Establishment Republicans held hostage this week can look forward to even more of that in the future.
After losing 14 consecutive votes over the course of four mortifying days, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House early Saturday.
Twenty of McCarthy’s fellow Republicans—members of the hardline Freedom Caucus—had held out for a range of concessions from the incoming speaker. They included requests for some interesting aberrations from the norm, and also plenty of nonsense. Before the votes even began on Tuesday, which was supposed to be the first day of Congress, McCarthy had already agreed to
that addressed some pet concerns of the ultraconservative bloc, including a provision that would let any group of five members force a vote on ousting the speaker at any time.By the end of the ordeal, he had caved much further: In a late-Wednesday meeting that ran into Thursday morning, McCarthy agreed to give the Freedom Caucus multiple seats on the powerful Rules Committee , hold a vote on term limits for members, and allow anymember to trigger a vote to overthrow the speaker.
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