Dinesh Considers the Future of the House Leadership
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
There's a very interesting and perhaps somewhat unexpected challenge to both McCarthy's leadership, Kevin McCarthy's leadership in the house. And Mitch McConnell's in the Senate. Now the house is almost certainly going to be in the hands of the GOP. There is some races still undecided, but Republicans are ahead of the Democrats substantially and should be able to get to the majority fairly easily. So McCarthy is almost certainly going to be the Speaker of the House. Or at least the Republicans will have a chance to choose a speaker. Now McCarthy has always, this guy is like a frat boy. I mean, he basically has got everyone in his pocket. They're all his buddies. They like to go, you know, eat steak with him and have a glass of wine. So he's been able to kind of glad hand his way to the leadership. And there's no doubt that he does have those personal qualities of affability and, you know, everybody likes Kevin McCarthy, but we're in a little bit of a precarious situation. And if you agree that we are in, let's call it Cold War combat mode, then we actually need a combat general. And I think Republicans are beginning to realize this. I'm not saying they're going to be able to prevent McCarthy from getting the leadership because as far as I can see, there's nobody else, perhaps Jim Jordan, who has the ability to run toe to toe with McCarthy and maybe give him a race and these positions are really important because when you come in as an elected congressman or senator, in a sense, you're almost giving up your power to your leader because your leader then controls committees controls appointments, controls the agenda, decide what bills advance and so on. So this is a very important decision. And I think that the house, the freedom caucus, by the way, Marjorie Taylor Greene is in there, Matt, Gates is in there. So these are people who might be able to exercise leverage on McCarthy and basically say, listen, no Democrats going to vote for you. You need the Republicans to kind of line up behind you. But we're not going to, unless we get certain agreements, concessions, and specific authorizations from you now in advance.