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This afternoon, Kevin McCarthy became the first Speaker of the House to be ousted from that position following a motion to vacate that was filed last night by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.
Gaetz needed only six GOP votes to go against McCarthy, but he got eight, including a somewhat curious vote from Rep. Nancy Mace (SC-01), the anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ lawmaker who seems quite invested in convincing political media she’s a moderate while she does things like this. (She is not a moderate.)
It’s hard to understate the history at play here. It’s not just that McCarthy is the first Speaker to be removed, but that he was ousted less than nine months into his tenure, the shortest of any Speaker who didn’t die in office. It is certainly not an overstatement to point out that this is a massive political failure.
It’s not just a failure for McCarthy but the entire Republican Party, who have been made to look disorganized, fractured, and clownish by a small number of GOP extremists. The GOP will undoubtedly suffer from this in the short-term, particularly with elections next month in Virginia and New Jersey.
And it may spell significant trouble for 2024. Depending on how long this vote for the next Speaker is dragged out, Republicans could be losing hundreds of thousands of moderates across the country—if not millions—with each day this circus continues.
In January, McCarthy needed 15 ballots to finally be elected Speaker, and he had to give the extremists everything they wanted, including the motion-to-vacate by an individual member, which Gaetz duly weaponized last night.
Following the vote, one congresswoman was reportedly crying on the House floor, and dozens of Republicans supporting McCarthy lined up to console him.
So many shocked faces being acquainted with a leopard.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was not present; she’s currently in San Francisco after traveling back with the body of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. There was no way she could have come back in time. The Speaker Emerita and McCarthy are not exactly fond of each other, so you can imagine she was disappointed to miss this vote.
McCarthy served 270 days, the equivalent of 27 scaramuccis or 0.093 of a pelosi, after giving away his power—and his dignity—to man-toddlers who eventually stabbed him in the back.
Nancy Patricia Pelosi, who served 2,290 days as Speaker of the House, won election to Speaker by her colleagues on the first ballot every time, deftly shepherded some of the most notable legislation in modern history, and successfully defied challenges to her leadership with uncommonly brilliant coalition skills, backwards and in high heels.
Kevin McCarthy just found out in the hardest way possible that Nancy Pelosi only made it look easy.
Tonight, the GOP will meet in private and then, supposedly, we’ll get the first ballot vote for Speaker. I’ll continue to cover it, of course, through here, Threads, and the website formerly known as Twitter.
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Nancy Pelosi Only Made It Look Easy