Late thoughts on the Speaker of the House Humiliation
Stepping into this subject late because I wanted to see how things played out before I stepped into anything icky. I'm glad I did. Also, I wanted to better understand the so-called concessions McCarthy made to get the speakership. But, more than anything, I’m on so many levels of disinformation, I don’t believe any of the framing around the 15 votes for Speaker of the House. Before I say more, I want to lay down that I simply do not see how the dustup damages the GOP in any sense with independents or winnable Democrats. This is inside baseball that those sorts don't even follow, much less remember two Novembers from now. The importance of the speakership vote can be and has been very easily overstated. Moreover, nothing about the vote was ever going to do diminish the prominence of figures like Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert, just as it didn’t raise the profiles of Michael Cloud or Anna Paulina Luna. If the 20 holdouts had only gone for two or three rounds—that is, if McCarthy