McCarthy is best understood as an empty suit and a quintessential swamp creature—someone who lives and breathes the D.C. game, who is cozy with K Street, and whose main lodestar is cutting deals and expending political capital in order to boost his own political fortunes.
. . ."But the mere fact that, even if McCarthy does prevail, he will necessarily have had to work harder for it than any new House speaker in over 160 years, comes replete with lessons. There are myriad cautionary lessons to be found here in the malodorous wreckage: for McCarthy himself, for McCarthy-endorsing former President Donald Trump, and for the legacy conservative pundits who have emerged as some of McCarthy’s most impassioned supporters.
"Kevin McCarthy, first elected to Congress in 2006, has been an establishment figure since the day he arrived in Washington, D.C. His political philosophy and guiding principles are to this day largely unknown, to the perhaps-dubious extent they exist at all. True, he is a well-known prolific fundraiser who knows how to work a room full of donors—but what exactly has that accomplished for either the GOP or the conservative cause, of late? McCarthy is best understood as an empty suit and a quintessential swamp creature—someone who lives and breathes the D.C. game, who is cozy with K Street, and whose main lodestar is cutting deals and expending political capital in order to boost his own political fortunes.". . .
"It should be unsurprising, then, that his being proffered as such an inevitable choice for House speaker—”I’ve earned this job,” he hectored reluctant conservative congressmen on the precipice of the first failed ballot—would trigger a backlash. In virtually all facets of American institutional life right now, the Left is winning: from the universities to the media to the corporate boardroom, and everywhere in between. The last remaining redoubts of conservative power are less cultural than they are nakedly political: various state legislatures and governor’s mansions, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. House. Given that yawning power imbalance, the clear onus for scarce conservative-held political institutions is to efficiently and ruthlessly wield their power to resist the Left’s onslaught and advance a positive alternative agenda. Most conservatives from outside the Acela corridor are (properly) skeptical that when it comes to the U.S. House, K Street’s favorite Republican is the best person to envision and execute that agenda.". . .
House Republicans have plenty of time to elect a speaker. With a Democrat-controlled Senate, the odds of passing meaningful legislation are vanishingly low anyway.
On the plus side:
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