McCarthy Explains Why Biden Must Be Impeached (SATIRE)

Why has McCarthy started the impeachment process on President Biden? Alexandria Petri helps McCarthy explain in this delicious bit of satire in The Washington Post:

Hi! House Speaker Kevin McCarthy here! Excited to answer any questions you might have about why I just announced an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Yes, you in the front! Ah, why are we impeaching him? Great question! I can’t wait to find out, either! I assume he must have done something pretty bad, if he’s getting impeached! Something dire, I bet! And I will be back to you very soon with what that thing is. He did TBD. And, of course, the terrible crime of TK TK TK! According to this piece of paper that I have here in my hand, he did “Put Something Here Before You Read This To Anyone.” So, I think that speaks volumes. Also he just gives off a corrupt vibe. Am I using that correctly? In the meantime, just close your eyes and imagine the worst thing a president could possibly have done. No, not that. That was fine, because Donald Trump is special and different. But something else bad! Well, I bet we are going to find that Joe Biden did it, or, if not, his son Hunter did. James Comer has been trying for months to investigate what he insists on referring to as the Biden Crime Family, without much luck — maybe this will be the encouragement he needs!

You know how in medicine, sometimes you have to just go in and start taking organs out while you figure out whether there’s a problem and, if so, what it is? Well, this is like that. Please don’t ask me any follow-ups: I am clearly an expert on medicine! I am a male Republican legislator, the best kind of medical expert there is, and one trusted even more than doctors in many states!

All I know is, people keep asking me to impeach him. Impeachment is something we undertake only for serious crimes and misdemeanors, or because the president is a Democrat and that makes us mad. In that case you can get impeached for reasons such as “Marjorie Taylor Greene asked nicely.” No, I’m sorry. We would never undertake something as serious as an impeachment inquiry for frivolous reasons! That would cheapen it and make it political. We would do it only if the fate of the country were at stake, or it was a Tuesday and we were feeling bored.

Look at it another way. Donald Trump got impeached twice. Donald Trump was the best president in our lifetime, and the second-best president in Joe Biden’s lifetime. (This is a joke about Joe Biden’s age!) So, why would Biden get impeached any fewer times than the most perfect president ever to govern? We owe him at least four impeachments.

No, this claim that Joe Biden is corrupt and diabolical in as-yet-unspecified ways has nothing to do with my other line of attack on Joe Biden, that he is too advanced in years to govern and could not conspire his way out of a paper bag. There is no contradiction here.

Yes, what? Oh, no. I expect that this will be covered with a surprising amount of seriousness by the political media. Please headline any coverage of this something like “We Guess Joe Biden Did Something Worth Impeaching And We Can’t Wait To Learn What It Was.” Or “Republicans Impeaching Joe Biden — For Some Reason, We Have To Think.” Don’t put anything in the headline about how it’s “Just For Funsies” or “Because I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.”

Yes, last question! Is the government going to shut down? Great question! I will say what I always say when people ask me that, as they now seem to do every few weeks: AAAAA STOP ASKING ME THAT, YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE. I thought throwing this inquiry into the mix might help! I mean, I undertook it with all seriousness because the country is in danger. (Is it helping, though?) 

McCarthy - Stop The Extremists & Pass A Budget W/Dems

From The Washington Post editorial board: 

The U.S. government will almost certainly shut down on Oct. 1, the work of ultraconservative holdouts who want to “burn the whole place down,” as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) put it. Yet, for now, Mr. McCarthy does not appear willing to take away the matches. He could sideline the objectors by calling House Democrats and agreeing to pass bipartisan legislation to fund the government. . . .

 The resisters had plenty of chances to bargain, and they have refused. They won’t even approve a defense bill that has everything in it they want. And even if legislation passed the House, the Democratic-controlled Senate would reject it.

Those Democrats have good reason to object to House GOP spending-cut proposals. President Biden and Mr. McCarthy agreed in May to a 2024 and 2025 budget outline that includes some spending cuts (about$180 billion worth of savings in those two years). But the holdouts demand more — and big — cuts. They argue a government shutdown is better than approving a bipartisan budget.

If the objectors’ goal is to control government spending, as they claim, forcing a destabilizing and expensive shutdown over what amounts to only about 10 percent of the federal budget is counterproductive. They don’t want to touch Social Security or Medicare. They refuse to discuss tax policy. They want to increase spending on defense, veterans aid and border control. Their deep concern about federal spending falls entirely on a portion of the “nondefense discretionary” budget, which funds education, transportation, science research, policing, parks, support for low-income Americans and other popular programs.

Meanwhile, a shutdown would hurt the economy. Historically, consumer confidence drops during shutdowns. This could be especially harmful now, as consumers and businesses pull back on spending and banks issue fewer loans. It would also demoralize federal workers at a time when many agencies are struggling to recruit. And it would reaffirm why Fitch downgraded U.S. debt last month, a decision owing largely to political dysfunction. Moody’s — the only one of the three major credit rating agencies that has not downgraded U.S. debt — has already warned a shutdown would be a “negative” in its assessment.

In an ideal world, the House and Senate would pass the necessary 12 agency budget bills by Sept. 30. But that has rarely happened this century; instead, federal budgeting usually involves smashing funding bills into one big package and passing it at the last minute — perhaps after lawmakers have given themselves an extension. That is the only realistic course now: passing a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running until December to give lawmakers time to debate and advance a full 2024 budget. The Senate is expected to approve a bipartisan “CR” by this weekend, a deal far from what the House GOP holdouts are demanding.

There is discussion of a discharge petition in the House, through which a majority of members — Democrats and some Republicans — could force a vote on a CR without Mr. McCarthy’s approval. In return for signing such a petition, moderate Republicans could insist that a bipartisan debt commission be included in any compromise deal. They could also push for Ukraine aid and other supplemental funding requests from the White House to be offset by revenue increases or spending trims elsewhere. At some point, moderate lawmakers from both parties, who represent a much broader swath of the country than the ultra-partisans, have to retake control of the legislative process.

Yet, it is hard for even the most frustrated of moderate Republicans to break ranks with their party leadership by signing on to a discharge petition. Until that changes, Mr. McCarthy is in charge, and the speaker is worried he could lose his job if he strikes a deal with Democrats to pass a CR, because the resisters would move to oust him. He should tell them, “Good luck.” Eventually, he will have to. The only way out of this impasse — in which Republicans control just one chamber of one of the two branches of government responsible for budgeting — involves bipartisan agreement.

Mr. McCarthy can’t lead the Freedom Caucus holdouts to accept this reality. But he can win over the public by putting the nation first, standing with the majority of his own party and getting a deal done — with Democratic votes.

McCarthy Is Weak & Lets Extremists Run The House

The following is by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

The speaker of the House is the only congressional officer mentioned in the Constitution, other than a temporary Senate officer to preside when the vice president can’t. The speaker’s job isn’t defined, but surely it includes passing legislation that keeps the federal government running.

But Kevin McCarthy, the current speaker, isn’t doing that job. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to see how he can pass any bill maintaining federal funding, let alone one the Senate, controlled by Democrats, will agree to. So we seem to be headed for a federal shutdown at the end of this month, with many important government activities suspended until further notice.

Why? McCarthy is a weak leader, especially compared with Nancy Pelosi, his formidable predecessor. But even a superb leader would probably be unable to transcend the dynamics of a party that has been extremist for a generation but has now gone beyond extremism to nihilism.

And yes, this is a Republican problem. Any talk about dysfunction in “Congress,” or “partisanship,” simply misinforms the public. Crises like the one McCarthy now faces didn’t happen under Pelosi, even though she also had a very narrow majority. I’ll come back to that contrast. First, let me make a different comparison — between the looming shutdown of 2023 and the shutdowns of 1995-96, when Newt Gingrich was speaker.

If you had told me back then that I’d someday hold up Gingrich as a model of rationality, I wouldn’t have believed you. But hear me out.

Back in 1995, while Gingrich’s tactics — his willingness to employ blackmail as a political strategy — were new and dangerous, he had an actual policy goal: He wanted to force major cuts in federal spending.

Furthermore, Gingrich tried to go where the money was. The federal government is an insurance company with an army: The great bulk of nonmilitary spending is on the big safety-net programs, that is, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And Gingrich in fact sought deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

He didn’t get them, and the government’s role in promoting health insurance coverage eventually expanded greatly — although Medicare has been surprisingly successful at containing costs. Still, Gingrich’s goals were at least coherent.

McCarthy, in his desperate efforts to appease his party’s hard-liners, has acted as if their refusal to approve federal funding is a Gingrich-like demand for reduced federal spending. He tried to pass a continuing resolution — a bill that would temporarily keep the money flowing — that involved deep cuts to certain parts of the federal government.

But there are three notable aspects to this attempt. First, even if he had managed to pass that resolution, it would have been dead on arrival in the Senate.

Second, unlike Gingrich back then, McCarthy tried to go where the money isn’t, slashing nonmilitary discretionary spending. That’s a fairly small part of the federal budget. It’s also a spending category that has already been subject to more than a decade of austerity, ever since President Barack Obama made concessions to Republicans during the debt ceiling confrontation of 2011. There just isn’t any significant blood to be gotten out of this stone.

Finally, even this extreme proposal wasn’t extreme enough for Republican hard-liners. I liked what one representative told Politico: “Some of these folks would vote against the Bible because there’s not enough Jesus in it.” The point is that the party’s right wing isn’t actually interested in governing; it’s all about posturing, and the budget fight is a temper tantrum rather than a policy dispute.

If the G.O.P. were anything like a normal party, McCarthy would give up on the right-wingers, gather up the saner Republican representatives — it would be misleading to call them “moderates” — and make a deal with Democrats. But that would almost surely cost him the speakership, and in general more or less the whole G.O.P. is terrified of the hard-liners, so the party’s positions end up being dictated by its most extreme faction.

As I said, all of this is very different from what happens on the other side of the aisle. You still sometimes see analyses that treat Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right as equivalent, but they’re nothing alike. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is, in fact, interested in policy; it tries to push the party’s leadership in its direction, but it’s willing to take what it can get. That’s why Pelosi, with only a narrow majority during Biden’s first two years, was nonetheless able to get enacted landmark bills on infrastructure, climate and technology, while McCarthy can’t even keep the government running.

Now, a protracted shutdown would be highly disruptive, and if past confrontations are a guide, the public would blame Republicans — which is what led Gingrich to back down in the 1990s. But it’s not clear that McCarthy, or whoever replaces him if he’s overthrown, would be willing or even able to make a deal that reopens the government. How does this end? 

McCarthy Cannot Control The House GOP Caucus

 

This is part of an excellent op-ed by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post:

What a gas!

A week ago, Speaker Kevin McCarthy was king of the world. “Tonight we all made history,” the California Republican announced after the bipartisan debt deal sailed through the House. “There’s a whole new day here,” he proclaimed.

He then proceeded to do the legislative equivalent of slipping on a banana peel, pulling down the drapes, knocking over a fully laden buffet and face-planting into the wedding cake.

Just six days after his triumph, a small band of right-wing zealots who opposed the debt deal used parliamentary tactics to bring proceedings on the House floor to a halt, in the first protest of its kind in more than two decades. They shut down the House for a couple of hours, then for the entire day, then for the next day. After 6 p.m. on Wednesday, House GOP leaders surrendered to the saboteurs with a whip notice: “Members are advised that votes are no longer expected in the House this week. … Thank you all for your patience.”

The mutineers were in command of the ship. They blamed McCarthy for betraying them. McCarthy blamed Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Scalise blamed McCarthy. Negotiations went nowhere. And the People’s House ceased to function.

McCarthy Destroys The House To Become Speaker

 

The following is just part of an excellent op-ed by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post:

This is what happens when a political party, year after year, systematically destroys the norms and institutions of democracy. This is what happens when those expert at tearing things down are put in charge of governing. The dysfunction has been building over years of government shutdowns, debt-default showdowns and other fabricated crises, and now anti-government Republicans used their new majority to bring the House itself to a halt.

This is insurrection by other means: Two years to the day since the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, Republicans are still attacking the functioning of government. McCarthy opened the door to the chaos by excusing Donald Trump’s fomenting of the attack and welcoming a new class of election deniers to his caucus. Now he’s trying to save his own political ambitions by agreeing to institutionalize the chaos — not just for the next two years but for future congresses as well.

On Thursday, the day McCarthy failed on an 11th consecutive ballot to secure the speakership, he formally surrendered to the 21 GOP extremists denying him the job. He agreed to allow any member of the House to force a vote at will to “vacate” his speakership — essentially agreeing to be in permanent jeopardy of losing his job. He agreed to put rebels on the Rules Committee, giving them sway over what gets a vote on the House floor, and in key committee leadership posts. He agreed to unlimited amendments to spending bills, inviting two years of mayhem. He agreed to other changes that make future government shutdowns and a default on the national debt more likely, if not probable.

Perhaps worst of all, the McCarthy-aligned super PAC, the Conservative Leadership Fund, agreed that it would no longer work against far-right extremists in the vast majority of Republican primaries — a move sure to increase the number of bomb throwers in Congress. Essentially, McCarthy placated the crazies in his caucus by giving up every tool he (or anybody) had to maintain order in the House.

Finally, on the 15th ballot early Saturday morning, McCarthy’s abject surrender secured him the speakership, at least temporarily. But it was the most pyrrhic of victories. To save himself, he sacrificed the Congress itself. The saboteurs won. . . .

Finally, after four full days of chaos capped by intra-GOP fisticuffs and Republicans voting down their own motion to adjourn, McCarthy claimed the gavel. But by then his fate had become unimportant, because whoever occupies the speaker’s chair will now be irrelevant. McCarthy’s surrender has condemned the House to two years — or more — of anarchy.

GOP's Commitment To America Is Platitudes - Not A Plan

 The GOP revealed its "Commitment To America" last week. It was supposed to be a plan for what the Republicans would do if elected. Sadly, it was just a list of vague platitudes and nothing else. Here is what the editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch thought of it:

Despite its stated purpose, the vague and cynical “Commitment to America” that top House Republicans unveiled with fanfare last week wasn’t actually intended to tell the country what the GOP would do if it regains power. The party’s list of platitudes revealed more about its intentions than it intended to. The manifesto provides the latest evidence that the party stands for consolidation of its own power — and pretty much nothing else.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s “Commitment” is an unabashed attempt to recapture the midterm momentum similar to what Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, did in 1994 with his “Contract with America,” which helped Republicans win the House that year.

Gringrich’s contract was a list of catchy phrases that appealed to conservative voters’ emotions (most of which, thankfully, never made it into law), but it had the virtue of specificity. For example, it promised to require a three-fifths House majority to pass tax hikes, impose the first-ever term limits on House members, prohibit welfare to minor mothers and pass a balanced-budget amendment. The plan included 10 fully written pieces of legislation addressing fiscal policy, crime, job creation, tort reform, House rules and more.

As counterproductive, short-sighted and often cruel as much of Gingrich’s policy agenda was, it was at least an actual, actionable agenda. Contrast that to most of what McCarthy and his inner circle offered last week.

McCarthy’s plan would strengthen the economy by curbing “wasteful government spending” (like what?) and passing “pro-growth” tax policies. Meaning, more tax cuts for the rich? It doesn’t say.

Its crime-fighting plan is to hire 200,000 more cops, with no word on how that would be paid for or other details. The plan’s similarly non-specific vow to “save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare” is especially insulting coming from a party that routinely threatens the stability of both.

Among the few somewhat specific promises in the plan is to promote voter ID laws and “accurate voter rolls,” which is effectively code for the kind of vote-obstruction efforts the party has already undertaken around the country. The plan’s only reference to the abortion issue roiling so much of America today is a vow to “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.” Does that mean a nationwide abortion ban? Anyone’s guess.

McCarthy’s game here is obvious: With Republicans no longer looking at a cakewalk to the majority in the midterms thanks to widespread fury over the party’s threat to abortion rights and its continued fealty to an increasingly unhinged ex-president, he’s looking for a way to rally the base while pretending to have a specific agenda to present to the rest of the country.

A party that won’t say, in detail, what it will do with power either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want the country to know. Either possibility should be viewed by the voters as disqualifying.

The Best Friends The Virus Has Are Republicans

 

The following post is by Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

The Republican Party is a pro-infection party. From their support of lax Covid-19 safety measures to their tantrums over social media crackdowns on misinformation, Republicans have shown they believe the unfettered passage of dangerous material — be it viral content or a literal virus — is their right.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made that clear once again Monday with his statement supporting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after Twitter banned her personal account for violating its Covid misinformation policy.

“Diversity of opinion is the lifeblood of our democracy,” claimed McCarthy, R-Calif. “And yet that fundamental American value is under assault by Big Tech — entities that have amassed more power and more control over more speech than any other institution in history.”

In typical fashion, McCarthy was merely shilling for an extremist in his party who was rightly punished for misconduct. Greene, of course, wasn’t banned for sharing “diverse” opinions — she was banned for sharing harmful misinformation. Specifically, she falsely tweeted about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths” and shared a misleading chart designed to make the vaccine seem dangerous.

Twitter told the true story in a statement to NBC News:

We permanently suspended the account you referenced (@mtgreenee) for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy.

A day later, Facebook also banned Greene — this time, temporarily — for peddling Covid misinformation. The suspensions clearly weren’t about free speech, contrary to McCarthy’s claim. Greene wasn’t sharing her food recipes (which I'd assume are unpalatable in their own way). She was sharing dangerous misinformation despite repeated warnings.

But Republicans reject these efforts to curb misinformation in the same way they reject efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus: with a fundamental belief that their personal freedoms should trump public safety. 

McCarthy Lies Repeatedly In His Fox News Interview

It looks like Donald Trump has created a template for other Republicans to follow. They don't even bother with telling the truth anymore, but tell whatever lies they think will fool people into supporting them. A good example is Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In a recent interview on Fox News, he told five lies in a seven minute period. And these weren't little white lies. They were huge and outrageous lies!

Here, from CNN.com, are the lies he told followed by the truth:

1. Trying to liken President Joe Biden's tenure to the 1970s era of former President Jimmy Carter, which was beset by inflation and oil-related challenges, McCarthy claimed that oil prices are now "the highest that we have seen." 

Facts First: McCarthy was wrong. Oil prices under Biden are not even close to the highest we have ever seen. Crude prices peaked in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush -- more than double their level at the time McCarthy's interview aired Sunday. Crude prices were also higher at various points under Republican President Donald Trump than they were on Sunday.

2. McCarthy claimed that there is now "inflation at a number we have not seen." He then described the Biden era as "Jimmy Carter on steroids."

Facts First: McCarthy was wrong again. While inflation was at a 13-year high in June and July, at a seasonally adjusted 5.3% on a year-over-year basis, it is not even close to the highest we have ever seen and not even close to the level of the late Carter era. Inflation was more than twice as high in every month of 1980 than it was in June and July of this year; its 1980 peak was 14.6%.

3. Speaking about congressional Democrats, McCarthy asked, "Why aren't they protecting the border from those 5,000 prisoners who have just left Afghanistan and -- have the hope of coming across our borders?"

Facts First: There is no basis for McCarthy's claim that 5,000 former prisoners have "just left Afghanistan" with the hope of coming to the US. And McCarthy neglected to mention that it was President Donald Trump's own 2020 deal with the Taliban -- a deal McCarthy had positive words about at the time -- in which the US agreed to let up to 5,000 Afghan prisoners go free.

4. After Bartiromo pressed McCarthy about making sure future elections are free and fair, and mentioned states that are changing their voting laws, McCarthy said, "We have watched state after state where Democrats have left the state. That is where the real difficulty lies. But now we have got them back into Texas."

Facts First: It's not true that Democrats have left "state after state" to prevent Republicans from passing changes to voting laws. Texas is the only state whose Democratic legislators left the state under Biden or Trump to deny Republicans the minimum attendance needed to pass elections legislation.

5. McCarthy said Democrats' new elections bill "would ban ID voting." (McCarthy was more explicit on Twitter on Tuesday, tweeting that the Democratic agenda is to "ban voter ID in every state.")

Facts First: It's not true that Democrats' elections bill would ban voter ID. Specifically, the Democratic bill would not prohibit states from having voter identification laws and would not prohibit states from checking the IDs of in-person voters. Rather, it would require states to give voters an alternative to showing the ID the states normally demand -- specifically, to allow voters who do not show that ID to instead submit signed statements under penalty of perjury attesting to their identity and eligibility to vote.

McCarthy Tries To Harm Jan. 6th Committee With His Picks

We have known who the Democrats were on the January 6th Investigation Select Committee for a couple of weeks now, and one Republican (Liz Cheney - picked by Speaker Pelosi). But Minority Leader McCarthy has dragged his feet in choosing the five Republicans who will join the committee. 

He has finally made his choices, and it seems obvious that he has picked members that will obstruct rather than investigate the January 6th seditious riots. His choices are Joe Banks (Indiana), Kelly Armstrong (North Dakota), Rodney Davis (Illinois), Jim Jordan (Ohio), and Troy Nehls (Texas).

I have no quarrel with Armstrong and Davis. They voted against impeaching Donald Trump, but did vote to certify the 2020 election results. I disagree with them on almost all policy matters, but we need five Republicans on the committee, and they are probably as good as can be expected among available Republicans.

The same cannot be said of the other three picks. All three of them not only voted against impeaching Trump, but also voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election. They were among the people who supported Trump's big lie, and in effect, gave their blessing to the rioters who wanted to stop the election's certification. 

Jordan is the worst one of all. He doesn't seem to think his job is to legislate for the good of the country. Instead, he is a bomb-thrower -- trying to obstruct and destroy the legislative efforts of others. He has no business being on this important committee.

At the very least, Speaker Pelosi should ban Jordan from serving on the committee, and personally, I think she should also ban Banks and Nehls. They weren't picked to help find the truth, but to prevent the truth from being revealed.

Voters See Biden As Most Bipartisan - GOP Leaders As Least

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done between May 18th and 20th of a national sample of 1,994 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

It shows that a majority of voters think President Biden cares about getting bipartisan support. They also see GOP leaders (McConnell and McCarthy) as being the least caring about bipartisanship.

That may make McConnell and McCarthy look good to the Trump-loving base of the Republican Party, but it doesn't impress the Independents (who will decide the 2022 election results).

Outlook Is Not Good For Committee To Investigate Jan 6th

A few days ago, I wrote that the January 6th Investigation Committee had a fatal flaw. The flaw was that the committee was made up of five Democrats and five Republicans -- and it took six votes to issue a subpoena.

Since then, things have just gotten worse. A couple of days ago, Kevin McCarthy (House Minority Leader) came out public against the committee. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell (Senate Minority Leader) did the same.

This is bad, because it's McCarthy and McConnell that are supposed to choose the five Republican members of the committee. Even if the committee is approved and establish by Congress, it is likely that McCarthy and McConnell will choose the more radical members of their party to sit on it (people like Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, David Clyde, Ron Johnson, or Rand Paul). 

That would mean no subpoena could be issued to a Republican - especially those who were involved with the rioters. And without the ability to subpoena those involved, the committee would not be able to function properly.

This was a good idea, because there needs to be a thorough investigation of the January 6th riot, but it now looks like an idea that is doomed to failure!
 

Party Leaders - Dems Viewed More Favorably Than GOP

The chart above reflects the results of a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 15th and 18th of a national sample of 1,239 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error. 

The survey asked registered voters whether they viewed the national party leaders favorably or unfavorably. President Joe Biden was the only leader to be viewed favorably by a majority of voters. He had a 7 point margin of favorable over unfavorable. It was the opposite for Donald Trump, who had 6 point ,margin of unfavorable over favorable.

When it came to congressional leaders, none of them had a majority viewing them favorably. But Nancy Pelosi was viewed 12 points more favorably than Kevin McCarthy, and Chuck Schumer was viewed 12 points more favorably than Mitch McConnell.

Mitch McConnell was viewed least favorably among all the leaders. Only 26% viewed him favorably, while 61% viewed him unfavorably.

Pelosi's Job Approval Is Highest Of Political Leaders

This poll is not going to make Donald Trump happy. While his job approval rating has dropped after the government shutdown fiasco, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's job approval has risen. In fact, her job approval is the highest of any of the political leaders in Washington -- Pelosi (42%), Trump (37%), Schumer (31%), McConnell (24%), and McCarthy (21%).

Speaker Pelosi is also the only one of these leaders that does not have a negative net approval rating (figured by subtracting disapproval from approval). While she has a net approval rating of 0, Trump's is negative 16, Schumer's is negative 11, McCarthy's is negative 10, and McConnell's is negative 21.

I think the public is happy that finally there is someone with the intelligence, power, and political know-how to stand up to Trump.

The chart above uses information in a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 27th and 29th of a national sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

Democrats Have Much Better Net Favorable Rating

The chart above uses information in the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 12th and 15th of a national sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

It shows the net favorability rating of the two parties and their leaders. Net favorability is determined by subtracting unfavorable percentage from the favorable percentage.

Both parties and all their leaders are in negative numbers (meaning more view them unfavorably than favorably), but Democrats are viewed more favorably than Republicans. The Democratic Party has a negative 3 net favorability, while the Republican Party has a negative 26.

The same is true of their leaders. Pelosi and Schumer both have a negative 12. McCarthy has a negative 10, but that is because twice as many people don't know enough about him to rate him than know about Pelosi. The two most unfavorable are McConnell (negative 26) and Trump (negative 17).

And McConnell, Trump, and the Republican Party are not doing themselves any good by maintaining the government shutdown.

GOP Rep. Admits Benghazi Comm. Is Just To Smear Hillary

(This caricature of Rep. Kevin McCarthy is by DonkeyHotey.)

The House Committee supposedly investigating the tragedy at Benghazi has droned on for over 72 months now (longer than any other committee hearing in congressional history), even though it was long ago established that there was no wrongdoing by our government. Why does it go on? Well, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (who is likely to be the next Speaker of the House) inadvertently told the truth -- that it is nothing more than a GOP effort to smear the good name of Hillary Clinton. Evidently he forgot the first rule of Republicanism -- never admit any of the lies being told.

Here is how McCarthy's slip of the tongue is reported by Politico:

After months of being dogged by the controversy surrounding her private email account, the 2016 Democratic contender and her supporters are taking the offensive against her congressional nemesis: the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Story Continued Below

They’re seizing on comments from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in which he boasted on national television that the panel’s work has hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls — a statement her supporters say vindicates their view that the panel is a politically motivated effort to damage her campaign.

Already, Republicans are distancing themselves from McCarthy’s remarks, even as he’s leading the race to be the next speaker of the House, and defending the panel they formed to investigate the 2012 attack on the Libya consulate. Democrats, on the other hand, have demanded that the panel be dissolved, with some Clinton allies even calling for McCarthy to abandon his bid to become speaker. . . .

On Tuesday, McCarthy bragged to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

The comments undermined House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) efforts to keep his panel’s work focused on the Benghazi attacks and stay above the political fray.

But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the disbandment of the panel, while David Brock’s Correct the Record group pounded McCarthy, demanding he withdraw his bid for speaker.

“According to the odds-on-favorite, future speaker of the House, the Benghazi special committee was put together to hurt Hillary Clinton politically,” Reid said. “This is evidence of what Democrats have said all along. … Senate Democratic Leadership sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select Committee be disbanded. It’s the right thing to do.”. . .

At the crux of the debate is whether Republicans created the committee specifically to hurt Clinton or to seriously investigate the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012.

Democrats, including Benghazi ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), call the entire committee a waste of taxpayer funds and "the longest and least productive investigation in congressional history." They note that several other committees have already probed the attacks and turned up nothing, and accuse the right of increasingly focusing on Clinton herself. . . .

“[B]y admitting — in fact sir by bragging — that the [committee] is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal,” Brock, one of Clinton’s most vocal backers, wrote to McCarthy, asking him to withdraw from the speaker's race. “It’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the [RNC]. … Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.”

There's no indication that McCarthy's comments would hurt his leadership campaign. Indeed, Cummings said Thursday he is "not naïve in thinking Republicans will cease their political attacks on Secretary Clinton” and stop their probe altogether.

But that doesn't mean they won't whip out the new ammo McCarthy served them. In an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that is set to air on MSNBC this week, Clinton called the quote “deeply distressing.”

“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise,” Clinton said, “I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but of everybody who has served our country.”