‘Someone Better’ Is Nobody

Without a plan, Matt Gaetz’s crusade to right the House is little more than empty moralizing.

When Representative Matt Gaetz set in motion the vote that ended Kevin McCarthy’s time as speaker of the House, he wrote his own name into history, too. One is tempted to look to real-life political assassinations for analogies. Was it madness, like John Hinckley? Or politics, like John Wilkes Booth?

McCarthy refused to take the bait of asking Democrats to help him overcome the tiny minority of Republicans who joined Gaetz’s rebellion. Republicans who stuck with McCarthy, even the most conservative, are understandably bereft. They don’t know how long it will be until the House is functional. Many of their colleagues are in swing seats and needed desperately to establish their reputation as a series officeholders, not as political kamikaze pilots. Republicans in the House are now losing time that could be spent making further inquiries into the Hunter Biden matter or our disastrous Covid response. They are losing leverage, too. During the budget showdown that just ended, the majority of the House Republican Conference voted against further aid to Ukraine. The Senate then overruled Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s instincts and passed a bill separating Ukraine aid from the bill funding the continued function of the government. To members of the Republican base, it looked like the Republican House under McCarthy was just starting to punch above its very limited weight. It was just starting to insert the spanners into the workings of Democratic governance from the White House. Now, it’s being accused of being part of the “uniparty” by Gaetz? C’mon.