Well, I’m officially not scared of the Freedom Caucus anymore.
The big losers in this debt deal? Not Joe Biden, by a long shot. Politically, he’s the biggest winner. Not Kevin McCarthy. He did what politicians normally do—he cut a deal—and he’s still the speaker. Not the Democratic Party’s left; 46 of them voted against the bill, but that was all orchestrated so that some Democrats could protest the cuts in the deal while Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made sure the party as a whole backed their president. I’m certain Pramila Jayapal, the House Progressive Caucus chair who voted “no,” supports Joe Biden no less fully today than she did yesterday.
No—the losers are the Freedom Caucus. Remember six months ago? Two months ago? They were going to kill this deal, submarine their own speaker, cost him his job, and send the country into default and the world into economic chaos. They held all the cards. They drew blood out of McCarthy’s flesh during the speakership vote and held the sword of Damocles over his head. The conventional wisdom, which I believed along with everybody else, was that the red-hot backbenchers were going to foment a coup against McCarthy if he dared to cut a deal with the enemy.
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