Tag Archives: kevinmccarthy

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Daily Broadside | Time to Dump Mike Johnson

I’m calling your attention to a rather long article because when Mike Johnson was selected as House Speaker after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last year, I was impressed and thought he looked like a good (though surprising!) choice.

In retrospect, I got taken. We all did.

Johnson professes to be a conservative Christian whose worldview is based on the Bible (i.e. Judeo-Christian values), he used to work for the Alliance Defending Freedom (lots of work on freedom of religion cases), and one of the first things he did was ask the Republican caucus to pray with him.

All encouraging, but in the time he’s been Speaker he’s been indistinguishable from a Democrat when it comes to political will. He’s proven to be a major disappointment to conservatives and like-minded Republicans (and some Democrats) and, frankly, I’m embarrassed that I was so easily lured by his Christian credentials and my dutiful assumption they would translate into a wise and Christ-centered use of power.

I had to learn (again!) that it may look like a duck, talk like a duck and walk like a duck, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to govern like a duck.

Now Johnson is being told he should resign before he’s forced out, as reported in this exclusive Breitbart story.

Exclusive – MTG on Mike Johnson Speakership: ‘It’s Over – He’s Just the Only One Who Hasn’t Acknowledged It’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News exclusively that she is prepared to force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) out of his position with a vote to vacate the chair if the Speaker does not willingly resign the position.

“Yes, I am willing to force it,” Greene told Breitbart News in a lengthy exclusive interview on Tuesday afternoon where she explained her plan to remove Johnson and get a real Republican Speaker in his place. “The reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker. He just will not be. There may be only two of us public right now. But he does not have the support of the conference at all. There may be people who might not vote to vacate him right now, but they will never vote for him to be Speaker next Congress. There are two large factions in the conference against his speakership.”

Lots of people see MTG as a nuisance, a political gadfly. She’s a huge Trump supporter and supported Kevin McLuntz before he was removed as Speaker. But I’m with her on this one.

A major development on Tuesday was that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), an influential conservative who sits on the powerful House Rules Committee, publicly joined Greene’s effort, saying he is cosponsoring her motion to vacate the chair. During a closed-door Republican conference meeting, Massie told Johnson to his face — in front of the entire House GOP conference — that he must resign or face the same fate his predecessor, now former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, did last year with a motion to vacate vote. Massie told Johnson, and later told reporters, that if Johnson does not agree to resign willingly he will likely lose even more votes than McCarthy did if and when the motion to vacate is called. Johnson responded to Massie in conference, and then later at a press conference, saying he will not resign — echoing what his spokesman Raj Shah told Breitbart News late last week when pressure began severely ramping up after Johnson was the deciding vote to kill an amendment to the renewal of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would have required the federal government obtain a warrant to engage in surveillance of American citizens. Johnson’s FISA ploy did provide such warrant protections only for members of Congress — protections that Johnson did not deem necessary for hundreds of millions of Americans not currently serving in the United States Congress.

I can’t reproduce the entire article for you, so I encourage you to go read the whole thing. Here’s what I’ll leave you with:

“From what I understand people were kind of down about it, or just ‘uh, not again’ because that three-and-a-half weeks was so painful for our conference and a lot of these Republicans don’t ever want to rock the boat or change the status quo,” Greene said. “That’s the whole problem. That’s why the Democrats keep winning and the Republicans keep losing, because Republicans never fight, because it’s uncomfortable, and Republicans never want to rock the boat. They just want to show up here in Washington and do their committee hearings and pass their legislation that they can hopefully get signed into law and hang it on their wall and then go back to their district and do whatever they do. But no one is ever taking the important and strategic steps to save our country. I’ll give you some examples. Out on social media today, there was an explosive report about an NGO that is passing out flyers to illegals encouraging them to vote for Joe Biden in the election. Everyone here, at the NRCC, our Republican conference, and many others, they’re busy practically measuring the drapes for the White House right now and totally convinced that Trump is going to win the election and ‘Marjorie, that’s when we’ll fix everything. We’ll do it then.’ But I’m going to tell you right now, I think that’s the worst possible mindset to be in. The Democrats are going to do everything possible to try to stop President Trump. They’re trying to put him in jail for the rest of his life right now. They’re going to do anything they can to make sure he does not win. So why in the world would our side just go along assuming that we’re going to win the White House and that’s when we’re going to stop all the millions of people invading our country and the terrorists coming across and the cartels bringing drugs and murdering our people and Americans being raped and murdered and killed, and the list goes on, and Americans being spied on through FISA? How do we sit there and look at ourselves in the mirror if we go ‘oh we’ll fix it when Trump comes back’? I don’t even think we deserve Republican voters voting for us if that’s our attitude. Here’s my biggest argument: If this is the state of mind of Republicans and Republican leaders, excluding President Trump, President Trump’s only on the ballot one more time — in November. Whether he wins or loses, what will the state of the Republican Party be after Trump? I’m going to argue strongly that Republicans in Congress and Republican leaders have not done anything to earn Republican votes for us to ever control the Republican majority ever again in the future. The only reason people will be voting for Republicans going forward is because they’re voting against Democrats. That is a very bad position to be in in the future.”

She’s right.

Time to dump Johnson.

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Daily Broadside | The UniParty Strikes Again — and Conservatives Lose Again

I have zero confidence in the Republican party to represent conservative Americans or to do what is right for the country. I no longer expect them to put up a fight against bigger government interests nor to ignore the howls from the Left should they try reversing our careening headlong mad dash into economic disaster.

They’re the opposition failure party.

After getting our hopes up, just a little, with the fight of Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Leader, we now see just what the man is made of and it’s just as we feared. He’s a lot of talk and little action to back up what matters. Remember this?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), speaking in Pittsburgh on Friday to promote the House Republicans’ legislative agenda, said a GOP-controlled House would introduce legislation that would block the IRS from receiving funds from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in August.

“On that very first day that we’re sworn in, you’ll see that it all changes. Because on our very first bill, we’re going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents. Our job is to work for you, not go after you,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy’s election pledge marks the latest in a series of commitments made by congressional Republicans to eliminate the multi-year IRS funding that passed by the slimmest of margins.

They couldn’t get the bill passed because the Senate refused it.

But when again presented with an opportunity to back Democrats into a corner and demand that the IRS funding get cut, here’s what we got.

CUTS TO IRS FUNDING BUT 87,000 NEW AGENTS WILL STAY 

Republicans are not happy with the spending bill passed last year to massively increase the money for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – and mainly the part allocated for the hiring of tens of thousands of more agents to audit Americans’ taxes and crack down on tax fraud.

In the debt ceiling deal, McCarthy targeted money that the IRS was allotted by cutting $21 billion of the $80 billion.

Many members of McCarthy’s party, however, say that the bill doesn’t go far enough and had urged all funding to the IRS be rescinded, especially the provision to hire more agents.

Sen. Cruz complained that the package will still allow for the hiring of 87,000 more agents.

‘There’s not ‘one thing’ for Dems,’ Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted, claiming Speaker McCarthy was ‘right’ to say so. ‘There are $4 trillion things—a blank check—for Democrats.’

‘Plus 87,000 things: new IRS agents to harass Americans,’ he added. ‘All in exchange for eliminating virtually ALL of the House’s spending cuts.’

Instead of playing hard ball like the Left does, and wielding the levers of power to squeeze concessions out of Democrats, McCarthy and other Republican squishes caved on almost everything.

The cornerstone of the deal includes a two-year suspension of the debt limit until January 2025 after the next presidential election. 

Republicans are taking issue with the $4 trillion ceiling increase, saying there could be virtually unlimited spending for the last two years of Biden’s first term.

The GOP had backed a deal in which the debt ceiling was only raised by $1.5 trillion – which was not agreed to.

Not agreed to … by the Democrats. We went from a $1.5 TRILLION deal to a $4 TRILLION “””deal.””” Which means that McCarthy caved to Democrats. Why? How? What do Democrats hold over the GOP?

The Leviathan grows and consumes more of our resources every time there’s a budget “””deal””” and pushes us ever closer to a global catastrophe. Our current debt is more than $31 TRILLION. The Democrats are hell bent on bankrupting us and the GOP goes right along with them.

The agreement also limits spending by keeping all non-defense appropriations roughly flat in Fiscal Year 2024 and increasing it by only one percent the following year – a point that conservatives are taking issue with since they urged a freeze on all federal spending for 10 years.

Congress is also required under the new bill to approve 12 annual spending bills or face a snapback to spending limits from the previous year.

The White House predicts the plan would reduce government spending by $1 trillion, but Republicans are calling them ‘fake’ spending cuts.

‘Fake conservatives agree to fake spending cuts,’ Sen. Paul tweeted. ‘Deal will increase mandatory spending ~5%, increase military spending ~3%, and maintain current non-military discretionary spending at post-COVID levels.’

‘No real cuts to see here.’

Rep. Norman of South Carolina called the deal ‘insanity’ said he won’t ‘vote to bankrupt our country.’

Here’s how Miranda Devine put it.

Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday, but increasing debt another $4 trillion with minimal concessions is nothing to boast about. 

To be fair, the House speaker has a razor slim majority and Republicans don’t control the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his sidekick Lindsey Graham have announced that the only thing they care about is Ukraine. 

But McCarthy’s one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS. 

This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker.

It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House. 

It struck a chord with voters, wary of funding a new “army” of armed IRS agents to harass middle-class families and small business owners and abuse their powers to target political dissidents, Soviet-style. 

“Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed. 

“You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”

[…]

In the debt-ceiling deal outlined Sunday and due to be inked later this week, McCarthy has allowed the lion’s share of that extra IRS funding to remain unmolested: preserving $78.1 billion of the $80 billion. 

As rebel GOP Rep Dan Bishop put it: “So there will be 85,260 more IRS agents rather than 87,000 to eat you alive. Big win.”

Overpromising and underdelivering is what turns voters off the GOP. 

We effectively have only one ruling party in government: Democrats and their side-kick, Democrat Light, aka Republicans. True, there are some actual conservatives in the party, but not enough to pull the majority to the right. Here’s what they said.

When will conservatives wake up and realize we have no effective representation in Congress?

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Daily Broadside | Tit for Tat is No Way to Go Through Life, Kevin — But It’ll Do For Now

Middle of the week and there’s a flurry of activity in the House as Kevin McLuntz (LOL thanks to J.J. Sefton over at Ace of Spades) works the list of promises he made to get and keep the gavel. Unlike the IRS defunding bill that doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance of surviving Daytona Beach at noon in the middle of July of being passed by the Senate, much less signed by the Resident, his promised next move is entirely within his control and will produce immediate results.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confirmed late Monday that he will make good on his pre-midterm pledge to remove three high-profile Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar — from their House committees.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) told the Associated Press that he would move to strip the trio of their assignments, following through on a vow of payback for Democrats ousting Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from their panels during the last Congress.

Schiff and Swalwell, both from California, would be removed from the House Intelligence Committee while Minnesota’s Omar would be kicked off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

McCarthy vowed almost exactly a year ago that he would remove the three Democrats if Republicans won back the House in the 2022 midterm elections, and repeated that promise last November after his prediction was realized.

They call it “payback” and it’ll be spun as revenge, but the truth is that the Democrats — especially San Fran Nan — started this tactic in the last Congress. Omar was quick to denounce his plan to demote her. “I think it would be hypocritic [sic] for him to remove, you know, the first African born on subcommittee on Africa on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I’ve had the opportunity to not only represent my constituents but the voice of so many people who have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

It’s so sad all those people on the African continent have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

McCarthy offered his reasoning for revoking their committee assignments.

“Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the public sector,” McCarthy told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo at the time. “Why would we ever give him a security clearance and the secrets to America? So, I will not allow him to be on Intel.”

Schiff, meanwhile, “lied to the American public time and again,” McCarthy said, while Omar has made “anti-Semitic comments.”

Not to mention that Swalwell slept with Chinese spy “Fang Fang” and threatened to nuke a fellow American, while Adam Schiff lied through is teeth about Trump and took part in sandbagging the former president through a sham impeachment process, twice. And Ilhan Omar is credibly accused of marrying her own brother in order to help him get a green card to stay in the U.S.

I’m totally in favor of stripping these three compromised anti-Americans from their posts.

See, when Democrats break precedent, it’s to protect our precious democracy (*ptooie*) from white supremacist domestic terrorists; when Republicans do it, they’re destroying our precious norms and institutions (*ptooie*). We can’t go on like this. Like Trump said, we have to punch back twice as hard and make life as miserable for the hard left as we can while we take back political territory that we’ve conceded. It is, as Andrew Breitbart said, “War!”