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McCarthy Wanted a Scapegoat, Not a Deal. He Got Burned by Underestimating His Opponents. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-15  

The default media narrative is that Kevin McCarthy "worked with Democrats" to avert a shutdown, and then was martyred for his noble act when they heartlessly denied him a lifeline.

I don't buy that for a minute, and I think we should be challenging that fiction more loudly. I believe Kevin simply wanted a scapegoat for the shutdown after the Republican bill failed.

Why else would you pull an unexpected 180 with a complex bill, and then call for a snap floor vote giving your opposition "allies" zero time to read it, especially when you need a ⅔ supermajority including many of their yeas for passage under rule suspension? Dems' natural a priori reaction would be to block a surprise GOP bill, and that's exactly what they were signaling at first.

Far from betraying the crazies, Bad-faith Kevin thought he'd found a brilliant way to ingratiate himself with the Gaetz crowd: give them their shutdown and let Democrats take the blame for blocking what we'd all soon learn was a reasonable 45-day CR, minus Ukraine funding. We were never supposed to read it until it had been defeated.

But the strategy all blew up in his face instead, because Checkers Kevin didn't count on Chessmaster Hakeem Jeffries being savvier and smarter than he is. Jeffries used his Magic Minute privilege as Minority Leader to hold the floor & delay the vote long enough for his caucus to vet the bill, recognize the ruse, and call the Speaker's bluff by voting for it almost unanimously.

Revealingly, during that time, Republicans were painting HJ as an obstructionist who wanted a shutdown, because projection is what they do, and because they expected the accusation would resonate very soon. McCarthy even floated this ridiculous line with the media after the fact, and he nearly got laughed out of the interview.

Certainly, after the CR passed, McCarthy had no choice but to accept credit for "working across the aisle"—and be crucified by the MAGAs he'd wanted to impress. But to anyone who knew the score, it should be no mystery why he didn't ask for Democratic support during his ouster, why he offered no concessions to that end, and why they were in no mood to help save his chair: he had just tried to trick them.

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