The surprising ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker of the House deeply alarmed the Washington, D.C., establishment. While many Republican congressional leaders have lost their positions, it was the first time such a removal occurred via a motion to vacate the chair.
The outrage was directed less at the 208 Democrats who voted to remove McCarthy and more at the eight Republicans who did. The media and other permanent Beltway inhabitants asserted that American life itself was thrown into chaos by the vote.
“Kevin McCarthy voted out: How the House chaos affects you,” promised Yahoo! News‘ Christopher Wilson, who asserted the use of an official parliamentary procedure to vacate the chair was somehow a “degradation of American democracy.”
