House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s quest to become speaker has dragged on through 11 failed votes. Comments on Fox News have targeted the 20 representatives who have united to block McCarthy.
Faced with one of the nastiest political train wrecks in modern memory, America’s conservative media stalwarts responded this week with recrimination, regret, reflection — and at least one suggestion that House Republican stalwarts might find solace, and a new leader, by getting good and drunk.
A week of party infighting over who should be the next speaker unspooled on live television even as much of the media establishment on the right coalesced around Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield lawmaker who has coveted the House’s top job for years.
Even former President Trump and a super-majority of hosts and guests on Fox News — the most powerful platform on the political right — could not provide the leverage that McCarthy needed to win the 218 votes needed to make him speaker.
After 11 stalemated ballots this week, GOP opinion makers on TV, radio and online spoke with a single voice on only one point: They’d much prefer to be hammering President Biden and other Democrats on issues such as the surge of immigrants crossing the southern border, inflation and first son Hunter Biden’s financial entanglements.
“Grow Up!” read the headline on the front page of the New York Post on Wednesday, over a picture of two of the most outspoken foes of a McCarthy speakership, Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
Inside the tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., columnist Michael Goodwin urged Republican lawmakers to “stop this madness and go after Biden.” He accused the dissidents supporting McCarthy opponents of engaging in “a fool’s errand masquerading as an act of principle.”
Goodwin’s views would be seconded throughout the day Wednesday and into Thursday in the House, where the refusal of 20 Republicans to back McCarthy prevented him from claiming the job that is second in the line of succession to the presidency.
Longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove said on Fox that the rare leadership deadlock was “an utter, unmitigated disaster,” adding that “chaos tends to bring about chaos.”
Former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow that the leaders of the revolt were “throwing the equivalent of a temper tantrum, with no workable plan to resolve the crisis.” He appealed to viewers to call lawmakers blocking the McCarthy advance to make clear they believe their campaign is “so destructive and, candidly, so stupid.”
That sort of sentiment extended from morning to night on the top-rated cable news station. A “Fox & Friends” morning host scoffed at the notion that “these 20 think that they can change the minds of the 200” House members voting for McCarthy.
