Crazies, Kooks and Terrorists

After 15 votes over the course of four days, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy was finally elected Speaker of the House of Representatives marking the longest voting process for Speaker since 1859.  His election was held up by a small group of GOP Congressmen who wanted certain concessions from McCarthy before supporting him. Many people called this band of Congressmen “crazy”, “kooks”, and the “cuckoo fringe” of the Republican party. GOP Representatives Dan Crenshaw and Don Bacon even called them “terrorists”. Resorting to name calling is usually a tacit admission that you don’t have a compelling argument against the people you are calling names.

Tensions grew so high last night that GOP Congressman Mike Rogers even tried to physically attack one of the holdouts, Representative Matt Gaetz, and had to be restrained. But in the end, McCarthy was elected Speaker, and even though it took a few days, not one person was harmed by this process, and considering that the Senate went on an immediate 3-week recess after swearing in their members and electing their leaders, it is good that our representatives actually had to work for something for once.

Why did these Congressmen hold-up the election of the new Speaker for four days? What extreme concessions were they asking for that they were labelled “crazy”, “kooks” and “terrorists”? Were they promoting Drag Queen story hour to 4-year-olds? Did they want to change the term “pedophilia” to “minor attracted person”? Were they advocating that boys be allowed to shower in girls’ locker rooms? Were they demanding that adults be allowed to mutilate children’s genitals? Were they advocating for cutting a healthy baby out of a woman’s uterus in order to kill the baby?