Punchbowl co-founder Jake Sherman went on Morning Joe Wednesday to dissect the fallout from the Republicans turning on themselves and ousting former speaker Kevin McCarthy. Sherman predicted that the Republicans kicking Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer out of their hideaway offices was just the beginning:
"I'm not sure this is penetrating with Democrats," Sherman said. "I don't know a single candidate for speaker that would put funding for Ukraine on the floor. These kinds of issues – I understand Democrats had to do what they did. They consider this an internal party fight. Even the things to keep, like Ukraine funding, which we staked as a country and government a lot of our credibility on, that's not going to come to the floor, period, the end. I don't know anyone who would."
"Kicking people out of offices, just the, as you know, the small things that help this institution run, giving the minority a heading up on legislation, the things that the two parties do to make sure that the House of Representatives works, those things are done for now," Sherman added.
It's hard not to take a moment to appreciate the irony of this situation. The Republicans, the party of self-responsibility, are blaming Democrats for not stopping themselves from cutting off their nose to spite their face.
The Republicans are taking no responsibility whatsoever for being the ones that set the grounds for this situation by getting McCarthy to agree to allowing one person to bring the vote to vacate him from office. Not one Republican approached the Democrats to ask for help until McCarthy went to Hakeem Jeffries at the 11th hour.
Furthermore, the Democrats had no reason to bail out McCarthy. He broke so many promises that he had made to them, he took the country to the verge of shutdown, and he arbitrarily authorized an impeachment hearing into President Joe Biden despite the fact that there was no credible evidence of an impeachable offense.
Are the Republicans really trying to blame the Democrats for the Republicans continuing to operate in bad faith? If so, they are more stupid than most people suspected, especially doing this a year before the elections. People might forget things quickly, but not that quickly.