Yesterday, California Republican Kevin McCarthy failed to win the vote for Speaker on three ballots. He should bow out today.
McCarthy is not a solid conservative. He’s soft a Republican, a moderate, a Californian, and a poor choice for House Speaker. America deserves someone else.
For more on why we oppose McCarthy for Speaker, click here.
The Speaker needs 218 votes to take the gavel. McCarthy could only get just over 200, second place to the consolidated Democrats who voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. On the third ballot 20 Republicans voted for Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
The effort to avoid giving McCarthy a promotion he doesn’t deserve is being led by Freedom Caucus members, but not by the caucus itself, and that’s a problem. Why does the Freedom Caucus exist if they are just going to rollover for an entrenched swamp creature like McCarthy? And Jordan, a Freedom Caucus founding member, doesn’t even want the job; he voted for McCarthy.
Old Dominion Post greatly appreciates and usually supports the Freedom Caucus, but the current caucus seems to have forgotten its origin. From Pew Research- “The group, which includes many veterans of the Tea Party movement, was formed in January [of 2015] with the declared aim of pushing the House GOP leadership rightward on certain fiscal and social issues. More broadly, the caucus wants power shifted away from the leadership to the rank-and-file (by, for instance, giving committees more leeway on which bills to move forward and allowing more amendments to come to floor votes).”
McCarthy was in Republican House leadership in 2015, making him very much part of the problem the newly formed caucus was trying to push back against. That seems to have been lost yesterday as a divided caucus split votes between one of its founders and one its identified problems.
A compromise candidate needs to rise. Someone who is a solid conservative and has experience as a legislative leader is obviously the best choice. Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida fits that description well. America needs Webster to step-up and for the entire Freedom Caucus to unite behind him.
If the Freedom Caucus can’t support someone like Webster over McCarthy, then questioning and examining the caucus’s role, at the very least, must happen.
When you view the Freedom Caucus’s Twitter account you may notice the blue checkmark. If you click on the checkmark a description appears that reads- “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.” Well, seeing the division over something as obvious as rejecting Rep. Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, the Freedom Caucus is drifting toward that last part; “may not be notable.”
