Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in studio to weigh in on the Speaker of the House election and Kevin McCarthy debacle.
Leahy: In studio, all-star panelist, recovering journalist, public affairs specialist, all-around good guy Clint Brewer. Clint, so what do you make of this debacle in Washington, D.C. where 20 members of the House of Representatives who are Republicans have said they don’t want Kevin McCarthy as speaker, they decided that the time to do that was on a floor vote.
P.S, Kevin McCarthy didn’t whip those votes. They had no idea that they would lose 20. It looks like a big debacle. And the big losers, it seems to me, are the American people, because the Republicans are not pursuing the agenda they should have used to hit the ground running.
Such as going after the problems with border security, all of the oversight of the overreach of the deep state, and, of course, the compromised nature of the Biden family wealth. Your thoughts on that debacle?
Brewer: It’s not good for the country. It’s not good for the Republican Party, and it’s not good for anybody’s district. Particularly I don’t know what you want to call them the mob of 20. (Laughs) They’re not a gang of 20. So here’s the thing. You’re right. McCarthy and leadership should have had the votes buttoned up.
In their defense, he underwrote the campaigns of most of the people who are standing in the way of electing a speaker. That’s a transactional relationship. You would think if a candidate accepts money from you, accepts money from your leadership pack, and accepts air support in the form of an independent expenditure, that they would be with you when the vote came. There’s no reason to think they wouldn’t.
Leahy: A couple of the newly elected members of Congress and, Andy Ogles from here in the 5th District and then Eli Crane from Arizona are among those 20 who are opposing Kevin McCarthy. Andy, you’re welcome to come in on the program, and he’s our friend, and we’ll have this discussion with him.
Brewer: And we want him to be successful.
Leahy: We absolutely do. However, let me make a couple of comments on this issue. I think that the points that they’re looking for, some concessions on the process, I think make sense so that people can make amendments to the votes that come in.
And these are all reasonable things. These are all things that should have been done before the House entered into the session to select a Speaker. Could have should have been done. With regards to Andy, in September, Andy told Politico that he was supporting Kevin McCarthy, A. B, he accepted $5,000 from McCarthy’s PAC before his election.
This Eli Crane fellow from Arizona not only took some PAC money directly according to the Politico report, got $900,000 of support in terms of independent expenditures from McCarthy’s PAC, and now he is voting against him. This seems to me to not be in good form.
Brewer: Oh, it’s terrible form. What’s the end game like? You got to have a point at the end of the day. The only real question is, is this good for anybody’s district? What are you doing for the people who elected you by doing this? How does this help them?
And the answer is, I don’t really see an answer to that. You can say, well, I’m standing on my principles. We don’t trust McCarthy. I’ve seen a lot of comments from those 20 about how they don’t trust him.
Leahy: And I think that is a true statement, that they don’t trust him. And I think he’s given people reason not to trust him in the past. The point is, you work all that out before the vote.
Brewer: You work on it out before the vote and, okay, so you don’t trust him. If you don’t have a path toward something else, what’s the point of all this? You’re just being a stunt pony. There’s no point.
Leahy: And providing your opponent, the real opponent here is a Democratic Party, it seems to me. And the authoritarianism there in. They’re laughing all the way to the electoral polls.
Brewer: I got to be honest, I think it’s about something I think, yes, that is true, but I think it’s about something even more basic than that. What was one of the dominant stories yesterday? And I don’t know if I’m saying his name right. Matt Gaetz from Florida and AOC chatting it up on the House floor.
It seems to be as much about attention and celebrity and having your moment as it does about actually are you interested in conservative ideals. Are you actually interested in governing? Can your party govern? None of those things are considered. Instead, it’s the two firebrands. It seems like it’s all made for social media.
Leahy:Â 615-737-9522. If you disagree, we’d love to hear from you.
Brewer: Or agree.
Leahy: Either way. We’d like to talk to you about being opposed to McCarthy, I think what they would say is we need to get some concessions from McCarthy about procedural issues so that we can actually have an impact on budget votes and things of that nature. I agree with that, but where do you work that out?
Brewer: Well ahead of time.
Leahy: Well ahead of time. And so now we’ve got the gang that couldn’t shoot straight as the opposition to the Biden male administration. And I don’t think that the Democrats are quaking in their boots at the moment over all this.
Brewer: No, they’re laughing.
Leahy: They’re laughing.
Brewer: And they should! I mean, it’s laughable.
Leahy: Now my good friend Steve Bannon has a different view. He sees this as taking on the Uniparty. And he thinks that McCarthy is going to end up leaving. If I’m McCarthy, right, I’m going to say, look, I got 201 votes, you guys have 20. I don’t care if it takes 150 ballots, I’m not leaving. That’s what I would say if I were McCarthy?
Brewer: I think at some point this group of 20 starts getting pressure in their own districts, I think that’s going to trickle over eventually and I think that conversations like this are going to start happening. At what point do you just have to say, it’s good for the country and the party to move on?
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Kevin McCarthy” by Kevin McCarthy.Â
I am glad that some real conservatives finally stood up to the SWAMP machine which includes McCarthy. It appears that McCarthy was not interested in negotiations earlier assuming that he would win in a landslide. If he did think that, then it just shows how poorly he can read the tea leaves.