Why is there no Speaker Of The House Of Representatives? Why is Kevin McCarthy not holding that position?
To hear Democrats and the preponderance of our wonderful “neutral” media tell it, the reason is that Republicans dumped him, thus rendering The House unable to conduct any business – including helping Israel right now. Damn Republicans.
But is that the way of things? Let’s think about this.
Currently, The House is comprised of 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats (with two vacancies). If McCarthy had received 218 votes he would have remained the Speaker Of The House. Here is how the final vote turned out:
| Party | Yes | No | Not voting | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | 8 | 210 | 3 | |
| Democratic | 208 | — | 4 | |
| Percentage | 50.7% | 49.3% | — | |
| Total votes |  216 |
210 | 7 | |
As you can see, 8 Republicans – all right-wingers, it should be noted – voted against McCarthy, resulting in 210 votes in his favor. Since every Democrat voted against, this resulted in a total of 216 to remove him versus 210 to keep him as Speaker.
If you stop right there, you have your answer in a neatly-tied bundle. Republicans downed McCarthy. The end.
But that is not the whole story.
Why did the 8 right-wing Republicans vote against McCarthy? The reason is that they objected to the concessions he made to Democrats; concessions which avoided a shutdown and kept the government going for at least another 45 days.
This left the 208 voting Democrats with a choice:
-Since Republicans are in the majority, they knew that the speaker would either be McCarthy or another Republican.
-They knew that McCarthy – probably unlike any other Republican who could regain those 8 right-wing votes – was at least somewhat willing to work with them.
-But, knowing this, every Democrat joined the 8 right-wing Republicans in voting McCarthy out.
In other words, the politics of being able to say “the house is paralyzed because of those 8 Republicans”, superseded the logic and value of keeping McCarthy in place.
If just 4 Democrats – less than 2% of the total – had put a working relationship with Republicans over politics, McCarthy would still be Speaker Of The House.
Bottom line? Less than 4% of Republicans voted against McCarthy. 100% of Democrats voted against McCarthy. But we are being told McCarthy’s ouster was entirely on Republicans; Democrats had nothing to do with it.
Does that make any sense? You decide.
