I Didn't Want Carlos Gimenez to Vote for McCarthy, But I Understand Why He Did

Let me start by saying I would be more than happy to see the speaker’s gavel in Jim Jordan’s hand and House Republicans uniting around him.

But sadly, this did not happen in the first round of voting because twenty Republicans voted against him, including Florida’s own Representative Carlos Gimenez, who voted to put Kevin McCarthy back in.

Prior to the first round of voting, Rep. Gimenez went on Fox News to explain why he remains loyal to McCarthy, which I wrote about for The Floridian. Basically, he said it does not make sense for eight Republicans who allied with the Democrats to be able to override the will of the other 210 Republicans.

“Look, eight Republicans voted with 208 Democrats to oust the speaker of the House, our speaker that we supported by 96%. And so I think the way out of this is to go back to the future, I guess, and just reinstate Kevin McCarthy. Looking for a new leader makes no sense whatsoever,” said Rep. Gimenez.

“But a vote for McCarthy is a vote for Hakeem Jeffries,” you might say, to which Gimenez responded, “The only way that Jeffries can become speaker of the House is because of the chaos that was caused by Matt Gaetz.”

You have to admit, he does have a point, and the Democrats voted for Jeffries in Borg-like fashion as we all knew they would, and no Republican voted for him either.

As a reminder, the House was working against the clock to pass a budget prior to a government shutdown when Matt Gaetz merrily chucked a bomb labeled “motion to vacate” in the middle of it right as House Republicans were trying to finish up a series of appropriations bills aimed at countering the Biden agenda.

Maybe Gaetz did it as a form of karma for the House taking an August recess when they could have been working on those bills, but now that we’re on the brink of war because Hamas decided to launch a barbaric terror attack against Israel a week after McCarthy’s booting it is a case of extraordinarily bad timing in hindsight.

At least when it took 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to be put in, nothing too pressing was happening, but now there is. You can say it was petty of those Republicans who kept voting against McCarthy to keep it going for that long, but now is not the time for revenge by being equally petty.

That is the mistake Gimenez is making by refusing to budge, especially when, as Elizabeth MacDonald pointed out during the segment, most of America is ready to move on from this stuff and get things done.

She cited AP/NORC, which showed that 61% of respondents polled disapproved of Biden and 67% disapproved of the economy’s performance. Another poll not cited by MacDonald showed 64% of respondents said the government is spending too much money (and half said too much was going to Ukraine), and 68% disapproved of how Biden is handling the budget. At the same time, there was no majority of people who trusted either party to handle the budget.

So if Republicans want to hang on to this razor-thin majority they have in 2024 (or grow it) and stand up to the radical left hellbent on destroying this country, they will need to quit this bickering and get behind someone (again, Jordan) and vote them in, because all they are doing right now is handing the Democrats more seats (or, God forbid, the White House) on a silver platter.

People like seeing their political party acting unified in times of crisis, and so far, Republicans haven’t been able to do that.