To answer his critics, McCarthy had a ready approach: He would make stuff up.Tuesday night, fed them cartloads of We the Pizza pies, and told them, “I’m going to go on record and vote for the biggest spending cuts in history!”“Tonight we are going to vote for the largest savings in American history,” he said , “over $2.1 trillion” .“History will write this is the largest cut in American history,” he continued .
McCarthy’s allies evidently didn’t appreciate the taunt. The presiding officer, Rep. Brad Wenstrup , took the extraordinary step of gaveling down the Democratic leader midspeech — on dubious grounds. But in the end, Democrats bailed out McCarthy again. In the final tally, most of the no votes came from Republicans; most of the yes votes came from Democrats.There’s nothing to celebrate in the way the debt agreement came about.
Some real good could come of this moment if McCarthy learns from it that he has the power to defeat the MAGA wing nuts, who now appear fewer and less powerful than they once did. During the speaker’s 40-minute, celebratory news conference in the Capitol’s Rayburn Room on Wednesday night, PBS’s Lisa Desjardins asked if the bipartisan debt deal could be a “template for other issues.”
Unfortunately, McCarthy sounded more interested in patching things up with the extremists. “I watched Congress divided today; I watched my own conference,” he said. “I’ll work to make sure everybody comes back.”the bill on Iowa radio. In the final question of the night, a reporter asked McCarthy about his dealings with Trump on the debt bill. The speaker brushed off the question before adding: “We don’t want to end on that question. Let’s end on something else.
But when it comes to the future of the party, and therefore of the country, the Trump question is the only question. This week provided Republicans with a road map to escape from Trumpism. The only excuse not to use it is cowardice — or complicity.