Imagine that you receive back the results of an important examination, and unfortunately, you failed. Luckily, your teacher is allowing you the opportunity to retake the assessment. But upon your second attempt, you change not a single one of your answers. Your sympathetic teacher allows you another chance, and you proceed to do the same thing thirteen more times. Now imagine that this important examination was the vote for Speaker of the House, and the senselessly constant answers are our nation’s unchanging, gridlocked representatives.

You may be wondering what idiot would fall victim to such mindless repetition. The answer is GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy. The headlines that McCarthy only managed to procure speakership after a historic fifteen attempts, and that his own PAC had poured hundreds and thousands of dollars into the campaigns of the Republicans opposing him, seem stolen straight from the front page of The Onion. Relying on Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” McCarthy ought to be straitjacketed. 

I must emphasize the truly bizarre nature of the recent proceedings in the House: McCarthy is the first party leader in nearly one hundred years to fail to procure speakership on the first vote. His ascension to the position, formerly held by Nancy Pelosi, was being blocked by a coalition of twenty of his Republican colleagues, nineteen of which are associated with the far-right Freedom Caucus and seventeen of whom received a Trump endorsement. 

The fact that Kevin McCarthy, an election denier who Trump himself has endearingly referred to as “My Kevin,” was deemed as too liberal for the support of his party speaks to a terrifying political reality within this country. Doom seems imminent with the House lodged in a child-like gridlock, and our parties radical to a parodical extent. 

Even with the major concessions that McCarthy had already made, including agreeing to place more members of the Freedom Caucus on the powerful House Rules Committee and lowering the number of members required to sponsor a resolution to force a vote on ousting the speaker, for several days, the coalition of twenty poised against him refused to budge. If party leaders are being ostracized and ridiculed because of their condemnation of the insurrection and pillaging of a national landmark, then our country is in a very dangerous place.

With 20 Republicans throwing tantrums like entitled children and McCarthy’s 15 votes making a mockery of the democratic process, the House has begun to crumble under the leadership of a ridiculed Speaker. For over a week in 2023, there was no oversight of the Biden administration, no clearance for classified information, no House rules, no payment for staff, and no legislation. Kevin McCarthy has to get his act together if Congress is to ring in the new year as an efficient and competent governing body.