‘GROW UP!’ New York Post Cover Blasts ‘Small Group of Republican Saboteurs’ for their ‘Madness’ Opposing McCarthy’s Speaker Bid

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The New York Post blasted the “madness” of the GOP House members who are blocking Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) quest for the Speakership on Wednesday, characterizing them as a “small group of Republican saboteurs.”

Republicans won a narrow majority in the 2022 midterms, flipping power from the Democrats and setting up their party leader McCarthy to claim the Speaker’s gavel. But a group of House Republicans, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), refused to support McCarthy, denying him the 218 votes needed to officially become Speaker. So far, McCarthy’s entreaties to the GOP malcontents have fallen on deaf ears and on Tuesday three consecutive ballots failed to name a Speaker. As a result, the House of Representatives has been left treading water, with new members unable to be sworn in until a Speaker is named, no new bills able to advance, and Cheryl Johnson, the Clerk appointed by outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), left presiding over the chamber.

And the Post has had enough of this nonsense, making it clear in one of their trademark outspoken covers that lectured the Republican rebel caucus to “GROW UP!”

“Small group of Republican saboteurs blocks McCarthy from taking power,” read one headline. “Stop this madness and go after Biden,” urged columnist Michael Goodwin.

McCarthy’s failure to secure the Speakership was thwarting the House Republicans’ ability “to serve as a check on President Biden following two years of united Democratic rule in Washington,” reported the Post in detailing the chaotic GOP infighting — as well as noting how the “sneering” Democrats “had trouble disguising their satisfaction with how House Republicans were beginning their two-year mandate.”

Goodwin, who is also a Fox News contributor, was absolutely scathing in his assessment of the GOP fight, calling it “more than a personal rebuke” to McCarthy, but rather “a mark of incompetence and a worrisome sign the party is so fractured it will not be able to unite to accomplish anything of significance for the next two years.”

“Instead of being a check on the White House and the Democrat-controlled Senate and using its investigative power to probe President Biden and his family’s corrupt business deals, the chaos suggests too many Republicans are freelancing and engaged in a fools’ errand masquerading as an act of principle,” wrote Goodwin, adding that it looked like “amateur hour” because the holdouts lacked any “viable alternative to McCarthy,” since their choice, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), was supporting McCarthy.

The whole escapade was “madness,” Goodwin continued, and the opposition was “fundamentally incoherent.”

“Most important, a shootout in a lifeboat is not a persuasive argument that the party is ready to govern,” he argued.

This “clown show” was a “gift to Democrats,” and probably left Pelosi feeling “vindicated” because she had always been able to keep her caucus in line, with “The Squad” making noise but never able to actually block Democratic leadership’s agenda items.

Besides the chance the Republicans could “screw up and accidentally stumble into a scenario where [House Minority leader Hakeem] Jeffries gets elected Speaker,” the circus meant that the “Dems’ media handmaidens were giddy Tuesday as Republicans shot themselves in one foot, then reloaded to shoot themselves in the other foot.”

These “rebels without a cause” risked turning “conservatism into a punch line,” Goodwin concluded.