Commentary
When it took Kevin McCarthy 15 votes to become Speaker of the House, the Washington establishment concluded that he was pleasant but would be unable to get much done.
The fate of the last two Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, seemed to hang over his head. They had not been able to unify the House Republicans even when they had much larger majorities than McCarthy’s tiny four-vote margin (the same margin with which Speaker Nancy Pelosi had dominated for the last two years they fail to note). Furthermore, Boehner and Ryan found themselves in a constant running war with the right wing of their conference—and especially with the Freedom Caucus….