McCarthy’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold

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Day 3 of The Best & The Brightest also happens to be Day 3 of the Passion of Kevin McCarthy. On Monday, you heard from Tara, who has long been predicting this debacle. Yesterday, you heard from me, with an explanation for how this shitshow may—or may not—affect aid to Ukraine. And today, you’re getting the dispatch that, frankly, I’ve been waiting for all week: Tina, the decoder of all things MAGA, who sees around red-hatted corners, looks into the minds of the Never Kevins and finally tells us what’s inside.

Not surprisingly, Tina’s portrait handily filets the conventional wisdom sloshing around #thistown about what’s driving these now 21 holdouts. No, the contributions of McCarthy’s Congressional Leadership Fund doesn’t matter. No, it’s not committee seats. And, most importantly, no, there’s no deal to be cut. “We’re having fun,” one of them told Tina.

But first, another dispatch from Tara on the latest wheeling and dealing under the dome…

Tara writes: Tensions continue to grow between Team Kevin McCarthy and Team Steve Scalise as it becomes increasingly clear, after three days without a breakthrough, that...

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McCarthy’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Here’s what the so-called Taliban Twenty really want. Hint: it largely starts and ends with McCarthy rapturing out of the Speaker’s office.

TINA NGUYEN

In the weeks leading up to January 3rd, the first day of the new Congress, a small clique of far right hardliners within the House Freedom Caucus—the majority of them freshmen, backbenchers, and members still waiting to be sworn in—were quietly, furiously reading up on the chamber’s arcane rules. They took meetings with the Office of the Parliamentarian, peppering the House’s resident expert with questions about which procedures to abide by on the floor, past precedents to thwart a speakership election, and what sort of motions they could call to grind Kevin McCarthy’s political future into dust. “I guarantee you,” a strategist close to their efforts told me, “that each of those 20 knows vastly more about House procedure than your typical non-leadership, middle-of-the-road member of the Republican conference.” ...

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