Takeaway from Season One of The Kevin McCarthy Show

The most important takeaway from Season One of the Kevin McCarthy Show is that McCarthy didn’t lose one vote from the so-called Moderate Republicans as he gave extraordinary power to the “Freedom Caucus.” I’m no longer convinced this was a genuine floor fight but a performance to tell us that Republicans are not dealing and that Koch Industries and the billionaires at the Club for Growth own the House for at least the next two years.

The Freedom Caucus is funded by Koch Industries and the Club for Growth, a billionaire PAC that supported Trump and backed Trump’s 2022 midterm picks and has supported QAnon candidates, including Lauren Boebert and January 6 insurrectionists.

To wield the gavel with which McCarthy famously threatened to hit Nancy Pelosi, with no consequences for the threat of violence because there are never consequences, McCarthy agreed to the “snap vote,” where one member can call for a vote to remove him from office. The media spin on this agreement is that McCarthy will be weakened, but the true consequence is that there will be no negotiation across the aisle, so Democrats are done in the House for at least two years. It also means that no deals will be made that exclude the extremists. All legislation coming out of the 2023–2025 House will be exclusively right-wing extremist, and the 202 or so House Republicans who initially supported McCarthy before his deal with the Freedom Caucus do not care.

Season Two will be the hearings against Hunter Biden, Joe Biden regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal, Dr. Fauci regarding Covid, Merrick Garland regarding bias at DOJ, and whomever else they want to threaten or use as a proxy to threaten others against interfering with their authority. Garland’s inaction against the House insurrectionists gave them the upper hand, and there will be no prosecutions of anyone beyond the poor, brainwashed schnooks at the bottom who took up Trump’s call, all well-funded by rich people. A lot of this, maybe most of it, is about keeping rich people’s taxes low, which brings us to Season Three.

While Season Two will be about softening us up with constant threats, Season Three will give us debt ceiling drama and what goes with that, deep cuts to the social safety net or economic collapse, take your pick. Late in the season, we’ll see all the cuts they demand in the 2025 budget and the demands for more tax cuts for the rich, leading to the question of how you can cut zero any more than zero.

Season Four will be about feeding minority people, vulnerable people, as red meat to the Republican supporters at the bottom who feel the pinch but refuse to see that they’ve been the authors of their own pain.

I don’t think Democrats have the will or the strategy to get past this. They let Nixon kill the Great Society and escalate the Vietnam War he promised to end, and Reaganites both deny and vilify the most significant accomplishments of the 20th Century, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Democrats complained and held some hearings about January 6, but they made a deal with Liz Cheney to let Congressional insurrectionists off the hook, and now it’s becoming clear that there will be no Trump prosecution for his inciting an attempted coup, so all that J6 Committee feel-good ballyhoo was for show. Trump’s in some trouble in New York, I hope it will matter, but I’ll be surprised if it does.

We were in trouble when Nixon found it easy to subvert the government, but he was at least pressured to resign. The situation worsened when Reagan and two Bushes manipulated us into impoverishing ourselves, first distracted by racist happy talk and then war and shopping. Things were dark when Iran/Contra went from a crime to a “neat idea.” But we were cooked, fork-tested done, when Trump wasn’t removed from office after two impeachments, and Trump and participating Congressional Republicans walked away from an attempted coup. It’s true, no justice, no peace. That’s not a campaign slogan or a threat, just a statement of fact.

Mueller was going to get the job done, but nope. Garland was supposed to get the job done, but nope. Now, Jack Smith will get the job done sometime in the foreseeable future, going, going…. gone. It’s no wonder we went from Howard Baker, the Republican senator who held Watergate burglars responsible in 1973–1974, to Republicans who openly supported or aided an insurrection in 2021 and still maintain the lie that started it, running the government.

The media will spend the next two years covering their hearings and spreading Republican talking points about the Bidens, Fauci, and Garland. House Republicans control the entire government because nothing will get past Koch Industries or the billionaire Club for Growth. Democrats will make a few nice speeches, and their supporters will thank them with goofy emojis on social media, but we all know that Democrats, who did not attack the Capitol on January 6, will be on the defensive in this sick, sad joke we’ve accepted for too long.