In an interview with Politico, former Republican Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., described the damage to his party since Speaker Kevin McCarthy was deposed more than three weeks ago: “The chaos that’s ensued has really illuminated the divisions in the party. Not only has it illuminated them, it’s kind of deepened and hardened those divisions.”
After cannibalizing three possible successors to McCarthy, an exhausted and exasperated group of House Republicans finally settled on Rep. Mike Johnson, an obscure 51-year-old lawmaker from Louisiana whose main virtue seems to be an absence of enemies. But this thin veneer of unity cannot hide the dysfunction and disarray that Katko describes.
