Speaker Kevin McCarthy played the role of king. Heir-apparent to the Speaker of the House role coming soon. However, things have changed.
Most Republicans recognized McCarthy for what he was and continues to be. A RINO. However, the political beast that he is, McCarthy straddles political lines. Republican when it suits him, and Democrat when it suits him. Yes, the typical politician.
That stance served him well. Until now.
McCarthy tried to play both sides again in dealing with Trump. And now McCarthy’s fate lies in the hands of the person he conspired to take down.
As The New Republic reports,
Once the government dissolves into a cult of personality, the successful party apparatchik must exercise at all times the discipline necessary to suppress independent thought. But what happens when that personality dies? Armando Iannucci’s brilliant 2017 farce, The Death of Stalin, explores that question on a literal plane, with Stalin’s deputies frantically maneuvering for position while Stalin, not yet entirely dead, lies insensible and unattended on the floor. A New York Times story drawn from Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns’s new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, explores this question on a metaphorical level, with Republican congressional leaders enslaved by the Trump cult daring to believe for a brief moment that Trump’s goading a mob into storming the Capitol has brought about his political death—and later discovering, to their horror, that it did not.
The Death of Stalin was an ensemble piece, but the Times story, and the farcical response to it by affected parties, is turning out to be a star vehicle for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The rich comic vein here is McCarthy’s frantic attempt, after Trump recovered in Republican polls, to suppress evidence that he displayed any integrity at all on the day of the insurrection and during the days that followed.
I saw the film they referenced. And if Stalin had returned, many more heads would have rolled in Russia. In the case of Trump, to quote Mark Twain: “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Clearly, Trump is far from death. He is a king maker and a king breaker.
The article continues,
Until the Times piece, the principal evidence of this was McCarthy’s after-the-fact reframing as unexceptional a January 6 telephonic shouting match with Trump in which he told Trump to call off the mob. Trump answered that the insurrection was a false-flag antifa operation, which McCarthy boldly disputed. Then, contradicting himself, Trump said: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” We know these details because McCarthy told GOP Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, whom Trump punished for her candor by endorsing her primary opponent. In effect, McCarthy has for the past year been screaming to the judges for the annual John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award, “Don’t you dare give that prize to me!” Taking pity on the poor man, the Kennedy presidential library gave it instead this week to Liz Cheney, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and three other suckers.
As I oft warn Leftists, “What will you do when you find out that yet again, Trump was right?!”
McCarthy sided with the Democrats. And now he begs for Trump not to execute him. If the Trump of old remains, he will forgive McCarthy. But if the new and improved Trump emerges, he will filet McCarthy publicly so all remaining Republican swamp rats know his last four years will be more than lame duck.
Trump will likely get 4 more years to bury the RINOs. I think he will understand the need for the culling of this herd of useless RINOs.
