The ex-speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy has said that he will leave Congress at the end of this year. That will result in two vacancies, since George Santos was unceremoniously kicked out last week and leaves the body split 220-213 in favor of the GOP. The current speaker can now afford to have only three defections om any bill he brings to the floor. (Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that the GOP now has a majority of only one, showing that she has not yet grasped this thing called arithmetic.)

After his ouster, he had said that he would not leave and that indeed he would run for re-election in 2024. But now McCarthy has released a statement saying that although he was leaving Congress he will not stop fighting for the country. I translate that to mean that he will quickly seek to make a ton of money as a lobbyist.

I was planning to write something about how awful McCarthy was but I see that Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison said it much better:

“In his short time as speaker, Kevin McCarthy managed to plunge the People’s House into chaos in the name of serving one person and one person alone: Donald Trump. At every turn, Kevin sought to give his puppet master a lifeline, even after the horrific events of January 6, and spent his embarrassing speakership bending the knee to the most extreme factions of the MAGA base.



This anticlimactic end to Kevin’s political career is in line with the rest of his time on Capitol Hill – plagued by cowardice, incompetence, and fecklessness. Our country will be better off without Kevin in office, but his failed tenure in the House should serve as a stark warning to the country about the future of the GOP – no matter how much he kowtowed to the extreme right, no matter how much he kissed the ring, none of it was MAGA enough for the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.”

Yep, that’s about right.

McCarthy was apparently furious with serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) for not calling off his attack dog Matt Gaetz when the latter was working to oust him, after all the groveling he had done to gain SSAT’s favor. But even after being ousted, he never said anything publicly, maybe hoping for some kind of rehabilitation. These guys never seem to learn that a sense gratitude is not part of SSAT’s qualities. He wants unquestioned loyalty and obedience and gives nothing in return. If you want something from him, you have to get it in writing and notarized before you give him anything.