McCarthy Elected on 15th Vote, Gaetz Says He Got Everything He Wanted

Kevin McCarthy was finally elected Speaker of the House in an after midnight vote Saturday morning.

Shortly before the vote, Matt Gaetz appeared on Sean Hannity’s terrible TV show to say that he got everything he wanted out of McCarthy.

As we had assumed, the final demands from McCarthy involved specific policy changes, rather than the procedural changes that McCarthy was initially offering.

Gaetz still refused to vote for McCarthy, but him and other members of his crew voted “present,” which allowed McCarthy to win with 216.

Unfortunately for Gaetz, he is now effectively serving as guarantor for McCarthy, having put his own name on the claim that McCarthy will be restricted from shilling for the next two years. McCarthy is a born shill, a spineless garbage human who doesn’t know anything and doesn’t care about anything, so it is very difficult to believe he is going to be able to make it two years without shilling for lobbyists, but I guess we’ll see.

Whatever McCarthy agreed to, he’s still the guy who wore double Ukrainian colors, with no American flag to be seen on his dress.

Saying he “hates America” would probably be giving him too much credit. He doesn’t think about America at all.

He perfectly represents the Jewish shill position, which is just to shill, shill, shill, mindlessly.

It’s unclear to me if there was actually ever a concession on the Ukraine, which is really just terrible.

Shortly before the vote, Liz Cheney came out and said that there can’t be a concession on the Ukraine.

According to PoliticoRoll Call and The Hill, these are the concessions after vote 12 (per Mediaite):

1. Only one House member needed to file a motion to “vacate the chair”

2. Freedom Caucus members having a few seats on the House Rules Committee that will allow those members to leverage certain criteria behind voting for bills.

3. Voting on a bill setting term limits for members of Congress

4. Individual votes on each of the 12 appropriations bills and excluding earmarks from such bills

5. A vote on legislation surrounding border security

6. 72-hour notice from release of legislation before voting on it

7. A vote on a balanced budget amendment

I guess we’ll have a better list on the actual concessions soon, which are not public, but this list also appeared:

It’s confirmed at least that Thomas Massie is going to be on a committee to investigate the intelligence agencies, a la the Church Committee.

The media is preparing this narrative (because of course):

So, who knows.

At least this happened:

These people really love their Jews! They’ll beat you up for Zion!

My expectations were always very low. It wasn’t like the House had the power to shut down the Ukraine war anyway. At best, maybe they could gum up some of the funding and give Russia a bit of breathing room, but presumably anything they cut would be covered by untouchable black budgets anyway. The Congress only has control over official packages that send new weapons systems – much of the funding is always going to be a black hole, because in real life, the American government is not run by elected politicians.

It was a funny little thing that happened, and there were definitely no downsides. Yes, it would have been funnier if Trump or the Democrat was elected Speaker, but that was never really a possibility, because not even Gaetz was willing to risk his entire career on this. It was a game of chicken, and Gaetz held out longer than McCarthy.

It sets things up for more funny moments. Gaetz now has an incredible power base, which I do think he will use in funny ways.