(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A mea culpa on McCarthy [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-04 Last week, I posted a couple of diaries remarking on the Kevin McCarthy saga, and in them I referenced a little diary from January where I speculated whether McCarthy’s Groundhog Day run at the Speakership was orchestrated. Political pantomime. That’s a thing in fascist circles, to produce performed propaganda. Even Joseph Goebbels remarked that the propaganda seen is far superior to that which is merely read. So there would be value in jumping through those hoops as he did in January, to make it appear that he was hogtied by the Chaos Caucus and that he would essentially be a functional hostage: amiable, but still with hands tied. I was wrong. My model did not hold. Under my model, which held all the way until last Saturday, McCarthy would continue to dither and stretch out the time to the deadline for the continuing resolution, let it expire, then say that he had no choice, that his extreme rump caucus held all the cards and that he had no real say in the matter. Of course, doing so would mean that he’d be in for a world of hurt, as the GOP was poised to receive most if not all of the blame for a government shutdown. That scenario did not play out. So I am officially shelving my hypothesis, though I reserve the right to pull it out of storage should something firm up the basics of the model (i.e., that McCarthy brokered some unseen deal with extremists and operated under some kayfabe immersion-acting framework). He didn’t stick to the script that I had predicted. However, he did stick to a particular viewpoint, a bias that he has done his best to impart to his audience, and that was to heap blame upon Democrats for nothing that Democrats did. He’s still doing this, even after losing his speakership. That I do continue to find suspect, and it does point back to a type of performed propaganda. He’s committed to a skewed perspective that he wants his audience to adopt, and in doing so he’s protecting the very people who sent his speakership down in flames. Take, for example, his offer to Democrats last Friday, where the offer was not serious. The Democrats rightly rejected this offer, and McCarthy portrayed this as Democrats not being partners in looking for solutions. Spin, one might say, something to play to the base as they take in Fox News or what have you. But then Saturday McCarthy sprung a relatively “clean” CR with extraordinary time pressure on Democrats (five minutes to read the CR and cast a vote). Were it not for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries using his “magic minute” to deliver extemporaneous remarks on the floor, garnering time for Democrats to look over the proposal, it’s likely that the Democrats would have seen the offer by McCarthy as not to be trusted and rejected it under the time pressure. Then McCarthy would have revealed to the media that the CR was “clean” and that it was Democrats who ultimately should be held responsible for the government shutting down. I think McCarthy was as surprised as anyone when Democrats voted his offer through. He was seen fist-bumping Steve Scalise after the vote, but I think that he had so committed to the scenario that the CR would be rejected that he had no capacity to pivot from his planned remarks for the Sunday shows. This would explain why he continued to paint Democrats as the saboteurs, even though they had sabotaged nothing—in fact, they had rescued the nation and, up to that very point, McCarthy’s job. He had committed to a storyline and he was sticking to it. That’s my best guess. I don’t believe that McCarthy thought that his up-is-down talking points would bite him in the boutonniere so soon. He knew that Matt Gaetz would make good on his threats, but I don’t think McCarthy realized how near he truly was to losing the one thing that he valued and for which he had sacrificed so much, that gavel. I believe he truly thought he would survive the challenge from Gaetz. But note that even now McCarthy is shielding the very people who shivved him. By continuing to cast blame on the Democrats, who certainly owed him nothing for his untrustworthiness and trash-talking, he is removing the spotlight from the eight Republican representatives who were the ones who actually did him in. He even suggested that it was Democrats who introduced the motion to remove him! To me, this indicates that he’s still playing—pretending—for the benefit of snowing the MAGA base, as Republicans have this whole construction of an alternate storyline that they’ve invested much time creating. To acknowledge actual reality would be to blow the whole thing up. So I cannot predict how this ultimately ends up. I have to go back to the drawing board on this one. However, the way that the GOP is spinning this is to paint McCarthy as not extreme enough and to put forth candidates for his replacement who are even more radical, more coup-friendly, than even McCarthy was. So, I think the GOP is looking to turn the page, find a new chapter, get a better storyline. I will go so far as to say that, if one of the extremists to the right of McCarthy does ascend to his seat, they ultimately will not seek to punish Gaetz or any of the eight that provided their ill-gotten gains. At least it’s unlikely. In that sense, it feels like a shell game of responsibility being shuffled around. But who knows? What I can say is that this development, this unprecedented unseating of arguably the worst Speaker of the House in history, has captured the attention of even low-information voters. The GOP, certainly, will do what they can with the spotlight while it shines upon them, ignoble as that light may be. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/4/2197459/-A-mea-culpa-on-McCarthy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/