Joining Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell is declaring surrender on Obamacare. He will no longer fight it. You’d never know that if you paid attention to his preferred words about Obamacare at CPAC. McConnell told the crowd that “Obamacare should be repealed root and branch.” He also told the crowd that those who think he’s given up the fight | Read More »
The behavior of the Republicans majority leadership in the House reminds me of the last paragraph in Animal Farm. “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No questions, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was | Read More »
Many Republicans are trying ton convince themselves that they will make up ground on the spending side of the equation come the debt ceiling fight. Mr. Obama says he will not negotiate, but he is going to have to. The problem for the GOP is that its House leadership is working at cross purposes and really is in the disarray the “liberal media” keeps saying. | Read More »
I talked to two congressmen who were not involved in the purge or victims of it. They both said that seeing House leaders back “squishes” during the primaries including against some incumbents and then seeing them throw conservatives off committees was all they needed to strengthen their spines against the Speaker. They said they’re happy to be team players, but they think conservatives in the | Read More »
Yesterday, we noted that not only did House leadership select moderates to fill vacant spots on the top congressional committees, they made the unprecedented decision to banish conservatives already sitting on some important committees. All of the decisions related to committee assignments are decided by a Steering Committee. At present, the Steering Committee is comprised of 31 members, most of who are either members of | Read More »
Not quite two weeks removed from Thanksgiving, it is worth giving thanks to John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy. I really am thankful for them. Yesterday the three of them purged fiscal conservatives from committees as punishment for being authentically fiscal conservatives. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina was put on the Financial Services Committee to show fiscal conservatism had nothing to do with removing | Read More »
Well, House leadership made sure to elevate like-minded members to leadership; they took care to co-opt the Republican Study Committee; they packed the Steering Committee, which chooses committee assignments, with a bunch of loyalists. Now we’re seeing the effects of those decisions. Maybe it’s because he’s intent on repealing Dodd-Frank. Maybe it’s because he wants to use his committee assignment to advocate winding down Fannie | Read More »
With the Wisconsin recall behind us and the Texas Senate race scheduled for the end of the month, we must remember that there is an important battle taking place in North Carolina next Tuesday. Conservative Scott Keadle – who has been endorsed by Red State, the Club for Growth, Citizens United, and the Madison Project – will be facing off against establishment-hack Richard Hudson in | Read More »
There are many House Republicans. And most of them call themselves conservatives. In fact, what we see over time is that most of the House Republicans ultimately wind up being what I call pro-life statists. They claim they are conservative because they vote right on life issues and against Obama, but they are perfectly happy driving up the cost of government for their own purposes. | Read More »
The New York Times has an interesting profile of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — the man who will someday probably gut Eric Cantor’s naked ambitions. For all the talk about a Boehner v. Cantor rivalry, reporters should keep their eyes on the Cantor v. McCarthy relationship. In any event, there is this interesting nugget about McCarthy rewarding House Republicans who toe the party line, | Read More »
Promoted from the diaries by Dan Spencer. “We will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone,” plainly reads a section now under much scrutiny in the House Republican’s ‘A Pledge to America.’ It was a section that was written by the now Majority Whip, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California’s 22nd district. Unfortunately an | Read More »
“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have | Read More »
As the timestamp shows, we actually had this interview earlier in the month; given that Rep. McCarthy has been doing a series of posts about his road trips on behalf of candidates this election season, I decided that it was long past time that I got the interview actually up. In it we talk about the general details of recruitment, and how it’s been going | Read More »
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