Wow. Just a month or so ago, the conventional wisdom was that John Boehner had nothing to fear from Mark Meadows assault on his speakership. Just conservative grandstanding with no chance of success, we were told. Then Boehner was gone. The conventional GOP wisdom just last week was that Kevin McCarthy was a shoe in for the Speaker’s job. Now he has just dropped out of the race.
All this because forty, just forty conservatives hung together and asserted their will. The is an enormous lesson to be learned by the entire GOP about what is possible if, you know, you actually try.
But what comes next may determine whether or not the GOP lives or dies.
In the wake of the announcement that McCarthy was dropping out. Sahil Kapur said this.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R) says there may have to be a bipartisan coalition on the floor to elect the next speaker.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 8, 2015
I have no idea if Dent has some inside scoop on the thinking of the GOP establishment or if this is just sour grapes, but I can tell you this.
If the GOP establishment does not embrace the conservatives and accede to some of their very reasonable demands, but instead chooses to ally with Democrats to elect a speaker, the GOP is truly done as a party at the national level. Their journey to the dark side will be complete and there is no coming back.
Let’s see what they do, but being the GOP, you can count on them to do the stupidest thing possible.
