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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • An under-appreciated point here is that with McCarthy gone, the math for somebody else to become Speaker is that much harder, and the odds of that person needing to rely on Democratic votes - and to make major, major concessions to get them - commensurately higher; in other words, just because McCarthy wouldn’t make a deal with Democrats to remain Speaker, it doesn’t mean that somebody else won’t eventually make one to become Speaker.





  • The other side of the argument is that McCarthy is the GOP’s greatest fundraiser, and getting rid of him would help Democrats take back the House. No replacement for McCarthy would have the same set of relationships and the donor network and political operation.

    This is, to me, the winning argument - it hurts them politically, both by taking away their best fundraiser and by replacing him with somebody who’s likely to be even more extreme and so do even more dumb things the Democrats can campaign against. A McCarthy replacement is even likely to shut down the government in 45 days than McCarthy is, and for Democrats that’s probably a good thing - Republicans screwing up air travel right before Thanksgiving and taking away government employees’ paychecks right before Christmas.

    Is it good for the country, maybe not, but Republicans losing the House in 2024 will do several orders of magnitude more good for the country than whatever harm might be done by that short-term idiocy.