Kevin McCarthy Elected Speaker Of The House

Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House on the 15th ballot. Regardless of how you may feel about this, it’s an improvement over Nancy Pelosi. Hopefully Speaker McCarthy will not embarrass the nation by tearing up a State of the Union speech.

Breitbart reported Friday night:

McCarthy received 216 votes, House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) received 212 votes, and six Republican members voted “present.”

…The roughly 20 members who had been voting against McCarthy throughout the week — many of whom are in the House Freedom Caucus — sought various structural changes to the House and other commitments from the leader, aiming to shift power away from leadership and to rank-and-file members and Freedom Caucus members specifically.

Their asks included, among many items, bringing the motion to vacate down to a one-member threshold and putting more members of the Freedom Caucus on the Rules Committee, as well as budgetary provisions and vows to bring votes on certain legislation to the floor.

The article includes the following screenshot:

With the exception of the first item, these are all good ideas. The problem with the first item is that it will be misused to halt legislation the Democrats don’t want. It should also be noted that the power of the House of Representatives will be somewhat limited by the fact that the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House. It should also be noted that the Republicans talk a really good game when they are not in power. Somehow when they are in power, things seem to change (remember the promise to repeal Obamacare).

The article at Breitbart concludes:

With McCarthy’s election, the House is expected to adjourn in the early hours of Saturday morning and then vote on a rules package as its next order of business.

Watch the vote on the rules package carefully, it will tell us everything we want to know about the future of the Republican party.