This week’s post is a current events post, and the topic du jour is Kevin McCarthy’s battle to become the 55th Speaker of the House. (I’m writing this Saturday afternoon, and Representative Kevin McCarthy was elected to the post earlier this morning.)
I am not a fan of Rep. McCarthy, although I did respect him for disavowing Trump and Trump’s allies following the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. In the two years since that event, McCarthy has shown himself to be another bootlicking toady of the former president. That lost my respect quickly.
The fact that it took him 15 ballots to win the prize and that he had to make major concessions to the right-wing extremists in his party makes me hopeful that the GOP will fail spectacularly as the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If they do, I hope that will bode well for the Democratic Party to retain the White House and the Senate in 2024, and perhaps even take control of the House of Representatives.
That’s the political side of me with my extremely liberal schadenfreude on full display.
The humanitarian side of me knows that a GOP mired by in-fighting and actively trying to tear apart the U.S. Federal Government and our Constitution from the inside means that a lot of families and individuals, particularly those from marginalized communities or lower-income backgrounds, will be hurt deeply in the coming months and years.
I imagine it won’t be too long before Representative McCarthy’s staff find him sitting in the Office of the Speaker of the House, looking rather like the pug in this post’s photo. He’ll be wearing sackcloth and ashes, wondering how in the hell it all came crashing down upon his head. And he’ll only have his ego and the concessions he gave to obtain the post to blame.
I truly hope I’m wrong about how badly the GOP under McCarthy’s leadership will do. But, I fear that too many of the Representatives who will soon be sworn in are bent on destroying our democratic republic and lining their own pockets rather than governing for the good of all the people.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
Ruth F. Simon 