Faced with one of the nastiest political train wrecks in modern memory, America's conservative media stalwarts responded this week with recrimination, regret, reflection — and at least one suggestion that House Republican stalwarts might find solace, and a new leader, by getting good and drunk.
A week of party infighting over who should be the next speaker unspooled on live television even as much of the media establishment on the right coalesced around Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California lawmaker who has coveted the House's top job for years.
Even former President Donald Trump and a supermajority of hosts and guests on Fox News — the most powerful platform on the political right — could not provide the leverage that McCarthy needed to win the 218 votes needed to make him speaker.
