Kevin McCarthy Oct 5^th

Today we’ll take a look at the most likely new Speaker of the House. This is the job that Congressman Boehner now holds and plans to resign, with his Congressional membership, at the end of this month. The Speaker of the House is a very important position, partially because the holder of that office becomes President of the United States if some catastrophe kills both the President, and the Vice President. Of course the Speaker’s day job is to get his party’s votes in a row so that appropriate legislation can be passed. He is the leader of the majority party.

Herein lies the problem that John Boehner decided wasn’t solvable: This was what is appropriate legislation? The far right wing of his party thought it was one thing and the somewhat larger middle of the party thought it was something else. The result was that absolutely nothing got passed until the Democrats were willing to vote and pull the Republican chestnuts out of the fire. This embarrassment was more that Boehner was willing to endure so he decided to leave. Who can blame him?

This brings us to Representative Kevin McCarthy; Kevin is next in line for the Speakership, he is the Majority Leader and heir apparent to Speaker Boehner. Some problems have emerged as McCarthy has vaulted into the spotlight. Kevin has a way with words and his way is not pleasing to many of his party members; however it is very pleasing to Democrats as his gaffes have made him a laughing stock; they are bad enough to gain him membership in the clown car of Republican Presidential hopefuls.

His downfall began with an interview by Fox News; perhaps he felt safe there. McCarthy talked about Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers and how quickly they had plummeted once the special Benghazi investigation had gotten underway. It seemed to many listeners that the investigatory committee considered deflating Clinton’s popularity as its primary purpose. McCarthy tried to “walk that back” but he couldn’t. Trey Gowdy, the unsmiling chair of the investigating committee, was quite unhappy. An additional problem for his committee, leading credence to McCarthy’s suggestion of a political witch hunt, is that this group has been investigating Benghazi longer than the committees which investigated Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination or 9/11. But surely they just want the truth.

McCarthy has had some other gaffes as well: he declared that the VA was not providing help to service men “who had fought to the last man.” You get the picture; McCarthy’s larynx seems unconnected to his cortex. Sometimes it is helpful to look at the educational background that produces these problems. McCarthy graduated from California State College at Bakersfield; this is not a distinguished institution, 54 percent of the faculty are part time, the student faculty ratio is 21 to I, the entrance exam scores place 42 percent of entering students about in the bottom quarter of all those taking the test. McCarthy also has an MBA from this same school. Of course even if you attend a lousy school you can still learn a lot; there isn’t much evidence that McCarthy did that. Now there is another challenger for the Speakership; he is Jason Chaffetz and whether he wins or loses he probably loses.