It took 15 ballots, but in the early hours Saturday morning House Republicans were finally able to stitch together enough votes to install California Congressman Kevin McCarthy as the next Speaker of the House. In his acceptance speech, McCarthy pledged to fulfill his commitment to take the country in a new direction:
McCarthy: "A commitment for a government that is held accountable, where Americans get the answers they want, need, and deserve. Our system is built on checks and balances. It's time for us to be a check and provide some balance to the president's policies."
Much criticism has been aired about the GOP's inability to unify behind a single candidate for Speaker early in the balloting process – and about the coalition of 20 or so members of the House Freedom Caucus who repeatedly nominated others to run against McCarthy, who has been labeled by some as a "Republican In Name Only" (RINO).
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (pictured above), an outspoken conservative who represents Georgia's 14th Congressional District, is a member of the Freedom Caucus. She has been criticized for supporting McCarthy during the hard fight to install a House Speaker. But during an appearance on American Family Radio Monday, Taylor Greene explained that Republicans need to understand the political reality.
"We have Joe Biden in the White House [and] we have a Democrat-controlled Senate. It's not like we can pass major legislative changes and Joe Biden is going to sign them into law. That is not going to happen," she emphasized. "But what we can do is use the power of our voting cards – and that's what each of us has to work it out to get to 218 [votes] on every single thing we do."
Taylor Greene contends the problem for Republicans isn't McCarthy; instead, she says, it's the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate.
"Mitch McConnell doesn't have an election coming up real soon – but he is the biggest enemy that we have in the Republican Party," the second-term lawmaker exclaimed. "I think people need to give Kevin McCarthy a chance because we have a razor-thin majority.
"People are going to be surprised [about McCarthy]. They're going to be shocked when they find out that he's not the terrible, scary RINO that they've been told he is."
Conservative activist and columnist Robert Knight agrees. He tells AFN that McCarthy is on the right track for holding the Biden administration accountable.
"I think if he can unite the new members with the ones who have been there a while – and make it clear to the Senate that they're not going to pass anything that will do the kind of damage that they've been doing over the last two years with a 100% Democrat-run Congress – then he'll be doing very well," says Knight.
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