The Real Reason Matt Gaetz Is Trying To Oust Kevin McCarthy
Inmany action movies, the participants of a looming battle will sometimes create a distraction so that the main event can occur. For example, if it’s a coordinated assassination attempt, someone might light up a dumpster to distract security while another aims his lethal weaponry at a high-profile target.
The current high-stakes action in the U.S. House of Representatives is a lot like those movies.
In this case, we have a villain, Matt Gaetz, played by himself, who is desperate to keep the house ethics police at bay. So he’s created a classic distraction: A war with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (another villain —what can I say? It’s a weird movie).
If you’re wondering how one lone crackpot insurrectionist can declare a speakership vacant, it’s because of a prior “deal” he and 19 other QAnon badge-wearing representatives made with McCarthy in order for McCarthy to gain the Speaker’s chair in the first place.
The full House still has to vote on what to do with this, but it’s a legitimate threat to McCarthy’s position as House Speaker.
Declaring the speakership vacant is a procedural trick that Gaetz can use every single day while McCarthy is the Speaker. Because that’s the deal McCarthy made during the 15 votes the House needed to land him the job.
It was a deal with the devil, but McCarthy lives on the edge of sanity, too. He’s power-hungry enough to try just about anything to hold his seat. So he took a deal to change House rules and hugged Marjorie Taylor Greene in memorable tear-jerking moments on the House floor shortly after he finally won the job:
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