After spineless careerist Squeaker of the House Kevin "Qevin" McCarthy groveled away his power and shredded dignity to his fascist insurrectionist caucus to become Speaker, inquiring minds have been asking, "what exactly did he promise in his Faustian bargain?" One Republican congressman learned the hard way that Qevin is all about Qevin's ambition, seniority or commitments be damned. Puck's Tara Palmieri reports:
"As I wrote last week, Republicans have been fixated on whether 71-year-old Rep. Vern Buchanan might retire from Congress after losing the House Ways & Means chairmanship to the 42-year-old Speaker’s pet Jason Smith, potentially reducing Kevin McCarthy’s margin of error from four votes to three to pass critical partisan legislation. [snip] Vern’s people say he won’t retire (despite the rumblings on the Hill), but they didn’t deny that he was mighty pissed to be passed over as the most senior person on the Ways & Means committee by Smith, a member who was fifth in line.
Just how angry was he? Well, a source on the House floor during the vote told me that while McCarthy was gaveling down the votes, Buchanan walked up to McCarthy and said, “You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.” He then proceeded to chew out McCarthy’s deputy chief of staff for floor operations, John Leganski. It was shocking to see such fury from Buchanan, who’s known for being mild mannered. Indeed, I heard that the tirade was so heated that the Speaker’s security detail stepped in with a light touch." (our emphasis)
We imagine this heated scene is being repeated with other Republican members privately, once they find out that McCarthy's bargain with the insurrection caucus screwed them. With a slimmest of margins in the House, we hope that Buchanan and other "victims" of McCarthy's blind ambition will find a way at the most important moment for McCarthy to return the favor.
