No matter what one thinks of Rep. Kevin McCarthy's ouster as Speaker of the House, there's been at least one positive development. That would be multiple Democrats, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, getting kicked out of their prestigious hideaway offices within the Capitol Building.
As RedState reported, Interim Speaker Patrick McHenry immediately evicted Pelosi after the motion to vacate was passed. It wasn't long until the wailing and gnashing of teeth commenced. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell joined that chorus, decrying the supposed breach of tradition.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Let me ask you about the retaliatory action that was taken within an hour or so, taking away the ceremonial rooms of Nancy Pelosi. Speakers need offices in the Capitol and they by-- I think Pelosi let John Boehner –
BRENDAN BUCK: Well, Boehner left, but Denny Hastert had on [sic] office in the Capital—
MITCHELL: And also let Paul Ryan keep offices for a while, not sure which happened, but she did not take the rooms away and did that in the past.
BUCK: Well, Boehner and Ryan were both gone, sort of, immediately after they left the speakership, so they didn't need any space. I will confess a, maybe, unpopular opinion. I don't have any problem with Patrick McHenry taking away an office space from Nancy Pelosi. They booted—they just basically worked with Matt Gaetz to construct a coup of the Republican leadership.
MITCHELL: Well, the fact is they changed the locks while she was in San Francisco and couldn't –
BUCK: I don't think that when you participate in a coup of the Republican leadership that you should expect any professional courtesy at this point. I don’t think any—I think any collegiality goes out the door at that point. So, I know that may be unpopular, but I have absolutely no problem with that.
If you've ever seen an interview conducted by Mitchell with Pelosi, you'll understand the level of affection the former has for the latter. The MSNBC "journalist" has long drooled over the former Speaker, not only treating her with kid gloves but actively promoting her political positions.
Of course, what Mitchell isn't mentioning is that the tradition is that the most recent former Speaker gets the special hideaway office. Guess who that is? That would be McCarthy, not Pelosi.
Has Mitchell heard of the concept of sowing and reaping? Because it was Pelosi who sowed the seeds of getting herself kicked to the curb. Besides, I don't think appeals to tradition are very powerful when it was Democrats who busted tradition and helped nuke a sitting Speaker for the first time in American history.
I mean, I rarely agree with anything Ken Buck says these days, but he's right about that. Democrats expecting professional courtesy when they threw every bit of it into the trash to secure a short-term political win sounds pathetic. Do you want decorum? Then respect decorum. Do you want courtesy? Then provide courtesy. Short of that, anything goes, and McHenry's move (apparently prompted by McCarthy himself) is more than fair.
Mitchell probably knows all that, but being a hack requires her to play dumb about the matter. I'm sorry her bestie got evicted, but it only happened because Pelosi flew too close to the sun. That's on her, not McHenry for enforcing the very tradition being claimed.
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