Kevin McCarthy is Very Unpopular Among Everyone

Kevin McCarthy, the GOP House majority leader, has had an appropriately momentous first couple of weeks as House speaker in the 118th US Congress. He has motioned to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs committee, issued movements to endorse pro-life organizations, and has defended the new controversial rep, George Santos. While not receiving a single vote from Democrats and being forced to offer concessions to Republicans who would vote for him, it is clear that McCarthy is not having his best term. While it is not surprising that 0% of Democratic representatives voted in his favor, a significant handful of Republicans (many of which coming from the Freedom Caucus) also were against voting him in and instead were lenient towards other candidates such as Byron Donalds and Kevin Hern. The iconic Matt Gaetz even came up with the avant-garde idea of nominating former president Donald Trump as speaker. It took 15 ballots to finally resolve the election, granting him the role, With this governmental debacle occurring for the first time in centuries the dim response he has garnered from politicians, perhaps, can translate to an even more negative response from the people.

According to a survey poll, only 39% of Republican voters are enthusiastic about McCarthy, while 0% of Democrats and only around 10% of unregistered voters are fond of him being speaker. This could be because potential omnibus spending packages, or perhaps it could be a result of Republicans simply coming to believe the McCarthy is not far enough to the right. Some say that the Republican party is becoming more conservative each year and this most recent midterm election is a clear justification. But on top of this, there are many interesting contrasts that have been made in the result of this. For one thing, Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Rep Lauren Boebert, two conservative Representatives who have been known to have been partners in crime within the far-right movement have (for now, at least) become partitioned. While the average person would likely assume these two to have just about the exact same voting record, Marjorie Taylor Greene staunchly backed McCarthy throughout the whole thing while Boebert refused vote for him and instead went for several other Representatives. Greene stated that the Democrats could ally with several moderate Republicans to elect a more centrist speaker if they didn't hurry up to elect McCarthy (though people have speculated that he could have offered her various incentives in secret, as she won her 2022 election in a landslide). Meanwhile, Lauren Boebert, after finishing with a "present" vote, said that she was happy about the compromises that McCarthy offered in exchange for his election (Boebert narrowly won reelection). It is interesting to see where these circumstances will take us.

At the end of the day, we will just have to see what plans McCarthy has in store for our country. On one hand, seeing how long the speaker election took, it could be worrying for some people to see how our current status quo is going to play out. However, it is also evident many people do not care about who the speaker is (seeing the majority is already Republican) and don't see how the election could have been so long and drawn out seeing how little a difference it makes. Regardless it is always best to make sure we are paying attention, and seeing how little McCarthy's room for error is, he might need to stay on top of things as well.