atlantic:
Republicans are only now beginning to contemplate the significant political ramifications of tossing McCarthy. Retaining their narrow majority in the House next year was already going to be a challenge. But the GOP will now have to defend its four-seat advantage without a leader who, for all of McCarthy’s political shortcomings, was widely recognized as its best fundraiser, candidate recruiter, and campaign strategist. “They just took out our best player,” a rueful Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma told me on Thursday, referring to the eight renegade Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy.
Wait, this almost sounds like … Republicans in disarray! Also, if Kevin McCarthy is your best player, you may want to check the waiver wire to see if there’s anyone better worth adding to the team. Like, say, Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger. Or the perduring, John Boehner-shaped Pall Mall cloud that lingers like Our Lady of Fatima in the speaker’s private office.
That said, Cole, who doesn’t want the speaker job but could be elevated if Jordan, Scalise, or some other jabroni spontaneously explodes into a cloud of bats while picking out Jell-O flavors in the House commissary, simply loved Kevin. And he appears convinced that this latest dustup will severely hamper the GOP’s electoral fortunes.
For now, Cole is, like other McCarthy allies, still seething at the unprecedented vote to overthrow the speaker and is backing efforts to change the House rules so that whoever replaces McCarthy does not face the same ever-present threat. “We put sharp knives in the hands of children, and they used them,” Cole said.
Ooh, that’s a fun quote. Want more? They’re fresh out of the oven!
Nom nom nom nom.
On the GOP’s prospects for holding the House in the wake of Gaetz’s putsch:
“I think these guys materially hurt our chances to hold the majority. That’s just the reality.”
“This is going to cost us candidates” and “God knows how much money.”
On the potential for changing House rules so it’s no longer possible for one disgruntled member to call for a motion to vacate:
“I think it would get a lot of Democratic support. We’d have to endure another hour of ‘I told you so.’ That’s fair enough.”
On Democrats’ refusal to save McCarthy’s bacon before Gaetz unceremoniously slapped his breakfast out of his mouth:
“If we had the opportunity to take out [Nancy] Pelosi, we probably would have done the same thing.”
Really? They would have? No way! They respect the institution far too much. When they’re not whitewashing violent attacks on it, anyway.
But whatever you think of McCarthy and his abilities—Cole seems to esteem him more highly than most—ousting him may actually put a significant dent in their campaign war chest.
McCarthy is neither a policy wonk nor a brilliant legislator. But his strengths were underappreciated, Cole said. Committees he controlled raised more than half a billion dollars for the House Republican majority in recent years. McCarthy has also played a leading role in persuading promising Republicans to run for pivotal House seats. “This guy was by far the best political speaker that I’ve seen,” he told me. (Democrats and more than a few Republicans would dispute that assertion, pointing to the fact that Republicans won a much slimmer majority under McCarthy’s leadership in 2022 than they were expected to.)
Whatever happens in the coming weeks should be fun to watch—and the eventual outcome will almost certainly be bad for Republicans. That alone should be enough to sustain our interest. We’ll see what happens next week. Be sure to tune in! Same batty time, same batty channel.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
