Some House Republicans are furious with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for pushing GOP Caucus Chair Liz Cheney out in a shameless attempt to make Donald Trump happy. They see it as “weak leadership” from a man who has “no moral compass,” Politico Playbook reports, detailing some of the “backlash against the minority leader behind the scenes.”
Politico says the “grumbling” is not just coming “from Adam Kinzinger types,” referring to the Illinois House Republican who blasted McCarthy on Monday with the bombshell revelation that he had warned him there would be violence on January 6 but McCarthy dismissed him.
“Some House Republicans are privately griping about how the California Republican has fed a colleague to the MAGA wolves in his quest to become speaker.”
And ousting Cheney could cost McCarthy the one thing he craves more than anything: becoming Speaker of the House.
“’Kevin McCarthy has pissed off enough members of his own conference that he’s going to have to go back to his former days as a whip to try to figure out where his votes are’ to become speaker,” one House Republican told Politico. That lawmaker “is neither a member of the Freedom Caucus,” the far right extremists in the House, “nor a moderate.”
“I’d be worried if I was him. … You have people like me — who are here to do the right thing for all the right reasons and have an expectation of leadership — that are, shall we say, disgusted with the internal squabbling that results from having weak leadership. And it is weak leadership. Straight up.”
It’s not just House Republicans who see McCarthy as weak.
“He’s flip-flopped on [Jan. 6 and whether it’s] Trump’s fault, it’s not Trump’s fault,” a senior GOP aide to a conservative member of Congress told Politico. “It seems like he doesn’t have the backbone to lead. He bends to political pressure. It’s tough to do when you’re speaker. You have to lead.”
McCarthy tried to become Speaker after John Boehner stepped down in 2015. It was a disaster, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported, on McCarthy’s “verbal incapability.”