Nancy Pelosi is one of the oldest sitting members of the House of Representatives. She’s been leading the House Democrats for quite some time, serving as either House Minority Leader or Speaker of the House since 2003.
Pelosi has been the reason that many bipartisan bills haven’t made it through. She also led the charge to impeach Trump just months after she said that there was no intention to do so.
For years, Pelosi has been leaning further and further to the left – and many moderate Dems are sick and tired of her antics. She’s announced that she’ll be running for Speaker of the House for the 2021 Congress. At 80 years old, she hasn’t learned that it’s time to step down and let younger politicians have a chance to rule things.
No one seems to be up to challenge her for her seat…except for Kevin McCarthy.
Kevin McCarthy is the Minority Leader in the House. As a Republican from California, he’s likely the only one who could put Pelosi, a fellow Californian, in her place once and for all.
Over the past two years, McCarthy has been able to accomplish great things for House Republicans. He has been able to unite the party and neutralize many of the rivals.
He was unanimously selected in 2018 to be the minority leader.
Now, can McCarthy take the position of House Speaker from Pelosi at this point in time? No. There’s no way for him to do so since the Dems have the House lead. However, the GOP has been able to win back a number of seats – and that was no easy feat.
What McCarthy is hoping to do is get even more GOP seats in the 2022 election. That would mean that the GOP would have the House majority in 2022. With Biden in the White House, it would be entirely possible to accomplish such a thing – and McCarthy would be able to make a play for the speaker’s gavel once and for all.
At 55 years old, McCarthy has had an impressive career in politics. He’s been the House Republican Chief Deputy Whip and was the first California Republican to hold the position of House Minority Leader, which he took over in 2019.
Assuming that the GOP can secure the lead for the Senate and the House in 2022, it means that Biden would be hard-pressed to get anything too left-leaning past Congress. It would also mean that Squad members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib would be stuck writing bills only to have them smacked down on site.
Black Lives Matter and other radical groups have been trying to make their way into Congress. Too many Dems now are looking to push the country toward a socialist agenda, including AOC. However, as they push, many of the moderate Dems push back. It’s created a major divide within the party – and McCarthy plans on exposing that divide so that it can play to his advantage in 2022.
When McCarthy wins, we all win. As he has said recently, “Our focus now is forward-looking, and this conference is completely united and energized to build on our movement and deliver results for the American people.”
Even though the House has a Democratic majority now, they don’t have the lead they think they have. The margin is smaller than it’s been in 20 years. And with the divide they have, the progressives won’t vote on anything too moderate and the moderates won’t vote on anything too progressive.
That leaves the divide two years to fester until people are over it. It will lead to more people voting Republican in 2022, allowing the GOP to take even more seats back in the House. Perhaps, by then, Pelosi will have gotten the hint that she’s no longer wanted and will retire once and for all.
McCarthy is fully prepared to become Speaker of the House, and if all goes as planned, he’ll thrust Pelosi from that position once and for all in 2022.
