Why Republicans Are Comparing McCarthy To Netanyahu-- This Post Is NOT For Children

This is a graphic—kind of pornographic— story for the memoir I'm writing. You'll see in a moment-- of you decide to keep reading-- why I'm posting it today. I thought about doing 2 versions, one soft-core and one harder core but I realized that was idiotic. I also thought of not writing it at all since the memoir won’t suffer too much from its absence. And maybe I’ll wind up not using it in the end anyway. But the thing is, I had a call from one of my friends in Congress a few days ago who wanted to know how I have better sources from the GOP side of the aisle than the Democrats do. Well, I said, I never burn any sources and I’ve been doing this a long time and people know they can trust me— even Republicans. We left at that, although he didn’t seem convinced. I had just published something straight from the inner circle of the House Republicans and no one else knew about it.

So I’m going to tell the story of why I have such a friendly, reliable source even though I’m not exactly friendly to the Republicans. And my source is very much a Republican and always has been. He was born into it. OK— fair warning: The sexually explicit stuff is coming right up.

I was at the Palace, the hotel formerly known as the Helmsley Palace until she embarrassed herself and everyone related to the place. I was living high in those days— amazing suite so I could entertain business guests without a bed in the room. And Warners was paying. The internet was a relatively new and exciting way to get a date and I had some time off. So… I got a date. He came over in a gigantic SUV that nearly didn’t fit into the hotel’s garage. He was so hot that I lost my breath when I opened the door. Also… not too bright. So we got right to the point of the meeting without much chit chat… except he kept babbling— bragging really about how rich he was and who his family was and how he had handicapped parking stickers because his father was tight with the mayor (Giuliani) and on and on with all this Republican crap. Big turnoff, but he was way too cute to be completely turned off at that moment.

Ever hear the term “bossy bottom?” That’s what this guy was— kind of macho and kind of take charge but he knew exactly what he wanted and it was to get screwed. Perfect. I didn’t want to hurt him so I took out a tube of lidocaine and a tube of lubricant. But then he really pissed me off with some aggressive Republican propaganda about Bill Clinton. So I threw away both tubes and was less of a gentleman than I have always been.

There was a problem there. It was meant to be a one-night stand (one afternoon-stand) and he kind of fell in love with… well not really with me, but with the rough sex. I walked him to his monstrous SUV and expected to never see him again—regardless of how beautiful he looked. I mean once you see someone on the inside, it doesn’t matter anymore. But he kept calling. I saw him again a couple times and we finally parted as friends— which is other story. But I brought him up today because he works on Capitol Hill and he offered me some insight into why McCarthy lost the roll calls and will— according to him (presumably according to his boss)-- never be speaker.

We spoke on the phone. He told me it’s because of Netanyahu. Huh? What’s that got to do with it? “No one trusts McCarthy. They all think he’s a sleaze and he’ll say anything to anyone who he’s talking to at the moment… He’ll promise two people the same position within 10 minutes of each other and not even understand that they talk and it gets around. It’s like Netanyahu. No one trusts him either.”

I didn’t get it. He explained. The Republicans in the House have been following developments in Israel more closely than I have been. Netanyahu promised the extremists (Shas and Religious Zionist) that he would give the job of Knesset speaker to someone not named Amir Ohana. And then he turned around and gave Ohana the job. Ohana talked about his husband and their children from the podium and the far right homophobic Haredi— part of the coalition— went ape shit. There were LITERALLY Knesset deputies— medieval-looking characters— banging their heads on their desks while Ohana spoke. These people are vicious, vicious monsters— worse than American evangelical-MAGA nuts. The worst. He sent me this piece from the Times of Israel: “Jerusalem’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, said Sunday that it was ‘unbearable’ that an openly gay man, Likud lawmaker Amir Ohana, was made Knesset speaker and sharply criticized the religious parliamentarians who supported his appointment. ‘This whole thing with the abominations— today they’re glorified. For shame. Such a disgrace,’ said Amar, a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, in widely distributed recordings of a recent lecture. ‘Woe to the ears that hear of such things. It is unbearable. They appoint them to roles that are considered lofty. They have lost all of their shame,’ he said, without mentioning Ohana by name.”

So my Republican friend— who’s almost middle-aged now, and married— explained that several of the members think McCarthy is just like Netanyahu and is equally untrustworthy and can’t be given the Speakers job. Some of them really want a crazed ideologue like Jordan and some of them just don’t want McCarthy. He suggested I read Tuesday’s Bulwark but didn’t send a link to which story he was recommending. I couldn’t find anyone mentioning Netanyahu but both Charlie Sykes (Welcome to the MAGA Crackup) and Tim Miller (Never Trumpers Understood Kevin McCarthy’s Conference Better Than He Did) had hilarious pieces up. Skyes called what his old party did yesterday “a shitshow for the ages from an unruly, dysfunctional political party that is obviously not all that interested in governing.” He called yesterday “a fitting culmination of McCarthy’s years-long campaign of self-humiliation. Time after time, the man who would be speaker tried to shrink himself into the office, and is ending his bid by offering multiple concessions to the bomb-throwers in the caucus who will hold him hostage if he survives… [I]t’s chaos either way, isn’t it? McCarthy is a hollow man and a weak leader, and his caucus is now in the process of testing just how weak he is. One of the most powerful speakers in House history is about to be replaced by one of the puniest.”

If you think that was mean, Miller began by noting that “For years Kevin McCarthy, a blow-dried, donor-class Republican, has tried to maintain a hold on his increasingly bedraggled, QAnon-class conference by prostrating himself before Donald Trump— in increasingly ostentatious ways, so as to prove to his flock that he was an authentic convert to the One True Church of MAGA. McCarthy calculated that this public self-abasement would be worth it because he would be rewarded in the end with the gavel and bust he had long coveted. This afternoon he was rewarded instead with the type of humiliation we have not seen on the House floor in a century: Being forced to smirk through repeated public beatings at the hands of his own members.”

On Fox News on Tuesday morning, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) expressed dismay over his Republican colleagues’ opposition to McCarthy, calling their actions “petty” and “childish,” and venting about how they are more concerned about notoriety than governing.

No shit, Sherlock. We’re all looking around to try to find out how that happened!

How might the new Republican conference have attracted these charlatans and con men and peacocking blowhards, I wonder?

McCarthy and Crenshaw and their ilk convinced themselves that they could throw in with the world’s biggest grifter, tell lie after lie (after lie) to their own voters, campaign for a boat of shithouse rats so crazy that they make yesterday’s crazies blush— and at the end be rewarded with their loyal support.

Absurd.

Their time was going to come eventually. For My Kevin, it appears that time is today.

Even Trump seems to have abandoned him. Asked if he’s still supporting McCarthy, all he said was “We’ll see what happens… I got everybody calling me wanting my support. But let’s see what happens and we’ll go— I got everybody calling, wanting my support. That’s all I can say. But we’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out.”