Did Speaker Kevin McCarthy double cross the right wing Trumpists?

House Republicans are not interested in governing:

An echo opinion (with Maine Writer IMO), published in the Nevada Sun news.

It should surprise no one that, in today’s Washington D.C., a deal sometimes is not a deal. (IMO Rather, look out for the double cross!)

IMO Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot who suffers from Stormy Daniels Envy syndrome.

Especially when it involves the House Republicans, who seem more interested in scoring (IMO undemocratic!) political points with their supporters and justifying the former guy Donald Trump than in being serious legislators.

Their first victim was the second part of the bipartisan deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden that prevented a catastrophic government default.

The first part of their agreement, approved quickly by large majorities in both the House and Senate, extended the federal debt ceiling past the next election into 2025, ensuring the government wouldn’t default on its credit obligations.

But the second part, setting two-year parameters for curbing government spending to prevent a year-end governmental shutdown, had barely been passed when both Senate and House Republicans began to punch holes in it, reviving the prospect of the crisis that both leaders hoped to avoid.

Hawkish Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, vowed to add funds to the $886 billion the agreement provided for defense, much of it to help embattled Ukraine. 

Being senators, that will probably prove negotiable.

More seriously, the same far-right House Republicans who opposed the original deal — and McCarthy’s speakership — said they’d oppose any funding bills that don’t cut overall spending by 2%, more than the debt ceiling bill specified. They took that stand knowing that Democratic control of the Senate would make it impossible to achieve.

Their demands — and the leverage they hold because of the GOP’s bare five-vote House margin — forced McCarthy and other GOP leaders to renege on the spending levels to which they had agreed.

As a result, the likelihood that the Biden-McCarthy agreement would prevent a government shutdown this fall has become an unlikelihood. Agreement on spending levels will probably prove impossible by the start of the new fiscal year October 1 — and possibly even by the end of 2023. (Ouch❗)

The underlying problem, of course, is that McCarthy, despite his success in helping pass the debt ceiling measure, again seems mainly able to control his fractious majority by acquiescing in such demands.

Indeed, events in the week before the House mercifully adjourned for a two-week “district work period” showed again that its de facto leader is not McCarthy, but Trump.

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And Punchbowl News reported Monday that McCarthy plans to start impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Merrick Garland if House Republicans are dissatisfied with his handling of the Hunter Biden case. The common thread here is a Republican political effort to tar Biden and the Democrats — without evidence — with the same sorts of misdeeds for which Trump was impeached and now faces criminal charges.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she accused the Republicans of turning the House into a Trump-led “puppet show.”

The week also showed the contrast between McCarthy’s speakership and Pelosi’s. She too had to run the House with a tiny majority and faced occasional uprisings from her party’s fringe.

When her prospective speakership was imperiled at the outset, she adeptly picked off her opponents one by one until she had enough votes. When Texas Rep. Al Green prematurely sought to impeach Trump, she allowed a vote and made sure it was defeated.
McCarthy yielded to demands by foes of his speakership. As a result, (IMO, like a Charlie McCarthy puppet that's somehow come alive!), the Republican remains beholden to the GOP’s most extreme Trumpist elements, subject to a vote to topple his speakership, if he crosses (IMO in other words, "double-crosses!) them.

Polls, over the years, have shown that Republicans prefer officials who stand up for their principles, rather than compromisers. The result is the current House GOP majority.

Carl Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.