A House in tatters

After watching the 15 ballots required to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, mere months ago, and then learning that he had traded the powers of the office for the trappings of power, we had to know that trouble was brewing. When it was confirmed that McCarthy sold his authority to a clique of right-wing election deniers of various stripes, we knew he didn’t have the ability either to govern his fractious party or to remain in office. However, when the inevitable happened—when the demands of governing collided with the sheer will to disrupt—when McCarthy was tossed for the sin of recognizing that the majority party must govern, like it or not, few of us expected the vacuum that the Republicans have created and have allowed to persist for weeks.