As he sowed

So: Kevin McCarthy now goes down in history as the first Speaker of the US House to be removed from office. Who could ever have seen that happening? I mean apart from everyone on the planet, of course. This was always going to be his only legacy: The worst Speaker of modern times, perhaps ever, created the path to his own inevitable demise from the very beginning. In the end, his ejection from the Speakership was exactly what he himself set the stage for.

McCarthy always came across as a cynical opportunist, willing to do whatever was necessary to get the Speaker’s gavel. He enabled and encouraged the lunatic fringe of his own party, and the worst excesses of the supposedly somewhat less-fringey rest of his caucus. He made his ejection inevitable by repeatedly worshiping at the feet of the party’s deified corrupt and indicted Dear Leader, a man so reviled by ordinary Americans that—mostly because of him and his clown car of sycophants in Congress—Democratic candidates in the elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 exceeded expectations.

The realty is that in 2022 Republicans only won control of the US House because of gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states, something that the courts are now undoing. If it wasn’t for that gerrymandering, the Democrats would’ve retained the US House. And, of course, Democrats also retained control of the US Senate in what was supposed to be a good year for Republicans.

McCarthy didn’t seem to be too stupid to to see how all that pandering to the lunatics in his party would end. When the inevitable end neared, it was obvious and inevitable. There’s now a golden opportunity for true bipartisan, responsible action—which is precisely why it’ll never happen: The few relatively sane Republicans in the US House could join with Democrats to elect Hakeem Jeffries Speaker, then eject the Republican lunatics from their various committees, and allow the House to get back to actually doing its job again, not playing stupid extremist games, wasting the time and money of US taxpayers.

What will happen is that there will be a bitter Republican internal war as the lunatics demand a lunatic be made party leader and then Speaker. The few sane Republicans will—if they have any brains at all—oppose that. However, how long can that go on without causing even more trouble for the country—or even utter disaster? No one one knows, and the Republican lunatics couldn’t possibly care less. They’re too busy acting like 12 year olds.

Still there are two things we know for certain. The first is that the arrogance, stupidity, and hubris of the lunatic Republicans in the House, and also of the party’s deified multiple-indicted Dear Leader, will only increase ordinary people’s revulsion for Republicans generally, and that will cause the party lose more seats in 2024 than they otherwise might have if they had grownups running their party. The other thing we know is that all of this was inevitable. Kevin McCarthy has absolutely no one to blame but himself. He sowed the seeds of his own destruction, and he richly deserves that walloping he’s received.

Good riddance to the first Speaker to ever be removed from office: It took fifteen votes to install him, but only one to eject him. My only sympathy is for the American people who have to watch this Republican shit-show as the party’s lunatic clowns and morons continue to do absolutely nothing of any value to anyone. The sooner all of them join McCarthy in being forced out in disgrace, the better for everyone—especially the Republican Party—though it looks far more likely that it would take a new, sane conservative party to emerge in order to put grownups back in control of conservative politics, and to finally kick the lunatics out of power for good.

Hope springs eternal, and all that.