Goodbye Mr. McCarthy

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For the first time in the 234-year history of the US Congress, the speaker of the House of Representatives was removed by a motion to vacate, when, last Tuesday, a small coterie of Republicans ejected Kevin McCarthy. Mr McCarthy had been appointed to the speaker’s post only in January 2023! It had taken McCarthy 15 rounds of voting to secure the position in January. In the House of Representatives, the only way Mr McCarthy could ascend to the speakership, after a humiliating 15 rounds of voting, was to make a series of apparently contradictory promises to members of his own side—and then agree to a rule whereby any one of 222 Republicans could bring forward a motion to replace him.

Why did the Republicans turn against one of their own? Faced with the threat of a federal government shutdown, Speaker Kevin McCarthy dropped demands for steep spending cuts and relied on Democratic votes for passage of a funding package that left behind aid to Ukraine, but increased federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, meeting President Joe Biden’s full request, which secured the passage of a temporary funding bill.

Mr. McCarthy deserves his reputation for being slippery, but it is sad that the moment he did something good and right, by reaching across the aisle to the Democrats to strike a bipartisan deal to fund the government, he was fired.

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