House Chaos: ‘Want to Know What This Is All About?’
Republican holdouts eagerly fundraising off keeping McCarthy from House speaker
The House of Representatives ended Thursday with Republican Kevin McCarthy going an astounding 0 for 11 in attempts to win the speakership.
And with each successive day, McCarthy trades away to the 20-odd Republican holdouts concessions which only a day or two earlier he had said would never even be on the table.
Some other Republicans think that they've sussed out a key motivation for the anti-McCarthy members to continue to fight, rather than take a deal: political fundraising.
“By the way, a friend of mine from Indiana passed us along an email he just got. You want to know what this is all about for some of these guys? Just received a fundraising email from Representative Andy Biggs, ‘Fellow American, we blocked Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker of the House. I need, can I count on your support?’” Republican strategist Scott Jennings said in an on-camera appearance on CNN.
Responding during the same panel discussion, former campaign chief for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns, David Alexrod, said, “And, you know, look, this is something that’s fundamentally wrong with our political system right now. The incentives are misaligned. You want to raise a lot of money. Be outrageous.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the great fundraisers in the Republican Party. Now she’s on McCarthy’s side here because he made certain commitments to her, but she got there by being outrageous,” he added.
Even the holdouts' own Republican colleagues have become willing to publicly call them out over raking in cash in the name of preventing the House from organizing.
“Oh, we ran out of patience a long time ago. But this is what it is. This is democracy. It’s messy. People disagree. But what I think voters and Americans want to see from their politicians when they disagree is disagreement in good faith. You should stand for something. If you’re going to hold the line, you should stand for something. You should say ‘This is why I’m holding the line,’” Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw said on Fox News. “But, you know as well as I do, that when you ask these 20 holdouts, what are you holding the line for, they give you very vague statements. They say, ‘Well, it’s to make this place work better. We’re tired of the swamp, we’re tired of the status quo.’ It’s like they’re on the campaign trail just screaming slogans that their consultants told them to say.
“Meanwhile, they’re fundraising off of this. Everybody is getting fundraising emails from these people. And let me say this to the American public right now: Do not donate to these fundraising — they don’t need the money for this. There’s no reason that their campaign need money,” added the congressman-elect.
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