Dana Milbank is easily the most caustic and virulently cynical op-ed writer the Washington Post has on staff, at least when it comes to lambasting Republicans in power. Sometimes I think his pieces are a bit much. It’s not that I ever disagree with him, but sometimes I feel he’s just preaching to the choir, and it would be easier reading with more sparing doses of his cynicism.
But in this take on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Dana Milbank is dead on.
Fact Check: Is Keven McCarthy a Moron? A sample:
McCarthy further concluded that the April slaying of a Capitol Police officer was politically motivated — “based upon if you listen to who made the killing of buying the knife and go out.”
On President Biden: “The president, we sat to met with, that we wanted to be — keep our path be energy independent.”
On a retired colleague: “Former liberal senator Barbara Boxer is now has the effect of being robbed in Oakland.”
On Pelosi: “She will go at no elms to break the rules.”
Recently, McCarthy trumpeted on Fox News an apocryphal report that Biden “is going to control how much meat you can eat.” McCarthy also claimed not to know about QAnon (which he called “Q-on”): “I don’t know if I say it right. I don’t even know what it is.” He had spoken several times previously about QAnon, by name.
In a 2015 foreign policy address, he announced that he had visited “Hungria” and lamented that Russia is “keeping the place of the band on America
Dana Milbank goes on and on in this vein, noting that Rachel Maddow once referred to McCarthy’s speech as a “word typhoon.” He finally concludes with the judgement that Pelosi’s description of McCarthy as moron rates as “mostly true.”
I really don’t think awareness of this man’s verbal and mental shortfalls have penetrated widely in the USA. McCarthy is a relatively boring figure, and typically the media spends a lot more time focused on the right wing loudmouthed “performers” such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and until recently Steve King.
But we are talking about the person who is the odds on favorite to become the next Speaker of the House. The GOP is likely to gerrymander it’s way to a Congressional majority starting in 2023. There’s a lot that can go wrong for McCarthy even so. In the age of Trump, Republicans eat their own often enough. Proper cannibals they are.
Nevertheless, the 2022 midterms might deliver a Speaker of the House who’s travelled to Hungria, and has worried about Nancy Pelosi going to no elms. The kindest explanation is that his mouth runs 3x as fast as his brain.
But I’ll go with Nancy Pelosi’s explanation, because no call for kindness.