Dem
50
Ties
1
GOP
49
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appeared yesterday on Newsmax, which apparently still exists. He was appearing on the show of Sean Spicer, who apparently still exists. And the point of the appearance was to stage a softball interview in which Spicer set up the pins so that McCarthy could knock them down. After the host waxed poetically about how very much McCarthy has done for Republican members of the House, raising over $500 million for them, he yielded the mic to the Representative. Once the floor was his, McCarthy declared:
We got five more weeks. We're working through our conference rules today. We want to make sure that everybody has input, but we have to speak as one voice. We will only be successful if we work together or we'll lose individually.
This is very fragile that we are the only stopgap for this Biden administration. And if we don't do this right, the Democrats can take the majority. If we play games on the floor, the Democrats could end up picking who the speaker is.
If McCarthy wants to speak to a Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) or a Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), he can do it directly without the need to go on TV. The reason he submits to this sort of hassle is to address the sort of far-right voters who make up Greene's base or Gaetz' base. The Minority Leader's hope is that some of those voters will contact their representative and insist they fall in line behind him.
Now, is there anything in particular that has put a bee in McCarthy's bonnet? Maybe. Reader P.F. in Fairbanks, AK, sent us this news item about the Alaska state Senate. It seems that, after the recent elections there, the upper chamber is made up of 8 Democrats, 8 normal Republicans and 3 whackadoodle Republicans. The 8 normal Republicans did not want to spend the next 2 years dealing with their whackadoodle colleagues. And so, they agreed to form a 16-member Democrat-normal Republican majority, with the 3 whackadoodle Republicans on the outside looking in. Perhaps the Minority Leader is worried that when his colleagues hear about this, perhaps from Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK), they'll start to get... ideas. (Z)