The scramble is on for who’s going to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House, and one man has emerged as the clear frontrunner: California Congressman Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy is currently the House majority leader and thus the second ranking Republican in Congress after Boehner – he is very much part of the GOP establishment.
He also has deep ties to the Tea Party movement, which could help him unify a very, very divided party.
See more news and opinion from Thom Hartmann at Truthout here.
But even if McCarthy does become the next speaker of the House, that doesn’t mean Congress is suddenly going to start governing the country again – far from it.
If McCarthy becomes speaker, that’ll just mean more of the same Republican lies and obstruction, especially when it comes to things like the Benghazi investigation, which McCarthy himself now admits was always about sabotaging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Amazing, right?
The guy who now wants to be two heartbeats away from the presidency admits to wasting millions of taxpayer dollars in a purely political conspiracy to bring down a former secretary of state.
That alone should disqualify Kevin McCarthy from being the next speaker of the House.
But here’s the thing, the Benghazi conspiracy is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Kevin McCarthy.
It’s nothing compared to the part he played – and continues to play – in the “Caucus Room conspiracy,” that began seven years ago this January.
On January 20, 2009 – a night when the Obamas were dancing at inaugural balls – a group of Republicans were planning the end of the Obama presidency before it even got going.
At the Caucus Room restaurant in Washington, DC, they drew up a plan to intentionally sabotage Obama at every point possible.
On the guest list for this “invitation only” meeting were Republican Senators like Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn, John Ensign and Bob Corker.
Also in attendance were Congressmen Paul Ryan, Pete Sessions, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Eric Cantor, and – you guessed it – Kevin McCarthy.
Over the course of four hours, this group of powerful conservative lawmakers committed to a plan of action.
They promised each other that they would filibuster and obstruct any and all legislation supported by the new president, Barack Obama.
They would do everything possible, for as long as it took, to make his a “failed presidency.”
Newt Gingrich, who was also there at the Caucus Room, admitted to me a few years later that Republicans were actually intentionally trying to sabotage the Obama administration.
Anyone who participates in this kind of politics shouldn’t be speaker of the House.
The speaker gets to decide which legislation does and doesn’t come up for a vote.
He or she also becomes our commander-in-chief if both the president and vice president die.
A powerful position like that is too important to hand over to someone like Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy has shown with his role in the Benghazi AND Caucus Room conspiracies that he’s willing to bring down our nation’s elected leaders if doing so helps out his party, the Republican Party.
He has repeatedly put party above country – the very definition, according to James Madison, of the “factions” that Madison warned us against in Federalist Number 10.
McCarthy has no business being two heartbeats away from the White House.
So if Republicans care about actually governing the country to the benefit of all Americans and not just the billionaire class, they’ll choose someone else as the next speaker.
But the odds are they’ll put in McCarthy, because they’re just as seditious as the man who now wants to lead Congress.
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