In a better world, which is not the one we live in, there would be no chance that an intellectual lightweight and professional liar like Kevin McCarthy could ever become speaker of the House of Representatives.
As my own congressman, who knows his Central California colleague all too well, says, McCarthy believes “truth is for losers.”
During and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, McCarthy told GOP colleagues Donald Trump should resign for his sins in prompting the attack. Later, he denied saying that. Then, as the Los Angeles City Hall pols found out, an audio recording undermined him. After saying that reporting of what he actually said was “totally false and wrong,” some honest fellow Republican leaked the tape of a phone call of party leaders in which McCarthy clearly says of Trump: “it would be my recommendation that he resign.”
Apologies for the lie? Uh, no. Later he flew down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss butt because, well, truth is for losers.
Since our world is a half-lousy one, there is of course every chance the Bard of Bakersfield will be speaker.
So what are the rest of us who have to live in the world run by lying, merely transactional politicians supposed to make of his latest utterance on international affairs? If his party gains control of the House, McCarthy told Punchbowl News, its members won’t “write a blank check to Ukraine.”
Ukraine — you know, that valiant nation currently suffering a massive military invasion by the Russians. So comforting, no doubt, to its bloodied, starving, freezing population to hear such from an American leader.
What is the point of saying such a thing? No one has written “a blank check to Ukraine” in the first place. So it’s not a thing that can be undone because of a party leadership change in Congress. What this is is clearly a sop to the isolationist, “America First” wing of the Republican Party, including the 57 House and 11 Senate Republicans who voted in May against a crucial $40 billion aid package for Ukraine.
McCarthy needs them to support his speakership bid, so he’ll throw them a bone, because he’s a fearful politician interested only in personal power. He very much voted for that aid package, by the way. But now he needs support from the likes of the increasingly fringe Heritage Foundation, which claimed in a paper last May that “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last” because it is championed by “progressives in Washington.”
No, it isn’t. Talk about chicken-hearted: 30 House progressives last week urged President Biden to do an end-run around Ukraine by holding direct diplomatic talks with Russia to “seek a realistic framework for a cease-fire.” Direct negotiations with evil, that is, without any of the pre-conditions Kyiv needs before talking turkey with the Kremlin: the return of its unlawfully stolen territory. If Canada took Minnesota, would we sit down at the diplomatic table before we got the Twin Cities back?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, chair of the Progressive Caucus, continued: “we believe such involvement in this war also creates a responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia.”
The McCarthyite approach, in other words. Then the progs tried to walk it back, blaming the statement’s release on staff.
Centrist Democrats are the ones making sense about this existential fight over whether we allow a vicious dictator to plunder Europe. “The way to end a war?” tweeted Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona. “Win it quickly. How is it won quickly? By giving Ukraine the weapons to defeat Russia.”
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. [email protected].