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Kevin McCarthy must be the most prominent and baffling victim of Stockholm Syndrome ever. He’s effectively been taken hostage by the domestic terrorists in the far right of his conference, and even though he has the power to break the bonds, he digs himself in deeper. Each concession he makes to his captors only results in more demands—that’s how it always works if you try negotiating with terrorists. The wild part of it is that he can stop it. He might not be able to save his own professional bacon, but he could save the institution of the House of Representatives by accepting reality.
He’s not going to do that on his own. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be gearing up for the 12th failed vote in his bid to be speaker of the House. This is where his allies should come in. They could be saving him—and the House—from himself. Instead, they seem to be more interested in grousing to the gossipmongers. They persist in ruling out the solution staring them in the face: a coalition government with the Democrats.
“He needs to move several people from the ‘no’ column so he can keep the temperature down with the members who are becoming, as you well know, very impatient,” one anonymous McCarthy backer told Politico. “There is a limit to how much of this crap we can take.” Oh, really? What’s that limit? Twenty failed votes? Thirty? A month of this stalemate?
RELATED STORY: Thursday saw McCarthy losses seven through eleven. House returns at noon Friday for number twelve
