Kevin McCarthy and His Enemy

Matt Gaetz is so upset that Kevin McCarthy cooperated with Democrats on passing a temporary spending measure to forestall a government shutdown that he wants to work with Democrats to topple McCarthy as speaker.

Gaetz is vowing to offer his long-threatened motion to vacate against McCarthy this week.

Since the motion requires a majority to succeed and only a small fraction of Republicans will support it, Gaetz needs a huge proportion of the Democratic caucus to come along. Gaetz the bipartisan dealmaker reportedly reached out first to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which hates McCarthy almost as much as he does, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already on board.

It is, to say the least, counterintuitive strategic thinking to conclude that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries should be handed power over the fate of a Republican speaker of the House — in the name of conservative ideological purity. But no one will ever mistake Gaetz for Sam Rayburn, or even for Bob Dornan.