Kevin McCarthy said that if he becomes the next speaker, members of the House of Representatives will take turns reciting the Constitution in its entirety on Jan. 3, the first day of the new session. It’s a stunt apparently calculated to promote GOP members as the true constitutional guardians, as they replace Democrats as House leaders.
Republican speakers began conducting similar readings in 2011 and repeated them every year after their party won a House majority. Members generally jockey for position, vying to read the 2nd Amendment as a signal to their conservative constituents of their right-to-bear-arms credentials or the 10th Amendment to underscore their belief in limited government.
Who will get to recite Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 this time? We’d like to suggest that it be McCarthy himself.
