Kevin McCarthy speaker fiasco brings ‘aid and comfort’ to America’s foes
Joel Gehrke
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Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) ejection from the speaker’s office has raised trans-Atlantic anxiety about continued aid for Ukraine, just as Ukrainian forces increase military pressure on Russia.
“It’s a psychological problem at the moment, with everybody,” a senior European official said, likening the military and diplomatic process to a basketball game. “It’s half[time], you’re in the [locker]room, and then the owner comes in saying, ‘Good game, you’re doing a good job, but you know all of our sponsors pulled out.’ It’s absolutely the wrong time to tell this message, but he tells it. But adds, also, that we will work to find someone else.”
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McCarthy lost the gavel on Tuesday after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) offered a motion to vacate the speaker’s office, which passed with the support of a handful of backbench Republicans and the House Democratic minority. That unusual coalition delivered a blow that left Republican foreign policymakers frustrated for partisan and geopolitical reasons.
“We’re focusing on internecine fights that don’t help the Republic; this is a great day for the Democratic Party, courtesy of Matt Gaetz,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said before providing a circumspect comment on how the events affect Russia and China. “It can’t be anything but aid and comfort to people around the world who wish us ill to see us in such disarray.”
McCarthy’s ousting comes on the heels of a funding fight last week that culminated in the passage of a short-term bill to continue funding the government, a measure that did not include any new funding to aid Ukraine.
“We have to keep Ukraine in the fight tonight and tomorrow and the day after,” British armed forces minister James Heappey warned the Warsaw Security Forum on Tuesday. “And if we stop, that doesn’t automatically mean that Putin stops. It may well mean that Putin takes the opportunity to break through and achieve the aims that he had in the first place.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence likewise warned that “chaos is never America’s friend” during a foreign policy discussion at Georgetown University on Tuesday.
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top lieutenants chortled about the dramatic display of infighting, although he displayed confusion about the nature of McCarthy’s defeat.
“For the first time in the history of the U.S., the Speaker of the House of Representatives has resigned. … This is precisely because of his love for the Kiev government and budget compromises,” Kremlin Security Council deputy chief Dmitry Medvedev wrote in a social media post.
President Joe Biden and his administration are working to allay any trans-Atlantic misgivings about the House funding fight, in which authorization for new Ukrainian aid was stripped out of a stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown.
“For quirky budgetary reasons, we weren’t able to pass a general budget or approve the full supplemental that the administration asked for,” Philip Gordon, Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security adviser, told the Warsaw Security Forum on Wednesday. “I wouldn’t read that as an overall comment on congressional support for Ukraine. Again, to underscore, there is overwhelming and bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine. I expect it to continue.”
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That might be right, as most Republicans agree, but the quirky budgetary process isn’t going away either, to the perplexity of Republicans.
“I don’t see a path forward in the next 45 days that doesn’t continue inability to fund the federal government in the longer term,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), who sits on the appropriations and intelligence committees, told the Washington Examiner. “In their absence of sending us appropriation bills, the Senate can’t send them back. And so this is a real challenge of just really Congress doing its basic work.”