Kevin McCarthy Finds That Charm Has Its Limits

[Zorro]

Many people will not forgive the Republican House leader’s blatant acts to embrace and perpetuate dangerous lies that threatened democracy.

By Miriam Pawel

Here is the important thing to understand about Kevin McCarthy: He has risen from college dropout to the highest rungs of political leadership by being the guy everyone liked. You can’t have too many friends, he likes to say. He was the guy with the pool table in the house he shared with legislators in Sacramento; the guy who slept on the sofa in his congressional office, went mountain biking with colleagues in the morning and hosted movie nights with Chick-fil-A; the guy who could deliver votes and raise money. Everyone, it seemed, liked the California Republican whom President Trump called “my Kevin.”

Until now. Now he is not just disliked, but reviled. No matter how Mr. McCarthy, the House minority leader, tries to finesse the attacks on the 2020 election and the U.S. Capitol, many people — including former friends — will not forgive his blatant acts to embrace and perpetuate dangerous lies that threatened democracy, and lives.

Former U.S. Representative Bill Thomas of California denounced his protégé as a hypocrite. The Sacramento Bee called Mr. McCarthy “a soulless anti-democracy conspirator.” In an emotional video, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose 2006 election marked the last time a Republican was elected statewide in California, took aim at “spineless” Republican elected officials who acted as enablers for the president’s lies. “They are complicit with those who carried the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol,” the former governor said. “We need public servants that serve something larger than their own power or their own party.”

Hope springs eternal, but no one really expected Mr. McCarthy to rise to the occasion last week; that would have meant breaking with the friends who had gotten him this far. As colleagues faced death threats, Mr. McCarthy could bring himself only to exhort his caucus not to publicly chastise Republicans who supported impeachment because it might endanger their safety. After months of repeating Republican lies that sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the election, Mr. McCarthy acknowledged the obvious — that Joe Biden had won the fair election — but not before voting against certification of the outcome. And finally, after a week in which many major corporate donors threatened to withhold donations to Republicans who objected to certifying the election results, Mr. McCarthy admitted that the president “bears responsibility” for the attack on the Capitol — and then voted against his impeachment for that egregious act.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-trump.html

McCarthy does have the reputation for not being very bright. Adam Schiff had no kind words for McCarthy last week on Rachel, saying he was nothing but pure ambition with no redeeming qualities.

[SheltieLover]

1. All those people who like him are deficient in discernment

[RainCaster]

4. For any lurking Q-trolls...

That means "shit for brains".

[kristofarian]

5. oh, balls. now we've got a Mineshaft

Gap AND a discernment deficit
not to mention:
Pandemic

[BigmanPigman]

2. "Not very bright"?

He is a traitor to the US, plain and simple. Treat him and the other traitors/enablers with no mercy. They are traitors, plain and simple.

[RockRaven]

3. Anyone who ever thought this vomit bucket was charming is a lunatic.

He is utterly repellant and transparently shallow. Only someone as socially and ethically diseased as himself would fail to recognize it immediately.

I'm not surprised, a lot of them also think Trump has charisma...

[tblue37]

6. He, Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor were lauded as the GOP's "Young Guns," in a book with that

title. He is the only one left, but maybe not for more than the next 2 years.

[Gothmog]

7. Why am I not surprised that this idiot is a college drop out

[Marcuse]

8. McCarthy has known all along.

[lagomorph777]

9. My Kevin, My Pillow, my God they are all idiots.