It’s interesting how ideas that start out as jokes sometimes take on a life of their own and gain substance. Last year the notion of Donald Trump running for a House seat from the State of Florida was dropped into the cultural narrative. Fat chance of that. But wait a minute, people said as they scurried to look up the law, Trump wouldn’t have to be a sitting member of Congress to become House Speaker. If the GOP regained control of the chamber and they wanted to vote him in as Speaker, they could do that.

Now Kevin McCarthy lives for nothing else but to become Speaker of the House. That’s been his dream for quite some time and he hopes to realize it in 2022. But if it was a choice between him and El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, forget about it, Kev. And after Mark Meadows’ perverse ranting today, that might be the way it goes down.

And Meadows is not alone. Peter Navarro and Marjorie Taylor Greene took a shot at him in recent days as well. Politico Playbook:

LET’S BE REAL FOR A MINUTE: Trump becoming speaker is extremely unlikely, but that’s not the point. If the former president has dozens of Trumpian members refusing to back McCarthy for speaker, and instead voting for Trump, the California Republican could face the same math problem that led him to drop his speakership bid in 2015.

THERE’S A HISTORY HERE: Meadows was among the members who helped ensure McCarthy didn’t get the votes to be speaker in 2015. Their tense relationship continued even after the GOP took over Washington, as the pair jockeyed to influence Trump to move in often opposite directions, including over how to repeal the Affordable Care Act and whether to embrace government shutdown fights.

Clearly, they’re still at odds. The split is worth watching if the GOP flips the House in 2022 as expected.

NOT ALONE: Comments like Meadows’ are starting to reveal a growing frustration with McCarthy in Trump’s orbit. On Monday, Trump ally PETER NAVARRO essentially called McCarthy an idiot for removing all Republicans from the Jan. 6 committee, leaving Trump exposed and without allies to defend him.

“Kevin McCarthy made arguably the dumbest checkers move in a chess game I’ve ever seen,” Navarro said on the “War Room” podcast, per Yahoo News’ Jon Ward. “He lost control.”

Then on Wednesday, Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) suggested McCarthy was “weak” for refusing to punish the 13 members who voted for the BIF.

So the issue is not so much Trump for Speaker as it is McCarthy not for Speaker. McCarthy wouldn’t even be Minority Leader now but for Paul Ryan deciding to leave the playing field. McCarthy has too many enemies in his own camp. He’s in a situation analogous to Mike Pence. He needs the MAGA endorsement to become Speaker but the hard core MAGAs want nothing to do with him.

And the hard core MAGAs are right, although not for the reasons they state. McCarthy is weak, another trait he shares with Pence. He’s trying to straddle a fence and please everybody at a time in history when politics has never been more polarized. Won’t work.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Dance along the edge of a razor blade and you’ll cut your feet. If you’re lucky you’ll wind up not being able to take it very long and fall off to one side or the other. But you might not be so lucky, and instead when the inevitable fall happens you land straddled on that sucker! McCarthy ought to think about that. Some dreams don’t come true no matter how hard you try to make them happen. And many a person who’s refused to accept their dream will never come true yet keep trying to proverbially fit the square peg into the round hole wind up losing a LOT more than the dream that failed to come true. I think McCarthy is so out of touch with reality he’s going to cost himself more than he ever thought he’d gain.

    I won’t lose a minutes sleep over it. I guess I don’t have to be a total dick about it. When the crash & burn happens I can leave him a message offering thoughts and prayers. Of course I’ll be completely honest and add that 1) I’m agnostic so my prayers are worthless, and 2) My thoughts are rather less than kind.

  2. Anything could happen if somebody doesn’t hurry up and indict Trump’s ass and get him in jail. I really want to know what the holdup is. There is so much obvious evidence against him. No need to wade through every syllable of every word.

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