Of Snakes, Deep Swamps, and Kevin McCarthy’s Bid to Govern From the Middle

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One could argue – and the corporate media and RINO establishment will certainly do so – that Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with President Joe Biden coupled with his ability to ram it through the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote was a master legislative stroke in a sharply divided government.  Yet, there are three very real problems with this argument that may trigger a vote to oust him as Speaker under rules put in place by House conservatives precisely for such a betrayal. 

First, McCarthy’s crafted – or more accurately surrendered to – one of the most poorly negotiated and one sided deals ever cut between an American president and House Speaker from opposite parties. Stripped of rhetoric – for which there was no shortage of in the media spin – the McCarthy deal provides no guarantees that what minimal deficit reductions that were agreed to will ever be honored or implemented.  Indeed, Joe Biden’s massive, multi-trillion dollar trio of spending packages that McCarthy should have demanded be cut are now destined to spike our budget deficit, soaring national debt, and already out of control inflation.

Second, the Biden-McCarthy deal provides absolutely no relief for America’s fossil fuel producers – relief essential if America is ever going to regain its strategic energy dominance in world markets.  Instead, the Biden-McCarthy deal ensures Saudi Arabia and Russia, not America, will determine world oil prices.  This means oil and gasoline prices 30% to 50% higher than Americans would otherwise be forced to bear if America were still the world’s leading oil producer and a net exporter – as it was under Donald Trump.

Beyond these economic concerns, there is Kevin McCarthy’s unforgivable political sin: McCarthy readily agreed to Joe Biden’s demand to kick the debt limit can down the road past the 2024 presidential and congressional races. Democrat strategists saw this extension as critical to Biden’s reelection campaign and any successful effort to regain control of both chambers of Congress. 

Why was McCarthy so easy to woo?  He, himself, feared that a renewed debt limit debate in 2024 with a possible government shutdown might put more pressure from conservatives on McCarthy’s position as Speaker.  Ergo, although it was politically foolish for his own party and prospects for taking back both the White House and Congress in the 2024 cycle, McCarthy put his own fortunes ahead of his Party.

The irony, of course, is that McCarthy’s surrender cum sellout may indeed trigger a challenge to his Speakership.  Under new House rules, it only takes a single member of the Republican caucus to trigger a vote.  Importantly here, more than 70 Republicans voted against the McCarthy deal – as they angrily watched Democrats help McCarthy shove it down their throats.

The kicker here – and what might hold conservatives back – is that McCarthy may already have cut a deal with Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for Jefferies to provide enough Democrats to allow McCarthy to hang on.  The cost of any such deal, however, would be McCarthy’s final sellout of America’s Heartland to the Democrats and that dark web of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Big Pharma, and  multi-national corporation interests that have fueled McCarthy’s rise.

Here, McCarthy’s maneuverings on the debt deal and his original jockeying to become Speaker by wooing key conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Green and Jim Jordan remind me of the Snake Poem that Donald Trump was so fond of reciting at his rallies to remind his supporters just how dangerous the creatures of Washington’s Swamp can be. In the poem, a kind woman tends to a sick snake only to be bitten in her bed when the snake regained its health.    

With her dying breath this Good Samaritan asks “why”?  All the snake could say was “shut up, silly woman…you knew darn well I was a snake before you brought me in.'"  Today, we should all wonder who among the conservative Republicans who supported McCarthy as speaker are having any such thoughts as they ponder a possible McCarthy ousting.