Coup!

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has fallen.

Insurrection has toppled him.

Yesterday… by a 216-210 vote… Congress yanked him down.

Never in the history of the United States has a House Speaker endured such an unhorsing.

In 1910 House Speaker Joseph Cannon withstood a similar “motion to vacate.”

Yet he repelled the assaults… and came out intact.

Thus the “historic” coup condemns Mr. McCarthy to the briefest speakership since 1876.

Yet it was not the Democratic opposition who engineered the plot.

It was instead fellow Republicans — Rep. Matt Gaetz in particular — who hatched the motion to vacate.

What Happened?

Why did Speaker McCarthy take the tumble? CBS News, by way of explanation:

Back in January, when Republicans took control of the House, McCarthy was struggling to win the backing of a majority of the House to become speaker. A group of Republican holdouts led by Gaetz withheld their support to extract several concessions from him.

One of their most pressing complaints was the process by which Congress funds the government, which they say enables runaway government spending.

What process — precisely — is that?

In theory, executive branch departments… are funded through a dozen individual appropriations bills that set spending levels for the year ahead. These bills typically must be passed by Congress and signed by the president by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown.

In practice, Congress has missed that deadline with growing frequency in recent years. To buy more time, lawmakers pass what’s known in Washington as a “continuing resolution,” which funds the government at current levels for a certain period of time…

They then use this time to lump all of the individual spending bills together into one massive piece of legislation called an “omnibus” that funds the various departments until the following October, when the cycle repeats again.

The Unvirtuous Cycle

Here you have the unvirtuous cycle.

“Do you wish me to vote yea for your personal legislation, Mr. Republican?”

“I just may,” continues the Democrat — “provided you vote yay for my own personal legislation.”

Reverse the roles. Reverse Democrat and Republican, Republican and Democrat… and you have the very same thing.

Continues CBS News:

Gaetz and his fellow GOP holdouts wanted to put an end to that practice, and return to “regular order” — the consideration and passage of the individual, annual spending bills. This… would allow them to extract deeper spending cuts than would otherwise be possible through an omnibus bill, which is often hastily approved with less popular provisions tied to must-pass items.

Poor Kevin McCarthy. We have no doubt he meant the best in the world.

Yet he is reduced to a very sad caricature.

To Roar Like a Lion and Moo Like a Cow

Yet what is politics? The art of the possible, runs the phrase.

He pursued the possible. That is, he pursued the status quo. To be certain:

His was not the role of the revolutionary. He was not there to overturn tables or to smash china.

His role was the role of the manager — to keep things pegging along in the customary manner.

Reduce it to its essentials and here was his role:

To roar like a lion and moo like a cow.

That is, to roar for his “base” — to show them he meant very heavy business — that he was the champion of “limited government,” fiscal responsibility and the rest.

And to moo for his donors and “special interests” who truly run the show.

His role was to appease them, to prove he represents no true threat to them or their interests.

In brief: His role was to say much — and act little.

Keeping the Business Intact

He would pledge to “clean up the whorehouse” — in the late libertarian Frank Chodorov’s unimprovable phrase — while “keeping the business intact.”

Above all else… to keep the business intact.

He might demand — and possibly even attain — a 1% lessening in the growth rate of the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He may twist the Democratic opposition’s arm into a chicken-winged position — and wrest pledges to scissor federal spending one-hundredth of one percent by the fiscal year 2027.

Or is it fiscal year 2029? Or is it fiscal year 2099?

He would then claim a thunderous victory for the American people.

He would have delivered a blow for fiscal responsibility. What has he actually delivered?

A stunt. It lacks all but the merest substance.

The business would remain intact.

Now Lt. Gaetz of the vice squad executes a raid upon the brothel… and heaves Speaker McCarthy upon the street.

Yet what about the brothel’s patrons? Are they innocent of blame?

Maybe We Should Look Ourselves in the Mirror

It is easy to indict the politician as a whole. But if we haul the politician into the dock… We The People must go with him.

We perpetually yell about the rascally, no-good  politician.

This is silver-tongued, glad-handing, baby-smooching mug who babbles one thing to get elected — but does another once in office.

But we contend the politicians act as they do… because We the People act as We do.

We demand a glistening military machine with every bell and whistle… heaping doses of Social Security… Medicare… a Rolls-Royce education… a million gaudy baubles.

We want the politician to give them to us. Yet we do not wish to pay for it all.

Hand it over, we bark out one corner of our mouth. But do not dare raise our taxes, we belch out the other.

We are heart and soul for limited government… as long as it’s the other fellow’s heart and soul feeling the blade.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

Give me that tax break, says the one. No, give it to me, says the other.

You can both go scratching, says the third. I deserve it more.

A fourth files a claim of his own.

Meantime, the hard-luck farmer wants his back scratched. The hard-pressed businessman wants his belly rubbed. The overlabored teacher wants her apple.

And millions more are hard at the business…

All trying to work the angles, to get a bucket in the stream, to get a snout in the trough… to catch a penny.

It is the evil of “special interests” when the other fellow gets his.

Yet it is “democracy in action” when it butters our own parsnips.

We do not exempt ourself. Be assured, we are out for No.1.

Thus we witness the great warfare of factions, the thundering collision of interests… each fellow trying to get it over on the next.

Pity the poor politician who has to referee and score the bout.

He cannot please us all. Yet he tries.

No Place for Honest Men

Let the politician take an honest man’s attitude before the American public…

Let him tell us we can have either A. Or B. But not A and B — and certainly not A, B and C.

Not without paying for it, that is.

Then observe the infinity of rotting eggs raining upon his head.

Ten times of the 10, our honest Abe is licked by the silver tongue who tickles our ears with false but catchy jingles, who seduces us.

This is the man who wins our franchise come Election Day.

So today we spare a tender thought for the poor, fimble-fambling politician — for Mr. Kevin McCarthy in particular.

He was a man in an impossible fix.

His replacement will find himself in the identical impossible fix.

Pray for him…