hi there, everyone, here we go again. it s 4:00 in new york. at this hour, the house of representatives is completely and totally paralyzed. it is unable and incapable of swearing in members, forming committees, setting rules for itself, passing legislation even in the case of an emergency, couldn t do any of those things. it s a state of chaos and paralysis that is unprecedent ed in modern american history and it is all because the new republican house majority cannot agree on who should lead it in the 118th congress. house gop leader kevin mccarthy has moved into the speaker s office already, appears to be living by the motto, if at first you don t succeed try, try, try, try, try, try again. he has now lost five votes for the speakership, a sixth vote is underway. it s already clear from the math that mccarthy doesn t have the votes to become speaker of the house of representatives this time either. democrats for their part quietly made history yesterday by choosing the fir
survive long enough to get that portrait on the wall, right? i think that s what he thought. he knew that his end game was going to be the same as john boehner s end game and paul ryan s end game. eventually these folks were going to throw him overboard, he thought if he was better at appeasing them than ryan and boehner was, if he sucked up harder, gave them a longer leash, that they would let him, you know, be led by the tail and get the speakership he had always dreamed of, and that was a flawed calculus. maybe had he won a bigger majority that strategy might have actually worked for a little while. he might have been speaker for a few months until the first crisis when he needed track votes. i think that is what he was thinking of, it was inevitably going to end like this. i don t think he thought it was going to end in as humiliating fashion. just a little bit of new reporting on mccarthy.