The New Yorker:

If the new House Speaker is to get anything done, he will need to retain the support of far-right extremists.

By John Cassidy 

Early Saturday morning, amid scenes redolent of the nineteenth century, when brawls occasionally broke out on the floor of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the 118th Congress. After it was all over—after McCarthy had angrily confronted the holdout Matt Gaetz in full view of the C-span cameras; after a fellow-congressman had to grab the McCarthy ally Mike Rogers, of Alabama, around the throat to keep him from lunging at Gaetz; after enough of the holdouts had finally agreed to end this four-day political debacle in a fifteenth ballot—after all that, the best the fifty-seven-year-old Californian could manage, when his Democratic opponent Hakeem Jeffries finally handed him the wooden gavel, was a lame wisecrack, followed by a telling admission. “That was easy, huh?” McCarthy said. “I never thought we’d get up here.”

Be careful what you wish for. Perhaps the most revealing image of the ugly night came shortly after the final ballot had been completed. As McCarthy sat waiting for the official tally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right election denier and conspiracy theorist who represents Georgia’s Fourteenth District, crouched down beside him to take a cheek-to-cheek picture with the soon-to-be Speaker. In February, 2021, eleven House Republicans voted with the Democrats to strip Greene of her committee assignments. McCarthy wasn’t among them, but he did issue a statement “unequivocally” condemning some of her incendiary statements, which included endorsing political violence against Democrats and suggesting that some school shootings had been staged. After McCarthy’s tortuous elevation, things are very different. In return for backing McCarthy, Greene will likely receive new committee assignments and be treated, by Party leaders, as an important ally, despite the fact that just last month she said the January 6th insurrection would have succeeded if she and Steve Bannon had been in charge of it. Based on his own self-serving modus operandi, McCarthy doesn’t have much choice but to comply; if he is to get anything done over the next two years, he will need to retain the support of Greene and many other far-right extremists.

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