[Politics] McCarthy, All Carrots and No Sticks, Grinned His Way to the Speakership

[Douma]

For days as hard-right lawmakers voted again and again to block him from becoming speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California sat on the House floor with a grin plastered to his face.

Talking with reporters, he gamely brushed off the notion that his historic and humiliating slog to election the most protracted such contest since 1859 foretold any troubles ahead for him in governing with an unruly and narrow majority.

“This is the great part,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”

What has become perhaps the most ‌painful and ‌critical‌ ‌week of Mr. McCarthy’s political career has also reaffirmed a portrait of him well‌ known by both his allies and detractors: that of an affable class president type who is all carrots and no stick, and is more adept at backslapping and political strategizing than policymaking or legislative maneuvering.

On the 15th ballot cast early on Saturday morning, as Mr. McCarthy finally clinched the speakership, it appeared that his malleability had paid off.

Late on Friday night, just as it appeared that Mr. McCarthy was finally going to win the speaker’s gavel that had eluded him for so long, it was suddenly yanked away from him at the last minute, in a highly charged moment on the House floor when his few remaining adversaries refused to bow.

As the voting dragged on, it became clear that Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has emerged as Mr. McCarthy’s chief adversary, would become the deciding vote. And when Mr. Gaetz voted “present,” depriving Mr. McCarthy of the majority support he needed, the California Republican blanched, stood up from his seat and walked across the House floor to speak to Mr. Gaetz himself.

After an energized and wildly gesticulating Mr. Gaetz refused Mr. McCarthy’s entreaty, Mr. McCarthy’s shoulders, for the first time this week, visibly sagged, and he trudged slowly back across the floor and sunk into his seat.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/politics/mccarthy-affable-and-malleable-is-compromising-his-way-to-the-speakership.amp.html

Edited January 7, 2023 by ProToCrisP