The Left is Right: Reply to the Bounds on Mr. Trump’s Bianchism, his Presidency, and Other Claims
McCarthy and his allies believe that they can win the trust of the detractors before the House vote on January 3, but the critics are determined to derail the speaker’s bid.
Some Republicans who have spoken out in the past have aided Mr. Trump and his policies. They were fearful of offending the party’s base while they were privately disdaining Mr. Trump’s politics.
The party is reaping political consequences. Several House races, as well as the key Senate races in Arizona and Pennsylvania, were lost by Trump-backed candidates. On Saturday, Democrats clinched control of the Senate with a hard-fought re-election victory for Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. The House did not have a majority even after predictions of a G.O.P. wave.
The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have both called for Donald Trump to be thrown out of office. Both Robin Vos, the powerful Assembly speaker from Wisconsin, and Winsome Sears, a lieutenant governor from Virginia, said that Trump should not be the party’s candidate for president in 2024.
Republican moderates criticized the party for its turn into conspiracy theories and issues that light up the right-wing media. A return to classic fiscal conservativism was called for by Senator Romney. The governor of New Hampshire said during an interview that Donald Trump risked up the chances of the party winning in Georgia.
And Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who spoke at a Trump rally in Sioux City days before the election, said on Twitter that it was time to move on from Mr. Trump’s pet issue. “Quit talking abt 2020,” he wrote.
Similar accusations are being made in the House of Representative, where some members are questioning the leadership’s embrace of theMAGA wing, lack of cohesive message on abortion, and decisions to spend precious resources in deep blue territory late in the game.
And in the Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling his colleagues over the last several days to shore up his support as his team plans to plow forward with leadership elections on Wednesday despite grumbling by a faction of dissenters who are trying to slam the brakes after their midterm debacle. They want to have a GOP air-clearing session on Tuesday.
Biggs, who secured 31 votes when he lost the GOP nomination for speaker against McCarthy last month, has told CNN he’s “not bluffing” and plans to run for speaker when the full House votes next month. The five Republicans who do not support McCarthy are not the only ones who have yet to make their position known.
There needs to be a discussion about whether he should be the speaker of the House, says leader of the House Freedom Caucus. I think we should have a very frank discussion about what we’re going to do next.
An Update on the Scramble of the U.S. Senate and the Implications for Senate Candidate Success and Senate Election Strategy
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is among those calling for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it “doesn’t make any sense” to have them this week.
What are we doing at this time? What do we believe in? Scott spoke on Fox News. “The leadership in the Republican Senate says you cannot have a plan, we’re just gonna run against how bad the Democrats are. And actually they cave into the Democrats. Now they want to rush through an election. We haven’t even finished what’s happened in Georgia.”
It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes – and potential moment of reckoning – for the once-bullish GOP, with party leaders now scrambling to quell the brewing rebellions in their ranks and explain why the election did not go their way. The disappointing results have resulted in a scramble for leadership positions, with Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer now facing a tougher time becoming the House GOP whip if Republicans capture the majority.
They have been looking at the curtains, putting forth an agenda. Nancy Pelosi said that they haven’t won it yet. “After the election is concluded, depending on who was in the majority, there’ll be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward.”
Behind the scenes, the finger pointing has already begun, and those conversations are likely to accelerate as the full House and Senate return to Washington this week for the first time since the midterm elections.
The party has placed the blame for failed Senate races on Trump, even though he was the one who chose candidates. Plus McConnell’s super PAC spent more than any other group in Senate races – while Trump’s group spent a tiny fraction of that – a realty not lost on the Kentucky Republican’s allies.
The retirement of Pennsylvania Republican senator Pat Toomey said that there was a correlation between the candidates and the losses. If fealty to Donald Trump is the main criterion for selecting candidates, my party is probably not going to do well.
McConnell and Scott have clashed over strategy throughout the election season with McConnell sounding the alarm over candidate quality while Scott stuck to his guns in the primaries.
Even though he wouldn’t have a chance of succeeding, Scott still wouldn’t rule out challenging McConnell for the top spot.
Not all of those ultra-conservatives are trying to block McCarthy. Some, for instance, are demanding fuller debates, a return to regular order in committees and more power for individual members. But even if McCarthy can deal with this faction, he still has a problem with a more extreme bloc of lawmakers.
One senior Republican told CNN that political physics says you can’t appease the moderates and HFC at the same time. “If you straddle that fence, you better hope it’s not barbed wire.”
Freedom Caucus: Conciliating with Speaker Candidate Tom McCarthy during the 2016 GOP National Recuperation Reionization Run-Off
Trump didn’t name the people who oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid but said that he is friendly with many of them and they are supporters of his.
Trump has been eager to lock up public support from Republicans for his third presidential bid, with a separate GOP source saying he has been asking to see which GOP lawmakers have endorsed him in the media. So far, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik has been the highest-ranking Republican to officially back Trump’s 2024 bid.
McCarthy has worked hard to get her on the committee after Democrats took her off the committees for making controversial comments.
Several members of the Freedom Caucus met with McCarthy in his office Monday as they seek to extract concessions from him in exchange for their speaker votes.
“He probably has another 24 hours to get an agreement. If he can’t negotiate to get an agreement on speaker it means he won’t be able to negotiate and get to 218 on anything controversial,” the member said, referring to the votes McCarthy needs if no member skips the vote or votes “present.” “Maybe nobody else can either, but he certainly can’t.”
McCarthy was asked to bring to the House his proposal for running the house, according to Rep. Bob Good.
While they’re trying to get rules changes that empower individual members and weaken the speaker, that isn’t the limit of their issues.
“We want to see this place change dramatically, to reflect the will of the people and to acknowledge how broken it is,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon anybody that wants to lead to kind of lay out their vision and how they would change their portion of it.”
Reply to the Comment on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Correspondence to Simpson: “We won’t talk about the House floor,” Rep. Tom Emmer said
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is hoping to pass a crucial test on Tuesday in his campaign to become House speaker despite an underwhelming midterm election performance that launched a search among conservatives for a challenger.
Simpson said he will back McCarthy for leader, because the GOP has gained seats in the last two elections. Simpson said, “He’s done a good job.”
“If we don’t unify behind Kevin McCarthy, we’re opening up the door for the Democrats to be able to recruit some of our Republicans,” said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A source in the room said that Bob Good, a McCarthy critic, criticizedMcCarthy for not calling to congratulate him when he won his primary, and for aligning himself with the pro-Trump candidates. McCarthy replied that he directed $2 million to Good for his race. Good had to be gaveled down in order to cut him off from speaking so they could move to the next question, the source said.
At the private intraparty meeting, McCarthy received a standing ovation from his colleagues. A source in the room said that if elected, McCarthy would remove Democrats from the House Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. And he underscored his role in returning Republicans to power.
Two sources familiar with the conversation said that McCarthy’s allies were attempting to convince centrist Democratic Rep.HENRYCUllar to switch parties in hopes of padding their slim margins. Cuellar flatly rejected the idea. McCarthy’s spokesman denied that McCarthy was involved in any of the conversations, even if they took place, because they weren’t part of the speakership bid.
Gaetz said that Kevin McCarthy didn’t have the 218 votes needed to become speaker. I don’t think he has 200.
Still, McCarthy and Scalise appear to be in command of their leadership races, while the No. 3 House GOP position remains up for grabs, which would be the role of House majority whip, if Republicans win control of the chamber.
A source in the room says that at the private forum, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer was pressed on his votes in favor of the same-sex marriage bill. His response: “These divisive social issues shouldn’t be brought to the House floor.”
There are three Republicans vying for the position of Republican Study Committee chair and chief deputy whip.
Members of the leadership team who he has cut out of his deliberations about the speakership race are seen by some as a display of paranoia. Instead, he has been spotted in recent days around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters nearby with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is among his closest confidants.
Mr. Norman, who has described himself as a “hard no” against Mr. McCarthy, declined to discuss his call with Mr. Trump, describing it as a “private conversation.” He said he didn’t know who he wanted to support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not respond to requests for comment.
When Nancy Pelosi in 2018 found herself about a dozen votes short of what she would need to secure the speaker’s gavel, she quietly picked off defectors, methodically cutting deals to capture exactly enough support to prevail. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.
The California Republican has already made a series of pledges in an effort to appease the right flank of his party. He went to the southern border and asked Alejandro N. Mayorkas to resign or face impeachment. He promised Ms. Greene a spot on the oversight committee after she was stripped of her committee assignments because of her violent and conspiratorial social media posts.
The House select committee is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and he wants to hold public hearings on the security breakdowns that took place. He has been trying to win over right-wing lawmakers. He told members to vote against the spending bill on Monday night.
Republicans won control of the House through democratic means in a free and fair election. But their far smaller-than-expected majority is offering extra leverage to the kind of pro-Trump extremists many voters appeared to reject in last year’s midterms.
If politics is the art of the possible, McCarthy is acting in a way that is most likely to allow him to reach power – even if the speaker’s gavel might turn into a poisoned chalice and require him to infringe democratic values to keep it.
The Californian, who has lost a stunning 11 consecutive House roll call votes in his bid to become speaker, was the first major GOP leader to embrace ex-President Donald Trump after the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
This is not surprising at all. It perfectly sums up McCarthy and many in today’s GOP who seek power at any cost — with no regard for principle or the greater good of our nation.
The problem with the bipartisan bipartisan budget crisis: The case of Corrigendum, the House Speaker, and the Ex-President Kevin McCarthy
This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.
On Friday, McCarthy took to the airwaves to argue the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril, warning that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy” – such as getting a new select committee on China up and running. McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes on January 3, assuming all members are in attendance and vote for a specific member.
When asked if she thought she was being facetious when she made the inflammatory comments, McCarthy said she thought she was being facetious. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.
The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. The House Republican leader lied when he claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when in reality he hadn’t done it once.
CNN’s Raju and Melanie Zanona reported Tuesday that McCarthy had signaled at the White House meeting that he’d be open to a large bill. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.
But the biggest problem with the bipartisan solution is that McCarthy and Republicans just won their slim majority after an election in which they tried to separate themselves from Democrats. To join with them now would be awkward at best.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that five hardliners have not budged in their opposition to his speaker’s bid, and warned that the Republican majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.
Five GOP members, including Gaetz, have said that they may vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning that they will all vote.
McCarthy said that you only have so many months to govern in a presidential year. “And you want to hit the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. So you don’t get new, stronger candidates. You don’t get more money to help candidates get the message out.
Kevin has worked very hard. I think he deserves the shot,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. Hopefully he will be very strong and good. He will do what everyone wants.
The Dean Obeidallah Show: The Last Seven Years of George Santos and the Charges of G. E. Boehner and Paul Ryan
The former president highlighted the situation in 2015, when House Speaker John Boehner resigned and was replaced by Paul Ryan.
McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting on a private phone call that was recorded that Trump should resign. McCarthy traveled to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida a few weeks later after the two made up.
McCarthy said that the House Republican agenda would be in danger and that legislating and investigating would be in trouble if the detractors are allowed to derail it.
The editorial board said that Republicans were the gang that couldnt shoot straight, except at one another.
Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions he gives in this commentary are his. CNN has more opinion on it.
The New York Times published an article documenting his many false claims about his career and education, and since then GeorgeSantos has been making the news. (Santos later described these falsehoods as “resume embellishment” but admitted to misrepresenting his employment and educational background.)
A review of genealogy records proved that his grandparents were Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who fled the Holocaust. Santos campaign did not reply to CNN request for comment.
Adding to the firestorm are recent developments that federal and state authorities have launched criminal investigations into Santos over his finances and fabrications. After running for Congress unsuccessfully in 2020, Santos reported that he did not have any assets, but that he was able to lend his campaign $700,000.
But it’s not just McCarthy. The GOP leadership has not made any comments about that person. One of the few senior GOP lawmakers to chime in has been Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee. The comments on Fox News came from the man who describedSantos as a disgrace. But Comer didn’t call for Santos to step aside, instead only saying he’s “pretty confident” the House Ethics Committee will investigate Santos.
McCarthy has also criticized the Biden administration’s border policy and played up accusations on Fox Business that the FBI worked to suppress news stories hurtful to Democrats.
Imagine for a moment if an incoming Democratic member of Congress had been engulfed in such a scandal. McCarthy might be saying how this representative-elect should not be in Congress and how the Democratic leadership needed to condemn this politician.
McCarthy and his allies are holding active discussions about adjourning the House until Thursday – but it is uncertain if that would be possible because they may not have the votes to pull it off, according to multiple sources.
Democratic sources believe they would whip against a motion to adjourn if they were to vote to adjourn. Some Republicans would likely vote against it.
If they don’t adjourn, the House would proceed to vote on a fourth ballot — and if that happens, McCarthy’s team is nervous about the prospect of losing more votes and killing any chance of regaining momentum.
Sources said that McCarthy made calls while talks continued Tuesday night. He also has dispatched several emissaries – Brian Fitzpatrick, Garret Graves, French Hill, Patrick McHenry and Guy Reschenthaler – to help find a deal with his foes and present their demands to the rest of the House GOP conference.
The same member said a statement made by former President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning that reaffirmed his support for McCarthy and urged Republicans to back him was basically a wash – while it was more helpful than if he had blasted McCarthy, it wasn’t expected to move the needle.
Another member warned that after Tuesday, it’s clear that the opposition to McCarthy is personal – meaning there may be little that he can do to turn the tide at this point.
As the votes stretched on Tuesday, the situation appeared to become even more dire for McCarthy, as the vote count in opposition to his speaker bid grew.
The tally for the first ballot in the speaker vote was 203 for McCarthy, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates. The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. In the third round of voting, there were 202 votes for McCarthy and 20 votes for Jordan, with Rep. Byron Donalds joining the 19 GOP lawmakers who had voted against McCarthy in the first two rounds.
“This changes neither my view of McCarthy nor Trump nor my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.
The former president’s diminishing influence over Republicans has been raised by Gaetz’s refusal to acquiesce to Trump’s desire for a McCarthy speakership.
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lying about Our Past” (Basic Books). You can follow him on the twitter.com/julianzelizer The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.
The Acolytes Aren’t? Why the Republicans are refusing to support the South Carolina General Remaining House Leader Jim Boehner
Over time, the acolytes demand more and become more extreme than the leader who originally welcomed them into the fold. This is what led Boehner to later blast Republicans like Jim Jordan as “legislative terrorists.” He was the establishment and they were the rebels.
A significant part of Trump’s influence was his nihilistic attitude of political combat. He helped to encourage a group of young people to demand power. It seems like these burn-down-the-house conservatives think chaos and disorder have great political value and will do almost anything in pursuit of victory. And now some of these Trump loyalists might be close to concluding that they no longer need him – or at the very least, they no longer need to follow his every move.
We see that in the group of 20 or so members of Congress who are now refusing to support McCarthy. They put their foot down and seem to be happy holding out, despite major concessions from McCarthy. According to Rep. Norman, a Republican from South Carolina, they were willing to go far to get McCarthy to agree to a government shut down instead of raising the debt ceiling. In 2011, Tea Party Republicans held the debt ceiling hostage to extract spending cuts from President Barack Obama – this time, Republicans like Norman are going even further by refusing to even negotiate, calling it a “non-negotiable.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/opinions/trump-2024-mccarthy-house-challenge-zelizer/index.html
How will the Left know about running with the fringe? The story of Donald Trump in Washington and his fight with a moderate speaker upset, Kasich and Bacon
The defeat of Trump could be a result of his influence. He is unable to sway the votes on Capitol Hill because he doesn’t have enough support, so he is likely to confront politicians who are capable of presenting a fresh and more polished version of Trumpism without the baggage that comes with it. If the GOP is now full of Trumpian Republicans who have taken his playbook and run with it, then voters might want to choose someone other than Donald Trump to lead them into the next political era.
Ask anyone in Washington and they will laugh at your naivete and shake their heads. McCarthy won’t ever ask Democrats for help. And Democrats wouldn’t give it to him. So silly.
Which leaves the vast majority of Americans to watch as McCarthy gives more and more to the intransigent fringe of his party, even as it becomes painfully clear that more than four of them have no intention of ever supporting him. He has to lose four GOP votes.
In fact, as CNN political analyst John Avlon pointed out on “CNN This Morning,” variations of power sharing or a moderate speaker upset could be seen in multiple states this year:
In Pennsylvania , aDemocrat wasnamed speaker of the state House after gaining support from Republicans. Following the vote, he announced he would govern as an independent.
Kasich told CNN’s Michael Smerconish that Democrats have a chance to come up with something that is more moderate if they stop laughing.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska is another Republican interested in finding some Democratic help. He told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Wednesday that McCarthy may have to start looking across the aisle and perhaps give Democrats more committee members or other concessions in order to get the government running.
“If the small handful refuse to be part of the team, you cannot let them hold you hostage, and that’s what they’re doing right now,” Bacon said, suggesting a move to negotiate with Democrats would take power from the fringe. They think we don’t have the ability to do anything without them. We need to show them otherwise.”
When Avlon suggested the idea of a bipartisan consensus-builder on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday, former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania agreed that it is indeed what would happen in a “functional Congress.”
He is correct. Democrats have been happy to continue to support their new leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who, if elected, would be the first Black lawmaker to be House speaker.
Fred Upton, a retired Republican from Michigan who voted to impeach Donald Trump, would give some concessions to Democrats if he became a consensus candidate for speaker. The constitution doesn’t require House members to be the speaker.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the moderate Illinois Republican who was part of the House January 6 committee and is now a CNN contributor, pointed out to Burnett on Wednesday that the role of the speaker as a partisan leader is relatively new.
Speakers previously simply oversaw House proceedings. Perhaps Democrats could get on board with supporting a consensus Republican who is not trying to use the House for partisan purposes.
I believe that the institution, and frankly the country, could use someone who is sitting in that position who just tells them how the house is going to work. Go debate,” Kinzinger said. As this roadblock drags on, he said, that kind of out-of-the-box solution could become more likely, “although still pretty unlikely.”
It’s also true that there’s some bipartisanship already in the air in Washington. President Joe Biden appeared with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday to announce new funding to rehab the deteriorating Brent Spence Bridge that ties McConnell’s home state of Kentucky to Kasich’s Ohio.
McConnell made it his mission to oppose on nearly every level and the appearance he made with Obama was not the kind of thing you could have imagined.
The Post-Corel Instability of the White House: The Two Year Anniversary of Joe Biden’s Outburst on Capitol Hill
While the Republicans and Democrats who vote for the bipartisan option might be celebrated by the moderate middle of the American electorate, they’d be attacked by people deep in the party trenches, the politically engaged people who contribute to political campaigns.
There is an issue with members of Congress waiting for years for plum committee assignments. Jumping out of the system they know would jeopardize that.
But on Friday’s two-year anniversary of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he’s finding out that even that supposedly career-enhancing bet is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump’s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.
Two years ago, scores of House Republicans refused to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and many spent years appeasing Trump’s lawless behavior. The GOP controls only part of Capitol Hill after driving democracy to the edge, or if it can get its act together and pick a speaker.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia who has downplayed the insurrection and said rioters would have won if she was in charge, is complaining about her colleagues who oppose McCarthy.
In the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, there are incentives for disruptor politicians to be in the expresident’s image.
Trump may no longer be in the White House but the circus-style politics that he built on a foundation of rebellion in the GOP is back and has tied Washington in knots again. The GOP can not take power because they cannot be sworn in before a leader is selected.
But that narrow margin – which will also put the majority in a precarious position on must-pass legislation like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling later on – is the direct result of voters being alienated by the ex-president’s incessant, false claims of 2020 voter fraud and the party failing to deliver the “red wave” many Republicans had predicted.
By balking at handing unfettered power to the GOP – and a House majority that would have been workable for McCarthy – voters who wanted a period of calm have inadvertently created a scenario that breeds the instability they appear to disdain.
Boebert said the country was watching democracy in action, even as McCarthy picked up around 200 votes from his conference, while his radical opponents only got 20. The Democrats supported Hakeem Jeffries, who got more votes than McCarthy, making itimpossible for McCarthy to get a majority of the House’s support.
“This is not chaos. This is a constitutional republic at work. Boebert said this is a really beautiful thing. She’s correct in that the messiness unfolding on the floor is based on rules and procedures – the most basic elements of governing that Trump had sought to disrupt with his efforts to overturn the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes.
A rebuke to the House leadership for giving an example of what a leader can do about the political system: Kevin Gaetz’s anti-Washington tea party ally failed to vote for Trump
Her arguments centered around the reality of the rebels behavior. Many other Republicans have complained that it is not clear exactly what concessions the group around Gaetz, who have vowed to never support McCarthy, actually want.
“This ends one of two ways: Either Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race, or we construct a straitjacket that he is unable to evade,” Gaetz, who cast his vote in the seventh round for Trump, told reporters on Thursday.
In other words, the most extreme hardliners will only accept a candidate that shares their no-compromise, Nihilistic form of politics that effectively makes governing impossible.
The demands are the culmination of many anti-government forces that were unleashed decades ago by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. They were also the genesis of the anti-Washington Tea Party movement in the 2000s. Trump then drove out much of the governing wing of the GOP as he effectively worked to bring down the institutions of government and accountability from inside as president.
Still, a McCarthy ally, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, told CNN that he was confident that a deal could clear the way soon for a solution to the impasse.
Before one of the votes for speaker, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a woman who once said that Trump was called by God to run for president and was “anointed for that position,” rebuked Trump and McCarthy. She told her fellow Republicans in the House that she would give Trump instructions.
“Let’s work together. The campaign should stop trying to get people to turn against us. Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off. I think it actually needs to be reversed: The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that ‘Sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw.’”
Talk about being damning with a touch of praise. She suggested that Trump was being told by the Republican House leadership what to do. It sounded lovely, but it was actually a cutting rebuke of sorts, like we’d say, “Bless your heart,” with a smile but disdain.
The Avalanches of Donald Trump, the Speakership Battle and the Disturbing of His Dedicated Poles by his Referees
Trump has suffered a staggering string of losses, most recently watching voters reject many of the candidates he endorsed during the midterms, and the speakership battle, which ended in McCarthy ceding so much power that he is essentially a speaker-in-name-only, was another loss for Trump, because it exposed the fact that his devotees no longer mindlessly follow his directions.