Kevin McCarthy loves power but unfortunately he’ll never be a real power broker because he can’t think strategically. He’s never been able to. Strategic thinkers, whether in politics, business, entertainment, you name it, are able to game out different scenarios. They figure out what the possibilities are for the future and they play the odds. Sometimes those odds involve getting rid of something that would prove to be a temporary convenience, if it stands to become a long term liability. McCarthy’s mind doesn’t work that way. McCarthy lives on a perpetually sinking ship. He’s always bailing water and plugging holes, as he navigates from vote to vote and hopes that he doesn’t go under altogether. What a way to “govern.”
Nothing McCarthy has done so far illustrates this point better than his mishandling of the George Santos matter. McCarthy could have eliminated this problem early on by refusing to seat him in the House. He had just cause at that time for doing so, and to do so would have been strategically sound. It would have set a pattern for a long term “Republican reset” meaning that the days of corruption were gone with the Trump, so to speak, and now, a new Republican ethos was being born — starting with McCarthy taking the helm. That would have been a very smart way to play it. And if you had had a different person other than McCarthy present at that time and place, you may well have seen something like that.
But no way McCarthy could do something like that. He was thinking short term desperation, the only process he knows, and he needed Santos’ vote too badly. So, rather than think strategically, McCarthy kept Santos around. And ha lived to regret it, which is usually how these things go.
That takes us to yesterday and the vote to refer Santos to the Ethics Committee. Semafor:
Following the various rules and customs involved in Wednesday’s proceedings required a scorecard. In February, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Fla. introduced H.R. 114, a privileged resolution to expel Santos from the House of Representatives, which can bypass Republican leadership, then forced it to the House floor this week. But Republicans offered a motion to refer the resolution to the House Ethics Committee, effectively killing a vote on actual expulsion, which would require a two-thirds majority.
“We’ve never expelled anyone in the history of the Congress without due process of either the courts or ethics,” Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y. told Semafor. “We all know where this ends. George Santos won’t be in Congress for long.”
Democrats complained that the vote was a ploy to run out the clock until after the Congress ends. The ethics committee typically defers to law enforcement investigations first before launching their own, which in the case of Santos — who faces 13 federal charges — could be a long time.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he wants his case to proceed “rapidly,” however, and Republicans insist accountability is on the way. “I believe it will be expulsion once ethics finishes its review if the report merits it,” one GOP source told Semafor.
Bear this in mind: Most of the New York Republican delegation has called for Santos’ resignation and that was many months ago, well before the Department of Justice came on the scene with 13 charges against him.
But McCarthy still needs to pass a debt limit bill — and potentially survive a vote to remain as speaker along the way — and it doesn’t make sense to let him go with a five-seat majority.
Republicans aren’t eager to give Democrats a win either, and many sincerely object to expulsion on substantive grounds, which has barely ever been used by Congress in modern times.
“Americans will remember that their representative voted the party line rather than for the people,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
House Republicans are now on the record as not voting to expel George Santos. That vote looks bad now, but can you imagine how bad it’s going to look in the history books?
There are enough Republican-held seats in New York alone to flip the House back to the Democrats in 2024. This may be what Kevin McCarthy has achieved. This is entirely plausible. The negative publicity is there and all it will take is intelligent utilization of same on the part of the Democrats come 2024.
And if it happens that way, that New York ends up being the state with the largest number of flipped seats, taking the House back to Democratic rule, then it will be in large part due to McCarthy, who simply would not take action when it was prudent to do so. His situation got worse. It always does.
Look for his situation to worsen, still. It’s only May.
I love the ‘it’s never been done before’ argument from these soulless toads. Really? We never had a president try to overthrow our goddamn republic until January 6th. I believe it was Aesop who noted: every tyrant has a pretext for his tyranny.
Hopefully, more than a little soul-searching of the various Democrats involved, is taking place in those NY seats that flipped to R last time. Having Santos turn up is a gift to be used properly.