The Speaker is Chosen - Let the Gridlock Begin!

So, Kevin McCarthy’s deal with Chip Roy yesterday afternoon didn’t immediately get him over the top, but it did help reduce the opposition to McCarthy’s elevation to Speaker to just 6 holdouts, and they all finally gave in on the 15th vote last night. The House has a Speaker, and now the gridlock can begin.

America faces the next two years with a 51-49 Democrat Senate and a 222-212 Republican House. Guess what’s going to happen in terms of getting legislation done? Probably not ‘nothing’ in a literal sense, but about as close to nothing as we’ve ever seen. That will by and large be a good thing for America.

Kevin McCarthy is the Speaker. He claims to have a legislative agenda, but he knows none of it will be passed into law. The Senate filibuster rule - which Democrats claim they want to get rid of - will work to ensure that any bill passed by the House GOP majority won’t even get a vote in the other chamber.

On the other hand, to the extent Democrats want to moderate their own agenda and try to get some reasonable things done in negotiations with GOP RINOs, it won’t take many of those RINOS breaking away from the GOP’s slim majority to stupidly help our national Sock Puppet get parts of his own agenda done.

The rest of the Republicans in the House will try doing their best imitations of B-1 Bob Dornan and make a lot of outraged after-hours floor speeches. That will be the extent of their legislative agendas. We can expect to see a lot of Matt Gaetz and Loren Boebert on C-Span 3 in the coming 23 months.

The holding of hearings will be where the real agenda of the House GOP is at, and God knows they could keep busy holding hearings on the illegal immigration crisis alone. The hearing agenda is important, because that’s how any majority party seeks to control the narrative. Their problem will be that Senate Democrats will be able to offset whatever they do, and the media will always focus on pushing the Democrat narrative over their own.

But McCarthy and his Republicans were left a gift by San Fran Nan and her Jan. 6 Committee scam in the form of enhanced subpoena powers and the precedent that kangaroo court set in the leaking of testimony transcripts. While the Washington Post won’t be eager to amplify any Republican leaks like it always loyally does for Democrats, the days of the legacy media controlling that particular agenda are long gone.

The problem for the House GOP in this session is akin to the problem Michael Corleone faced after the death of his father: The Corleone family was in a war and Michael needed a wartime consigliere. In this analogy, Kevin McCarthy is Tom Hayden, played in the film by the great Robert Duvall. He’s not a wartime Speaker, and his party needed one.

That’s what the last four days were really about, you know. McCarthy is a compromiser and a deal maker by nature. In this congress, the only deals that will be available to be made will be deals that help enable the Democrat Party’s socialist/fascist agenda, because when congress is split, the balance of power resides in the White House. Or with whomever is controlling the Sock Puppet who was installed in the White House, to put it more accurately.

Thus, while I never believed they would be able to deny McCarthy his ultimate ascension to the Speaker’s job, I did understand why the holdouts were so angry about their situation. The first guy they backed, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, would have been perfect, the wartime Speaker the party really needed.

Jordan’s a bulldog who would not be afraid to shut down a third of the government for a week or two to deny the Dems an easy win on the inevitable fight over the debt ceiling. He’s a battler who would be willing to subpoena Biden officials who don’t want to appear before his committees for sworn testimony. He’s a guy who understands what the stakes really are.

McCarthy is not that guy. He did make a bunch of concessions on House rules for this session that will leave him no choice but to take some actions that make him uncomfortable, but he will always be looking for the compromise needed for a smooth landing. The Republicans needed a guy like Jordan, who isn’t afraid to land on two wheels when the third one is stuck in locked position. He isn’t worried about busting up some of the establishment’s china when the country needs a bull in the shop.

At the end of the day, the holding of real, aggressive oversight hearings will be the Republican House majority’s main weapon in this congress. That’s the hammer they will have to enable them to expose the corruption and mendacity of the Democrats.

It will be interesting to see the choices McCarthy makes to chair those key committees. It is most likely the single most important task he will fulfill as Speaker.

That is all.