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Congress GOP Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy’s Constituents Trash Him As He Retires: ‘Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out’

As he prepares to leave Congress and head back to the California district he’s represented since 2007, Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may be anticipating that he’ll be well-received by his constituents.

But based on a fascinating report from Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian, many residents of the district — the largest city of which is Bakersfield — aren’t exactly eager to see McCarthy back in in their midst.

“If you went through the wringer he went through, I suspect there’s a little humiliation, a little embarrassment. Maybe he’s licking his wounds and wants to go off into the sunset,” said Greg Perrone, president of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly, an activist group that hews to McCarthy’s right. “Still, I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t finish the term that he was elected to serve. That’s not what we expect from our elected leaders.”

Consider some of the letters to the editor of The Bakersfield Californian, many of which are filled with stinging rebukes of McCarthy, including calling him quitter for retiring early.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kevin,” two of them wrote last week. One added: “You haven’t represented us in a very long time.”

Even Bakersfield mayor Karen Goh gave McCarthy the back of her hand, saying she was “too busy” to provide even a brief quote regarding the former speaker.

Some in the district complain that McCarthy has never been interested in their needs and has instead spent most of his time in other parts of California in an effort to raise fundraising dollars for himself and the GOP, which doesn’t exactly do them any good.

McCarthy’s district, California’s 20th, extends well beyond Bakersfield into the farmlands of Kern and Tulare counties and into the suburbs of Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley. It was redrawn before the last election to make it more solidly Republican, relieving McCarthy of any significant pressure to fight for his own congressional seat. He scarcely visited during last year’s campaign, focusing instead on raising hundreds of millions of dollars for more competitive districts in California and the rest of the country.

For his part, McCarthy is making it clear he’s still interested in politics on a national level, especially if a future Republican president has a cabinet post that needs to be filled by an insider who has lots of contacts in Congress and can always be counted when it comes time to ask donors to write a check or two for the GOP effort.

Historically, McCarthy will go down as a lesson in the personal greed for power that drove both his rise to the top and the crash that left him as little more than a historical footnote who is only interested in what he can do for himself.

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Congress GOP Kevin McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy On Matt Gaetz: Congress Would Benefit ‘Tremendously’ If He’s Expelled

Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was asked today if he thought Congress would be better off if Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is expelled from the body and made it clear that he still blames the Florida Republican for his ouster from the top post in the House.

Manu Raju was interviewing McCarthy and asked him directly, “How much would the Republican Party benefit if he were no longer a member of the House, in your opinion?” 

McCarthy replied:

“Oh, tremendously. I mean, people have to earn the right to be here. And I just think from, I mean, he’ll admit to you personally, he doesn’t have a conservative bent in his philosophy and just the nature of what he focuses on.”

So does that mean Gaetz needs to be removed? Raju inquired.

McCarthy: “That’s up to the conference. But I mean, I don’t believe the conference will ever heal if there’s no consequences for the action.”

You may recall that it was Gaetz who led the effort that resulted in McCarthy becoming the first House speaker in U.S. history to be removed from the post, as CNN reported in October.

Gaetz said Monday that he has “enough Republicans” to either push McCarthy from the speakership or make him cut a deal with Democrats to remain in power.

“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen. Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House, or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats. And I’m at peace with either result, because the American people deserve to know who governs them,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

Reportedly, the main reason Gaetz wanted McCarthy ousted is because the former speaker refused to put an end to an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation of Gaetz for alleged drug use and sex with underage girls, both of which could indeed cost him his House seat.

Sounds like McCarthy is now ready for some major payback.

 

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Congress GOP Kevin McCarthy

Disgraced Kevin McCarthy Plans To Resign Before His Term In Office Ends

Disgraced ex-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is planning to resign from his seat in Congress before the end of his term in 2024, according to reports from Politico and CNN.

Mediaite notes

“The ex-Speaker has said he does not intend to make another attempt to wield the gavel — the memory of the excruciating fifteen rounds of votes it took him to win it in January is undoubtedly still a raw wound — but the news he might forgo running for re-election on the November 2024 ballot and even resign before the end of his term was new Friday.”

Olivia Beavers of Politico notes that McCarthy “has made clear he plans to stay at least through the speakership election that begins next week before ending his House career…in order to help the party steady itself after a seismic shakeup.”

Additionally, the former speaker is said to have told his GOP colleagues, “I’m going to spend time with my family.”

Despite McCarthy’s plans, some of his House Republican allies insist they will enter his name into nomination when a vote for the next speaker is held.

One of those, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), says McCarthy is needed now more than ever:

“Each day that goes by without a Speaker, the House is paralyzed to act on the dangers bearing down on us. Each day brings us closer to a power-sharing arrangement that will move the House sharply to the left and eliminate the only political counterweight in our elected government to the woke left.”

“The only workable outcome is to restore Kevin McCarthy as Speaker under party rules that respect and enforce the right of the majority party to elect him,” McClintock added. “This depends entirely on several of the dissidents to disenthrall themselves from their decision and to repair the damage before it is too late. I appeal to them to act while there is still time.”

The two most frequently mentioned names to replace McCarthy are Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Steve Scalise (R-LA). Jordan has announced he will seek the post while Scalise is said to be considering whether or not to toss his hat into the ring.

 

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Congress Fox News GOP Kevin McCarthy

Peter Doocy Gets His A*s Handed To Him For Asking If The White House Is ‘Loving’ GOP Disarray

As he so frequently does, Fox “News” correspondent Peter Doocy managed to ask a question so stupid that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was forced to dispatch him with a stinging rebuke.

“Is any part of the West Wing here, just loving the fact that Republicans don’t appear to be able to govern the one part of the government that they actually control?” Doocy asked.

Jean-Pierre responded:

“Nobody’s ‘loving’ anything when we’re not able to deliver for the American people. Nobody’s loving that.”

She added:

“It is important for Congress to work, not for us, but on behalf of the American people. It is important to make sure that we meet the challenges of the American people. That’s what’s important. What we saw, you heard from the President, what we saw on Saturday should have never happened, but we’re glad that a deal was made. We’re glad that we’re not in a shutdown. But House Republicans should have never gotten us that far.”

The press secretary noted that since Republicans are the majority in the House, “they can fix this.”

“They’re creating the chaos. That is not helpful to the American people.”
“…We’re not loving it. It is not helpful to any American across the country.”

 

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Congress GOP Kevin McCarthy Social Media Viral Video

Acting House Speaker Gets Ridiculed For His Angry Gavel Drop After McCarthy’s Ouster

If you were still watching yesterday when the House of Representatives took a vote that ousted Kevin McCarthy from his post as speaker, you probably saw a man wearing a bowtie presiding over the event.

That man is Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was serving as speaker pro tempore, and an action he took after the votes had been tallied and the speaker’s office formally declared as vacated has gone viral and resulted in McHenry getting heavily trolled on social media.

Here’s the video of McHenry’s “sulk slam” as HuffPost dubbed it, courtesy of Ron Filpkowski:

Damn! That is one angry and uptight little man.

Reaction on Twitter was absolutely hilarious.