McCarthy Elected Speaker After Far-Right GOP Minority Joins Rest Of Far-Right GOP Majority

WASHINGTON—Following a tense four days in Congress’ lower chamber that saw members of his own party vote to deny him the top spot 14 straight times, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was elected speaker of the House early Saturday morning when the far-right GOP minority joined together with the rest of the far-right GOP majority. “It took a while, but we were finally able to get our 20 most right-wing members to compromise with our other 200 most right-wing members,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), a McCarthy ally who was instrumental in helping the new speaker win over members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus with key concessions to the majority GOP’s hard-right plans for this congressional term. “Electing Kevin showed that we’re able to smooth over the differences between the far-right faction and the other far-right faction to pursue our identical policy goals of eradicating the social safety net, punishing immigrants, and trying to subvert democratic elections, as well as find key compromises in the approach all of us will take to undermine a functional government. Whether you’re one of the holdouts who wants Republicans to pursue a radically conservative agenda, or one of the stalwart McCarthy backers who wants a reactionary right-wing agenda, you have a place in the McCarthy-led House. It’s a good sign for Americans that we’re able to compromise despite seeing eye to eye on every issue.” McCarthy allies also told reporters that the concessions allowed them to avoid the nightmare scenario of some of the far-right Republicans moving to align with the right-wing faction of the Democratic Party.

The Onion