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every speaker for a very long time has dealt with "rebellious factions" within their caucus, from tea partiers to new dems
Nancy Pelosi had the votes for speaker in 2019 without 10 Democrat members, so the claim she wouldn't have managed it in a similar situation to McCarthy falls flat, and it would have required fewer concessions to boot with easy examples to support that claim being later legislative fights where she got people who allegedly opposed her or her agenda to embarrass themselves with individual "present" votes because she wanted them to.
real opposition defined by what? the fact that the speaker wasn't vacated? this is a chicken-egg problem where I will claim they didn't face "rea" opposition because they were effective and you will claim there wasn't a "real opposition" to begin with
what did McCarthy accomplish? what are his 8 wins and 4 losses? I would bet most of these "wins" you can think of weren't Kevin but the part of the caucus you claim is on "team democrat" holding his feet to the fire to deliver from committees, to subpoenas, to indiv personal appointments, to some individual bills, and more
he stuck around promising individual Congressmen more aggressive investigations, subpoenas, individual bills brought to the floor, and more, and he never delivered or only delivered crumbs, and as the anger and opposition mounted he attempted a crunch-down media blitz with aligned media mouthpieces and that failed
he became speaker by making promises he didn't intend to keep, lying to a bunch of people, stuck around for 7 months stringing them along, and it all came crashing down as he attempted to force his caucus into a CR which failed (something he promised he wouldn't do) so he teamed up with Democrats to pass a CR (something he promised he wouldn't do) over objections of his own caucus
and then he relied on Democrats to save him from pissed off members of his own caucus
and you think this makes McCarthy the most effective speaker of the last 25 years (difficulty adjusted)? this isn't supportable
worse, your attempted portrayal of this is Gaetz sided with team Democrat? this isn't supportable
I agree McCarthy likely didn't want a majority which was this slim, but it's the result of his and the Party's behavior:
lots of candidates lost, it wasn't something which was limited to "Trump/Gaetz-alligned" candidates; candidates without trump endorsements but Party endorsements did worse
or are you trying to claim McCarthy isn't a part of this Party leadership who made these calls? McCarthy controls the money because he's the one who raised it and uses that money to control the Party in the House
unfortunately, I suspect out beliefs about basic facts of what has happened over the last few years in this area may be too different to have a productive dialogue without quite a bit of effort on both our parts
There has not been a 8 vote defection by democrats on any important vote in the house in a decade at least.
They voted together on one of the most important questions of the 2 year term.
yeah, that's the point
you claim this is because there is no real opposition, I claim because the speaker was more effective
there is no articulated substance to your opinion about McCarthy or even a single note of any of his accomplishments, so there really isn't a dialogue to have there
You really think Pelosi is more effective as opposed to McCarthy being less because???
Boehner and Ryan were also mysteriously less effective than their contemporaries. Its almost like there is a pattern. Perhaps its just Pelosi is the GOAT. I think its much more likely that Democrats are easier to govern.
you think McCarthy is more effective because??? noting a slim minority is talking about difficulty, it has nothing to do with effectiveness
mccarthy likely ended the dictator speaker era because he so desperately wanted the gavel, but that has nothing to do with effectiveness as speaker
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