Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz may have pulled off half his coup — he deposed Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy — but a complete coup requires that the perpetrator next install a new figure on the throne.
Gaetz and company haven’t managed Coup Part Two yet — as it has been challenging to find a Republican head that the Speaker’s crown will fit. (Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is at present still trying to squeeze it on.)
Part of the problem, according to irate Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY), is found in the phrase above — Gaetz and company. Because besides the intransigent eight Republicans who booted McCarthy, Lawler drops the inconvenient truth that most of Gaetz’s company — his abettors in the ouster — were Democrats who voted unanimously to show McCarthy the door.
And that truth (untenable from a GOP perspective) means that the insurgent Republican Congressman Gaetz is working more closely with Democratic members of The Squad — Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) than with his own party. Lawler implies that Gaetz still doesn’t get it.
They don’t seem to be ironing out their differences tonight. pic.twitter.com/3odF79EJLI
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 18, 2023
With the Republican conference seemingly paralyzed by dysfunction, Lawler revisits the recent past, asking “Does someone want to tell Matt Gaetz that he worked with RADICAL DEMOCRATS…to remove Kevin McCarthy, a REPUBLICAN SPEAKER.”
Even McCarthy characterized his ouster as Democrat-induced, notwithstanding that solidarity among Republicans would have made it impossible. McCarthy said of his removal: “I think today was a political decision by the Democrats.” Lawler wouldn’t disagree with that, but he would add Matt Gaetz’s name to those who, like AOC, made that decision.
In Lawler’s estimation,McCarthy may as well have said: “I think today was a political decision by the Democrats — and Matt Gaetz.” Gaetz, of course, initiated the Motion to Vacate that made the Democratic party’s vote on McCarthy possible.
