When the House of Representatives is seated on January 3, the first order of business will be to elect a new Speaker of the House. With a narrow majority to work with, spineless, QAnon-courting opportunist Rep. Kevin "Qevin" McCarthy has coveted the position for his entire miserable career, and there's a chance it may slip out of his grasp. At least five radical right-wing Republicans are vowing never to vote for him, and where he has a caucus of 222, he needs 218 to be elected. From the Associated Press:
"The increasingly real prospect of a messy floor fight over the speaker’s gavel on Day One of the new Congress on Jan. 3 is worrying House Republicans, who are bracing for the spectacle. They have been meeting endlessly in private at the Capitol trying to resolve the standoff. [snip]
'The fear is, that if we stumble out of the gate,' said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a McCarthy ally, then the voters who sent the Republicans to Washington 'will revolt over that and they will feel let down.'
Not since the disputed election of 1923 has a candidate for House speaker faced the public scrutiny of convening a new session of Congress only to have it descend into political chaos, with one vote after another, until a new speaker is chosen. At that time, it eventually took a grueling nine ballots to secure the gavel." (our emphasis)
In order to build a coalition of support, McCarthy has been making deals with various demons in his caucus, including the odious Rep. Marjorie Taylor "Traitor" Greene, who recently bragged that if she'd been running the January 6 insurrection, they would have brought guns, presumably to kill more police. Greene may get a chair or two of a key subcommittee after her bargain with Qevin. Knowing his monumental ambition to become Speaker at all cost, we suspect Qevin will find a way to make a dark deal with at least one of the five holdouts.
Here's hoping the splits in the rotted out Republican / New Confederate / Seditionist party keeps spreading (including the one splitting supporters of the Malignant Loser and supporters of DeSantis / anyone else, and the fight for the RNC chair), and their attempts to reverse the gains under Speaker Pelosi and President Biden fail.
(photo: Alex Edelman / Getty Images)
