Murc’s law, as I mentioned a few years back, refers to an attitude that “only Democrats have agency.” If Republicans pick far-right psychos and Nazi lovers for public office, it’s because Dems pick candidates Republicans can’t support. Whatever policies come out of Washington are what Dems want, regardless of how much they fight (if Obama had really wanted single-payer insurance, he’d have gotten it through Congress!).
Inevitably, as Roy Edroso says (and also says here), this would turn up in the Monday-morning quarterbacking over Rep. McCarthy being voted out as speaker. Megan McArdle, for example, says Dems should have used their influence to save him because it will only get worse with him gone. Instead they just stood by and let Republicans flush the country further down the tubes!
As A-OC says, “men failing up is not a Constitutionally protected right.” He wanted the job enough to kiss the ass of the Gaetz wing of his party in the House. He made zero effort to give the Democrats anything. He supported the Biden impeachment efforts. As LGM points out:
- Kevin McCarthy was one of the first Republicans to make a U-turn on the January 6th insurrection and deny that anything wrong happened.
- McCarthy negotiated a spending level of $1.59 trillion for discretionary programs during the debt ceiling standoff. Within days he reneged on that and demanded a much lower spending level.
- He did the same dozens of times, agreeing on some legislation or other and then immediately reneging under pressure from the MAGA wing of his party.
- He made a handshake deal with President Biden to provide more funding for Ukraine. Practically before he made it back to the Capitol he had reneged on that.
- He promised he wouldn’t open an impeachment inquiry without a full vote of the House, and then did it anyway on his own.
- He took a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act that passed 58-1 in the House Armed Services Committee and larded it up with right-wing poison pills that then passed only on a pure partisan vote and never had any chance of passing the Senate.
- At the end, McCarthy offered nothing to Democrats as a token of good faith and even said he didn’t expect any of their votes
It’s going to be a mess moving forward. But treating McCarthy as too big to fail or the best of a bad lot was never a solution. With character like Gaetz and Greene who are more into personal celebrity than governing, I’m not sure there is one. But I do know it’s Republicans who got us into this mess. Both sides did not do it.
