Welcome to Douglas Wilson's The Plodcast, presented by Canon Press.

Yeah. Yes, God, God, God don't never change.

Welcome to the Plodcast. This is episode 263. My name is Douglas Wilson and I'm glad you

decided to join us. Welcome aboard. Good job. So what I'd like to talk about in this opening segment here today is the skirmish, the battle,

the controversy in the House of Representatives just now concluded as

we're recording this just now concluded where Congressman McCarthy was

finally elected as the Speaker of the House on the 15th ballot, which was a record.

I think the previous record was something like nine ballots a long, long time ago.

So this was 15 ballots.

This came about because the Republicans took the House,

but they didn't take the House by this huge landslide majority.

They took the House sort of barely or barely and a little over, which meant that about 20 conservative Republican

Congressman refused to vote for McCarthy as the Speaker of the House unless certain demands were met.

And those demands in themselves were reasonable. They did this because McCarthy has been in Washington for a long time and knows his way around. He's a very capable politician.

And there may have been some personal scores to settle in this as well.

It was not just a matter of policy.

There may have been some bad blood involved as well.

But the upshot of it was actually very good. Sort of a

mainstream Republican is now the Speaker of the House. Some would say a rhino, a Republican in name only, is the

Speaker of the House, but he has committed himself publicly to certain things, like a vote on term limits and a staffing of certain select committees with some

hard conservative or hard right congressman, giving them more representation

on certain influential committees and so on.

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