GOP should be attacking Biden instead of McCarthy

 Micheal Goodwin:

As generations of students learned in typing class, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” It’s a pity so many House Republicans either missed that class or forgot they were supposed to help their own party, not the other one.

The GOP’s inability to elect a Speaker despite having a majority is more than a personal rebuke to the presumed leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. It’s a mark of incompetence and a worrisome sign the party is so fractured it will not be able to unite to accomplish anything of significance for the next two years.

Instead of being a check on the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate and using its investigative power to probe President Biden and his family’s corrupt business deals, the chaos suggests too many Republicans are freelancing and engaged in a fools’ errand masquerading as an act of principle.

As such, it’s amateur hour and a mystery over what the holdouts stand for, in part because they don’t have a viable alternative to McCarthy. In the first roll call, they scattered their 19 of the 222 votes among five or six other people. In the second round, all 19 voted for Ohio’s Jim Jordan — after Jordan gave a stirring floor speech in favor of McCarthy!

By the third round, 20 voted for Jordan, even as he continued to support McCarthy.

This is madness. The reasons for opposing McCarthy seem either vague or more personal than substantive, especially after he made so many concessions to win their votes. But it was never enough because their opposition is, at this late stage, fundamentally incoherent. Most important, a shootout in a lifeboat is not a persuasive argument that the party is ready to govern.
...

“To my friends here on this side of the aisle, I would just say this. The differences we may have . . . pale in comparison to the differences between us and the left, which now unfortunately controls the other party,” Jordan said. “So we had better come together and fight for these key things.”

He’s absolutely right, but that he even needs to remind his own party of the stakes now is distressing. Let’s hope the rebels without a cause come to their senses before they turn conservatism into a punch line.

I think McCarthy or Jordan would be a significant improvement over Pelosi.  At this point, McCarthy has the most votes including that of Jordan so what the holdouts are doing is making the party look like it is unable to even govern itself, much less the country.