POOR WIDDLE QEVIN

Former President Trump declined to say today whether he's sticking by his endorsement of House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy for speaker, telling NBC News: "We'll see what happens."

Translated from Politician into English, that comes out as “Buh-bye, Kevin!”

Today, Kevin McCarthy demonstrated that there is a deal more politically disastrous than a deal with the devil. That would be a deal with Donald Trump, which Quiverin’ Qevin is now learning is worth even less than it recently appeared to be. Even the support of Trump couldn’t prevent the demeaning embarrassment of events in the House of Representatives today in the vote for Speaker of the House. As with everyone else not named J.D. Vance who pinned their political hopes on Trump, McCarthy has found that doing so is the political equivalent of an exploding cigar, one that blows up at the worst possible time.

The lesson McCarthy’s speaker bid taught as it turned into chaos is that Trump’s magic doesn’t work for more than Trump. That’s because the MAGAts weren’t really Trump’s property. They existed before he came along; his genius was in spotting them and attaching himself to a worldview that already existed in the GOP. Since those forces are independent of Trump, he cannot command them to do anything they are not already predisposed to do, which translates into having no power to command the House Freedom Caucus crazies to be good little boys and girls and vote for Kevin. Then, there’s the backlash against Trump that manifested so strong in November that the predicted “red tsunami” resulted in a “majority” so thin and precarious that even the actions of a few of the craziest of the crazy had a major effect. All that abasement to Trump, from sticking with him from the Access Hollywood tape, through to his abject surrender at Mar-A-Largo two weeks after calling out Trump truthfully for his role in January 6, merely turned McCarthy publicly into the putz he’s been known as since he first ran for office.

For the first time in a century, the House of Representatives adjourned on its first day with no speaker, no swearing in of new members, and no path to functioning as a governing body in the near future.

As bad as the embarrassment of losing the first two ballots was, it was the third that drove the stake through the heart of McCarthy’s ambition when Representative Byron Donalds switched his vote from McCarthy to Gym Jordan, increasing the loss from 19 to 20 and making it safe for even more defections tomorrow as Donalds called on the House Republicans to "come to a consensus" given that McCarthy "doesn't have the votes."

Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman’s tweet, "Hard to overstate the psychological/optical blow of *losing* support on the third ballot when you desperately need things to be heading the opposite direction," put things in stark clarity.

McCarthy is still threatening to turn the speaker battle into a war of attrition when the House returns tomorrow at noon. His opponents replied, “Bring it. When he was asked how long he was willing to engage in this, leading anti-McCarthy Republican Ralph Norman replied, "Six more months."

Bloomberg opinion columnist Joshua Green points out what is different this time from the Republican’s leadership struggles seven years ago: "Unlike their Tea Party predecessors a decade ago who made life miserable — and short — for two previous Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy’s enemies aren’t driven by a desire for aggressive conservative policy reforms. They want to blow things up. They want McCarthy’s scalp. And the narrow Republican margin in the House makes it extremely difficult for anyone to stop them."

Even if McCarthy prevails, with having given away the motion to vacate, he can’t get anything done that the House Freedom Caucus opposes - most particularly must-pass legislation like raising the debt ceiling. With the full faith and credit of the United States on the line, House Republicans' game of chicken suddenly gets a lot more serious than one man's political career.

Democrats and moderate Republicans in the last Congress didn’t take this off the table as an issue of crucial importance, instead kicking the can down the road to October in the belief that the radicals had learned their lesson in 2011 and would not risk a loss of the United States credit rating as happened then. This is rapidly looking as wrong-headed an act as people told them it was.

What it will take in October or before is all 212 Democrats working with whichever seven sane Republicans they can find, to pry the debt ceiling vote out of committee with a petition for release despite the die-hard opposition of whoever is in charge of the House Republicans and the overwhelming majority of the party, and then that “sane caucus” voting the debt increase despite the likelihood of the seven Republicans facing primaries from crazies as a result. That’s an Enormous “If.”

Even the usual means of political wheel-greasing through campaign donations couldn’t work its usual magic. McCarthy's leadership PAC, known as the Majority Committee, donated more than $300,000 to the campaigns of 17 of the 20 members who voted against him, with 12 of them getting cash during the 2022 cycle that powered them to victory.

To no avail.

"Today, Madam Clerk, House Democrats are united!" declared Pete Aguilar in his nominating speech for Hakeem Jeffries.

The House Democrats' main super PAC put out a satirical press release that rattled off historical events - opening of Yankee Stadium opens, construction of the Hollywood sign - from 1923, the last time it took more than one ballot to elect a speaker. Schadenfreude aside, the political unity of Democrats is going to be a potent asset, particularly when it’s compared with the Republican paralysis that gripped the House Republicans from the moment they stepped into the majority. The fact that Jeffries won 212 votes on all three ballots was an important demonstration of party strength. It was the first time since Nancy Pelosi was first elected speaker in 2007, that every Democrat voted for the party’s nominee.

If they keep doing this, it will make the Republican acquisition of power almost impossible, since McCarthy or whoever prevails will have to find 218 votes, which will only come from winning over at least 16 of the crazies.

Democrats need to start planning now, and searching for and gaining the needed allies, if they are going to save the country once again, this coming October.

As it turns out, being present at the destruction of a major political party is more dangerous than one might expect - it’s not unlike the necessity of being outside shrapnel range when an ammo dump explodes.

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