It seems what's left of the few moderates in McCarthy's caucus have had quite enough of the "Freedom Caucus" pushing for a government shutdown. McCarthy warned against a government shutdown and promised a vote on the defense spending bill this week, and we got it, only to have it go down with hardliners refusing to vote for it.

Now that it's obvious that McCarthy has absolutely no control over his caucus and that a shutdown is likely, some lawmakers are eying the possibility of a discharge petition as a way to avert a shutdown, with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who managed to narrowly defeat Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney last year in a seat Biden would have won by 10 points in its current configuration, among them.

CNN showed some of Lawler's edited remarks this Tuesday without the full context which you can watch in the video above:

LAWLER: This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity. The idea that we’re going to shut the government down when we don’t control the Senate, we don’t control the White House. These people can’t define a win. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. It’s a clown show. You keep running lunatics. You’re going to be in this position.

As they noted in their article about the possibility of a discharge petition making its way through the House in time to avert a shutdown, it doesn't look good for a number of reasons:

Democrats and Republicans could use an arcane procedural step known as a “discharge petition” to force the vote on a clean spending bill on the floor, in effect shielding House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from having to do it himself.

But Democrats are warning that if Republicans are serious, they’d need to take action as soon as Tuesday and even that would not likely be fast enough to avert a shutdown.

A Democratic source told CNN that the process for forcing a floor vote on a bipartisan continuing resolution would go as follows (even as Democrats are not confident at this point enough Republicans are serious about pursuing the option and they are not holding out much hope this is a serious option):

1. The source told CNN that there is already a legislative vehicle on the floor of the House from when it was filed during the debt ceiling that could be amended to fund the government, but five Republicans would have to sign on.
2. Once that happened, it would ripen the following legislative day and it would take seven legislative days (days in the House is in session, not days of the week) before action could be taken on it. Then, someone would have to raise it on the floor and the speaker would be forced to schedule a vote within two legislative days.
3. It’s possible that leadership could try to kill this move in the Rules Committee, but if they passed a rule to kill it, the rule would need to get a majority on the floor.

One rules expert warned that “it is viable but it is not something that works well with a deadline that is so many days away.” Government funding is slated to run out on September 30.

Lawler was asked whether he would sign onto a discharge petition, and here are more of his remarks from the same article:

Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, has blasted his GOP colleagues who won’t sign onto a Republican-only spending bill. He has said he’s open to working with Democrats.

“If the clown show of colleagues that refuse to actually govern does not want to pass the CR. I will do everything we need to make sure that a CR passes, the bottom line here says we’re not shutting the government down,” Lawler said. “These folks don’t have a plan. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. They don’t know what it is to work as a team. They don’t know how to define a win. So at the end of the day, the American people sent us here to govern. They sent us here to be in the majority and be responsible. And that’s what I’m gonna do. And so if that requires, you know, taking action to get a bill on the floor to pass the (continuing resolution) because they refused to pass the rule, or they refuse to pass the CR that the vast majority of the conference supports, then that’s on their doorstep.”

If McCarthy wants to get something done, he's going to have to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats, something his colleague from New York has figured out, but obviously he hasn't. He's too afraid of the MAGA nuts trying to oust him as Speaker.