Quick(ish) take: Is Kevin McCarthy toast? (What were his chances before the tapes?)

 Quick story.  Remember John Boehner?  I liked that guy.  Many moons ago, he was Speaker of the House, and a damned-good one, although under-appreciated because he had the challenging task of trying to wrangle what looked, at the time, like a caucus of crazy people.  Little did we know...  Anywho, Boehner's problem was that he was a sane institutionalist trying to lead a party in a downward spiral of loony.  He was fired, and I wrote a piece for The Monkey Cage about the internal dynamics of the Republican Party.  The timing was a little awkward.  You may recall that Boehner was succeeded by some douchebro with an Ayn Rand fixation (Paul Ryan), but that was actually not what was "supposed" to happen.  Next in line, to the degree that that means anything, was a fellow named Kevin McCarthy.

When I wrote my article, I was less than convinced that McCarthy would get the job.  The problem was that McCarthy is what we call, in technical terms, a "shitweasel," which is not a problem in a moral sense for the Republican Party, because sociopathy is kind of their thing.  The problem, rather, is that he is too obviously a fraud.  The issue for them was the weasel part, rather than the shit part.  Point being, this was the era when the whole party was going around teabagging each other, and McCarthy has always been so obviously a cloyingly useless windsock that it was easy to see that he'd face opposition.  So, in my original article, I wrote some stuff about how McCarthy was far from certain, for some of the same reasons that Boehner was getting booted.  

Paul Ryan, one may notice, is at least a true-believer extremist, as opposed to being a shitweasel.  Just a shit, not a weasel.  OK, he's a bit weaselly, but nobody out-weasels Kevin McCarthy.

Anyway, so my original article had my own weasel-words about the succession process because of McCarthy's obvious weaseliness.

I... got told to take that out in the editorial process.  I'm not sayin' by who, but his name rhymes with "Ron Chides."  So I wound up writing this thing in The Monkey Cage with shit all over my face once McCarthy got taken down, even though my original draft got it, if not exactly right, then less wrong.  At least, I saw the trouble comin' because McCarthy has always been a shitweasel, and the crazier the GOP gets, the more they demand a true-believer shit, without the weasel.

Is McConnell a weasel?  No, he just doesn't give a shit, but he has the benefit of being the smartest tactician in Washington.

McCarthy?  McCarthy is an idiot.  And a shitweasel.  Does the House GOP conference care that he is an idiot?  No.  They stand behind Marjorie Taylor Greene.  They clearly do not care that he is an idiot.  Do they care that he is a shit?

Have you been paying attention?

But here's the thing.  Greene is a true believer.  McCarthy is not.  The tapes?  They reveal a thing the House GOP has known all along.  McCarthy is a weasel.  He is useless to anyone, disloyal to everyone, and there is not one, single positive reason for anyone to support him as Speaker.

It would not take much for Scalise or Stefanik to take him down, but his path to the gavel was never clear anyway!  Does nobody remember how Paul Ryan got the gavel?  If McCarthy wasn't pure enough for the teabaggers, he certainly isn't pure enough for the January 6-ers.

Does that mean he necessarily loses?  No, but he should have evoked more skepticism before those tapes came out than we were hearing.  Perhaps I had more from my Monkey Cage incident than other analysts, but seriously.  Kevin McCarthy?

The chimera is real.  "Shit" and "weasel" have been combined in a lab experiment gone wrong.  The result is Kevin McCarthy.  This is why some people hate science.

Yes, you can make good music out of this.  Hank Garland, "Pop Goes The Weasel," from The Unforgettable Guitar of Hank Garland.  Youtube's clip is from a compilation album.