McCarthy Urged to Abandon GOP, Run as Independent 'After All That's Happened to Him'
A columnist in California thinks fellow Californian Kevin McCarthy should leave the Republican Party and run for re-election as an independent.
His argument is based largely on a false premise, but it’s already gotten some notice on social media.
“His own party abandoned him, [and] the Democratic Party did not come to his rescue,” columnist Sal Moretti wrote in a Sunday piece for The Bakersfield Californian.
That, of course, is largely not true. Most of the Republicans in the House voted in support of McCarthy; had Rep. Matt Gaetz and the seven Republicans who voted to oust him not allied themselves with the entire Democratic caucus, McCarthy would likely still be House speaker today.
That said, it’s interesting to speculate what might happen should McCarthy decide that Moretti’s idea made sense.
i dont think this happens. and, furthermore, it will be interesting to see how retirements/resignations shake out for the rest of the year.
Santos likely to be expelled. Bill Johnson has accepted job at Youngstown State. after @CelesteMaloyUT is sworn in, Rs are at 220 if… https://t.co/bjyJNLnyFj
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 27, 2023
Moretti’s position is based largely on what he seems to see as a rise of extremism in American politics.
“As our political dysfunction has run rampant, we now have two political parties that cater to the extremes in their party even though the majority of us reside politically more toward the middle,” he wrote. “We are not extremists but feel pulled by these parties to choose from extremes. On the Republican side, moderate Republicans feel compelled to vote for former President Donald Trump and on the Democratic side, President Biden.
“Most of us are not happy with these choices,” he suggested.
That is somewhat accurate, although how McCarthy running for the House as an independent would change that, Moretti didn’t explain.
Nor did he explain how McCarthy, considered by many a poster child for establishment Washington, would suddenly become a key figure “in a centrist movement trying to break away from D.C. dysfunction.”
Regardless, as Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman pointed out, if McCarthy wants to follow up on this, he’ll have to do it soon, as the filing deadline is less than two weeks away.
A column in the Bakersfield Californian is urging @SpeakerMcCarthy to run as an independent in 2024.https://t.co/troqvwoJuY
filing deadline is Dec. 8.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 27, 2023
But even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense — even Moretti admitted that many of his readers may find the idea “more absurd than fun” — there are some precedents that he thinks McCarthy would do well to follow.
“[I]f Romney, Manchin, Sinema and Cheney can bolt from their parties, someone like McCarthy, who was so badly treated by his party, can bolt too,” he argued, again missing the point that it wasn’t really his party that treated McCarthy badly, but only a handful of party members — the ones Moretti himself would most likely decry as the “extremists.”
“He has the war chest, he has a great chance to win in his district, and after all that’s happened to him, he should have the motivation to upset this rotten apple cart,” Moretti claimed.
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