Kevin McCarthy has become the first ever Speaker of the House to be recalled from that position. What are your thoughts on this?

40 comments

  4. Kevin McCarthy vs. Matt Gaetz is the reason the Ken Watanabe “let them fight” meme exists.

    I only wish they could ride off into the sun together.

    Not the sunset.

    The *sun*.

  6. My prediction is that we’ll have a bunch of voting drama for a few days and then he’ll cut a deal with Jeffries for half a dozen votes and get the Speakership back. He’ll likely have to make some major concessions for it. Been a real circular firing all around lately.

    Edit: I stand corrected. Must be a hell of headache dealing with that but I figured he’d do anything for it.

  10. I mean, what is there to say, honestly. Congress and the GOP has reached new and epic levels of dysfunction.

    The GOP chose loud extremists and are shocked when those views are rejected by the majority, and then the only option is desperation hail marys.

    When people are defending a one-term president who hasn’t been in office in two and a half years as the only-hope, you’d think some self-evaluation would come in to play….but noooope. So here we are.

    I do not, however, like the precedent this sets.

  11. I don’t quite understand the implications. But in a weird way it’s kinda of a good thing? Like, it’s good to have mechanisms in place to peacefully remove someone from a position of power.

  15. He was not recalled, he was fired from the role. If he was recalled, he would no longer be a member of Congress, which he still is.

  16. The GOP House Speaker is the worst job in politics—it’s more or less destroyed the political career of every person who held it in recent memory. John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and now Kevin McCarthy. They are permanently caught between the unreasonable demands of the party’s far right wing and personal responsibility for Congress’s failure to do very basic things. Whoever accepts that job now is both power hungry and masochistic.

    Ironically, it was two House Republican speakers (Gingrich and Hastert) who made it a terrible position—hyperpartisanship and the Hastert rule mean that even small factions within the House Republicans can torpedo popular bills, and the Speaker generally can’t work with the democratic half the House to bypass them.

  17. He shouldn’t have:

    1. Enabled the far-right.

    2. Burned so many bridges with Democrats.

    After he blamed Dems for an almost shutdown, even though they kept the government running, he deserves what he got.

  19. One of the reasons he was recalled was not delivering (on time) on his promise to return to “regular order” with twelve individual appropriations bills and an open amendment process instead of passing last-minute omnibus bills.

    Whatever folks may think of the other reasons that he was recalled, hopefully whoever replaces him does return to regular order.

  20. He was a weak candidate even before he was viewed as a traitor to Trump. He flip flopped and neither side particularly likes him. It was well known that he couldn’t reign in his own party so it was only a matter of time

    I’m more worried about the House not getting stuff done until a new speaker is selected. I’m still of the opinion that this is a bad move and look for Rs especially going into an election. This gives Ds a great opportunity to say: hey look, they don’t want to work they just want to complain and slow things down / throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way, elect us instead.

  21. It’s just political theater. There’s a small group of politicians for whom it’s all a reality TV show so they do whatever gets the talking heads talking about them and the cameras pointed at them. Shutdown the government? Default on debt? Fire the speaker of the house? Whatever gets them clicks and views is their policy.

  24. It’s October 3. Mean Girls Day.

    The House told McCarthy “You can’t sit with us.”

  25. At least he wanted to keep government functioning. Avoid a shutdown, not break the debt limit (he caved on almost everything), and strongly supported Ukraine.

    He was also too beholden to Trump and MAGA. He voted to decertify the 2020 election hours after a mob attacked Congress at Trump’s incitement. He quashed a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th and delegitimized the panel Pelosi put together that did include Republicans. And he broke the deal he struck with Biden around spending bills.

    Essentially, he was awful, but the successor is likely to be worse.

  26. I’m worried the new speaker will be even worse. The best outcome, afaic, is that they will spend 6 weeks deadlocked until the government shuts down and then are forced to elect a more-moderate-than-McCarthy speaker in order to get the government funded again.

    I promise to only hope for that and not expect it.

  28. The continued self-immolation of the Republican Party is unbelievable.

    First they flock to a sleazy, corrupt con man like Donald Trump. Then they allow people like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert to suck up all the oxygen in the room.

    The GOP might have had its flaws in the past, but at least it was the party of math and maps. Now it’s a sad collection of sideshow freaks who, among other things, are trying to staunch aid to a country that’s fighting a country that’s fighting a brutal, expansionist fascist empire.

    Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave faster than a GE Turbine.

  29. This is the result of the Republican Party flirting with extremists. Its good that it burned them.

    That said, I respect that McCarthy fell on the sword to avoid a shutdown. I may disagree with most of his politics, but he did the decent thing imo.

  30. As a government employee, I’m extremely concerned I’ll be furloughed for a long time, right before the holidays.

  31. I want to give everyone a new perspective on this situation if I can. This exact thing may be unprecedented, but it’s not really “bad”.

    The Republican party is not one party anymore. Under a different electoral system we would now have a coalition government of a smaller far right party and a conservative party and they would be jointly choosing a majority leader.

    They may be all calling themselves Republicans, but that doesn’t mean anything. We basically have a volatile coalition in charge of the house and we could be seeing the beginning of the end of the modern Republican party. This has happened before in our history, it’s not anything new, but it has been a long time since this has happened.

  32. My thought is these assholes are too busy playing petty keep away with each other. They need to get their shit together and stop treating the halls of these institutions like a high school and work for the American people. Good grief.

  34. I think Kevin McCarthy is the worse thing to come out of Bakersfield, California since the satanic panic of the 90’s.

  35. He made a deal with the far right wing just to get the job in the first place so he should have anticipated this st some point because there was no way he could keep pleasing them.

  36. I’ll, more or less, repeat what I said on another sub.

    I’m worried about who will replace him, but I hope it ends up resulting in Republicans getting exactly what they wanted and it turns out to be like a monkey’s paw wish and they end up hating it or it ends up blowing up in their faces.

    Seriously though, don’t let it be MTG or Boebert or Gaetz. Surely Republicans have someone better than them.

  38. I thought it was just the left that was plagued with infighting, but I was wrong

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