McCarthy’s Revenge
It was announced yesterday that California congressman and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy not only would not run for re-election in 2024…but that he was resigning from the House effective the end of this month.
It’s not surprising that someone whose lone goal was to be the Speaker, would find it hard to fit in once the gavel was ripped from his hands…but the timing of the move shows that the deposed Speaker intends to teach a lesson to those who drove him from the post.
Once the House returns in the new year, they’ll immediately be faced with the prospect of another government shutdown, with temporary spending measures only in place until the middle of the month. McCarthy leaving in the same month that New York’s George Santos was expelled makes the math more challenging.
You need 50 percent of the members plus one to pass anything. Presuming all members show up, when Congress comes back, they’ll be down two members—Santos and McCarthy—pending special elections. Even if the GOP were to hold on to both seats, which is unlikely, it would be some period of time before those new members would be seated. Meaning 433 members in the chamber…and only 220 that are Republican.
A majority of the 433 is 217…so new Speaker Mike Johnson now can only lose 3 members on an issue to get anything passed…unless he gets support from Democrats and that’s where McCarthy’s tenure came unwound.
So if you’re McCarthy, and you’d like to stick it to the people who stuck it to you…you could hardly have come up with a better plan. “You folks thought it was easy to pass things with a five-vote cushion? Try three.”
So much for a bright start to the new year.
