TRANSCRIPT:
McCarthy has tried and failed eleven times now to win the 218 needed votes to become the Speaker of the House. He’ll likely fail 3 or more times before the weekend.
The 20 or so holdouts have been called terrorists and enemies by Dan Crenshaw. Countless conservatives have likewise denounced these individuals for daring to challenge the establishment.
Oddly and even incomprehensibly, one of Kevin McCarthy’s loudest critics in Congress is suddenly McCarthy’s most vocal cheerleaders.
It wasn’t too long ago that Marjorie Taylor Greene went on Matt Gaetz’ podcast and announced that "He doesn't have the votes that are there, because there's many of us that are very unhappy about the failure to hold Republicans accountable, while conservatives like me, Paul Gosar, and many others just constantly take the abuse by the Democrats.”
How things have changed. Greene now is one of Gaetz’ loudest critics.
In May of 2021, Greene praised a tweet calling McCarthy a moron, saying, “Thank you for seeing the truth.”
Over the past week she’s been seen fawning over the man she once deemed a moron with the same lovestruck appearance as Joe Biden in a room full of underage girls with recently washed hair.
Maybe she finally discovered she has more in common with McCarthy than she thought.
In 2015 McCarthy was in line to become the next speaker after Boehner announced his retirement. But McCarthy abruptly dropped out. His speakership ambitions ended nearly as quickly as Kamala Harris’ affair with Willie Brown, or her own presidential ambitions in 2020, when she dropped out just as soon as she’d announced her candidacy.
Why did McCarthy drop out? Here’s what McCarthy said.
There you have it. In 2015 McCarthy said he didn’t have 100% of the votes. That was back when Republicans had a 246 seat majority. Paul Ryan ended up becoming speaker and got 236 votes.
Today the Republican majority is much smaller — they have a slim 222 seat majority. McCarthy hasn’t been able to get the 218 votes required, despite 11 rounds of voting thus far.
But is that really the reason McCarthy dropped out in 2015? Back in 2015 rumors were swirling that McCarthy, a married man, had an affair with with then-Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. Were the rumors true? They went away when he dropped out of the speaker’s race.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is no stranger to affairs herself. She recently finalized her divorce from her husband, Perry Greene, who she was married to for 27 years. Nearly a decade ago, Greene openly cheated on her husband with a polyamorous tantric sex guru. She had another affair with the manager at her gym. This is a very different MTG than the one publicly presented — a devout Christian and woman of immense integrity.
McCarthy was rumored to have had an affair in 2015. He has denied it. Greene has not denied her two known affairs, which torpedoed her own marriage. When you watch the video of her fawning over McCarthy knowing all of this, it certainly stirs the imagination. If I were CNN, I might state what you’re now thinking about the newfound friendship and alliance between the two.
The 20 holdouts have been called the never Kevin caucus. How dare a minority of Republicans prevent the coronation of John Boehner’s understudy. Suddenly, Republicans sound like Democrats, who attack the electoral college and the safeguards put in place to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Are the 20 violating the rules? No. The rules require 218 votes to win the Speakership.
And while the never Kevin caucus is viewed as extreme. How about the only Kevin caucus? There are 222 Republican Congressmen and women. Is Kevin McCarthy the best candidate? What about the only Kevin caucus? Of 222 options, Kevin McCarthy is the ONLY candidate they’ll vote for? What’s so special about Kevin?
When Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and executive branch in 2017-2018, Kevin was the floor leader of the Republican controlled House. Somehow, despite having control of both legislative bodies and the presidency, every single major budget bill that passed under Kevin’s leadership was passed with more Democrat support than Republican support. Daniel Horowitz has written about it extensively.
In 2017, the House passed a 1,665 page omnibus bill without anytime to read it. It increased spending and provided no funding to fund the border.
That same year, McCarthy whipped Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling without demanding anything in return.
When Republicans had the majority and a trifecta of power, McCarthy refused to use his political leverage to champion a Republican agenda.
Now he’s going to suddenly champion a Republican agenda as the Speaker — an agenda that has no hope of going anywhere because we don’t have the Senate or the Presidency? Maybe he will. Because supporting Republican priorities is an act of virtue signaling. Biden may be a lame duck President without the House, but a Speaker McCarthy would preside over a lame duck Republican House.
Republicans are saying we must elect Kevin speaker now because it’s vital that they get to work doing the people’s business. When was the last time the House or Congress did the American people’s business?
Did they do the people’s business when they passed the inflation reduction act, a 740 billion dollar spending spree that wasted 80 billion to hire 87,000 more IRS agents to audit 600 dollar transactions between citizens?
Or spent 369 billion dollars to combat climate change?
Or how about the Safer communities act, which incentivized states to pass the same red flag laws, which have failed to prevent a single mass shooting in America? Yes, we’re all much safer now that law abiding Americans with no criminal background have to wait a month to get a gun.
And what concession are the 20 so-called rebels demanding that McCarthy refuses to concede to? Has anyone asked Dan Crenshaw?
Here’s one: Require at least 72 hours from release of final bill text before it gets a vote on the House floor.
Is it too much to ask that we abandon the days of passing a bill to find out what’s in it and give our elected representatives 3 days to read 2,000 page bills before they vote on it?
Or how about this one: Decline to raise the debt ceiling without a plan to cap spending and balance the federal budget in 10 years.
Is this too much to ask? Fiscal responsibility from our Congress. We are over 30 trillion dollars in debt.
Our politicians are using the debt ceiling to hold us hostage. Each year they spend more than they take in. Their federal tax revenue increases and so dos the debt. Rather than pay off the credit card, they take out additional credit cards in our names to continue their reckless spending.
But these 20 are far right extremists. We have to elect Kevin now! There’s no time to waste. No, there’s never anytime to waste when it comes to approving the agenda of the establishment.
Just before Christmas we heard the same thing. We have to get this 1.7 trillion dollar omnibus bill to the President’s desk. America cannot wait. The truth was, Congress couldn’t wait…to go on vacation.
“Members have planes to catch, gifts to wrap, carols to sing, religious services to attend to”
That’s what Pelosi said. It wasn’t about the people. It was threatening to disrupt Pelosi’s holiday plans.
The bill approved 45 billion American tax payer dollars for Ukraine.
In January 2019, Trump asked Congress for 5.7 billion to secure the American border with a wall.
Democrats balked at the number. Maybe we’ll give him half, many said.
Congress approved just 1.4 billion.
Where was the President when this latest urgent omnibus bill arrived on his desk? It was so important and urgent that Biden was in ST. Croix on holiday. The bill had to be flown to the Virgin Islands so that Biden could sign it. It was so urgent that Biden left Washington D.C. before it was completed.
The same people telling us we have to pass bills to find out what’s in them demand we have to elect Kevin Speaker to find out whether or not he’s serious and principled.
If we don’t elect Kevin, Republicans might go nuclear. We might get Hakeem Jeffries or another candidate the Republicans and Democrats can agree on.
In other words, the only Kevin’s would rather work with Democrats to elect a speaker democrats approve of, rather than work with the 20 rebels to get a candidate conservatives agree on.
If that happens, who is to blame? The 20 rebels, who want to make the most of this opportunity, or the 202 Republicans, who want to rubber stamp another establishment Republican, who has proven himself a spineless Democrat sympathizer throughout his entire political career.
Republicans find themselves nauseated by the unseemly sight of 20 rebels demanding concessions and slowing down the process of electing a Speaker. These same people praise the Founding fathers. They would faint had they witnessed the debate between the Founding Fathers. Why is this so difficult? Why must we debate the Constitution so vigorously. Why can’t we all just agree and get this Constitution signed.
The 20 demand that McCarthy use “must-pass” bills like the annual defense authorization bill and the farm bill as leverage to secure conservative priorities and “check the Biden administration.”
This is brilliant. The Democrats use this same process to get their priorities funded by inserting their agenda items in bills they can claim are national security priorities.
The truth is, these 20 rebels are putting the country first. They only seek to ensure that Republicans don’t squander this opportunity.
If Kevin can’t instill confidence, it’s time Kevin puts the country first. By stepping down. After all, he’s done it once before.
In Defense of the Twenty 'Rebels'