SMRs and AMRs

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

The Disturbing Prospect of Trey Gowdy as Majority Leader

By Andrew Rosenthal
September 29, 2015 2:52 pm NYT

The choice House Republicans make to replace John Boehner as speaker will say a lot about how the party is going to handle its current identity crisis. Will it finally take governing seriously, or will it go on using its majority in Congress to shut down the government, hold show votes on health care reform, stymie President Obama and try to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president?

The current conventional wisdom holds that the leading candidate is the majority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California. Mr. McCarthy, at least, said on Monday that it is time to stop “governing by crisis,” and that he would look for “the most conservative solution I can find.” That might, possibly, hint that he is open to compromise.

His promotion, however, would leave the majority leader spot open. And, as Jennifer Steinhauer reports today, some in the party are hoping to elevate Trey Gowdy to that position.

Mr. Gowdy, of South Carolina, was elected in 2010 and built a reputation sponsoring marginal and often bizarre bits of legislation, like the 2014 bill that would allow the House of Representatives to sue the president of the United States if it did not like the way the president was enforcing the law.

He’s a big supporter of repealing the Affordable Care Act and, of course, of denying federal money to Planned Parenthood.

(More here.)

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