Last week, the article I chose to present was about the
faux-pas of Republican candidate Kevin McCarthy for the position of Speaker of
the House. Recently, McCarthy has decided to no longer run. As Jake and Dominic
both pointed out, many speculate that his reason for dropping out of the race
is closely linked to his commentary on the Benghazi Committee and the loss of
popularity resulting from his slip up. McCarthy was assuredly the favorite to
win this race, and as of Thursday October 8th, the race is a lot
less direct. The position of Speaker of the House is very much up in the air. McCarthy’s
withdrawal from the race is interesting in that it likely confirms Democratic
suspicion of the truth in McCarthy’s slip-up about the intent in creating the
Benghazi Committee. While these suspicions have yet to be confirmed (and may
well never be), McCarthy’s actions do help in justifying the true intent of the
Committee.
After McCarthy’s resignation from the run, John Boehner,
current Speaker, postponed the elections for the position. Many are
disappointed about this decision. It doesn’t look good; moving elections simply
because the one candidate drops out of the race makes it seem like Boehner is
trying to control the outcome of the election. If this had happened on a
presidential level, the election would not have been moved at all. If it had,
there would certainly have been a much larger scale discussion on the topic.
The problem lies in that not nearly enough of the population of voting
Americans pays attention to elections of smaller scale government roles.
Although the Speaker of the House is by no means a “small scale” governmental
role, being that the Speaker is third in line for the presidency, many
Americans do not even know who the Speaker of the House is. Therefore, there is
likely not much that is going to be done about the postponing of the elections.
One house representative even argued, “They certainly wouldn’t have postponed
the election had either of the other two candidates withdrawn.” Even though it
is impossible to prove this, it very likely could have been the case.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/speaker-election-delay-stirs-conservative-anger/?dcz=
2 comments:
The fact that the person everyone thought was going to get the job, Kevin McCarthy, backed out is something that's still shocking. It was a pretty questionable move on Boehner's part to postpone the elections. It makes me wonder what, if anything, could be achieved or gained from doing this. This is definitely history in the making and it makes me wonder how people will look back on this as. As you mentioned, this sort of a thing wouldn't of happened in a presidential election. I'm even more curious to see how these elections play out now.
I agree with Mariel. What was the benefit of postponing the election? Is someone going to suddenly rise from woodwork and step up to the plate? Maybe there will be someone who will rise to the top, but right now, that seems unlikely. What are your thoughts?
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