Politico: House Republicans are dealmaking newbies -- and that's a problem

[brooklynite]

Kevin McCarthy is finally a leading player in a huge Washington drama with his gavel on the line.

But as his team sits down with President Joe Biden’s, McCarthy is confronting a handicap that even his allies acknowledge is real: Four years in the minority have left him, and the entire GOP conference, with little practice at monumental bipartisan negotiations like the current debt fight.

Before John Boehner became speaker, he worked across the aisle on a landmark education overhaul. Paul Ryan took over the House after helming a massive budget deal that even Democrats called a blueprint for future talks.

McCarthy brings a far different profile to the table. As minority leader, he was largely sidelined during the type of high-stakes talks with Democrats that he’s now helming. And while Speaker McCarthy is keeping his often-fractious members in his corner more consistently than his predecessors, his newness to the glare of White House negotiations leaves Washington without a decoder ring for his public vows that — even as the two sides stay far apart on big issues — a deal is still possible by next week.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/24/mccarthy-debt-talk-problem-biden-00098429

[no_hypocrisy]

1. To a rank amateur like McCarthy, he doesn't understand that a good negotiation

means that BOTH sides don't get EVERYTHING that they demand.

[tanyev]

2. The problem is not that they're dealmaking newbies.

The problem is that they don't want to make deals and they would rather use every single issue as an opportunity to "own" the Democrats instead of trying to accomplish something that helps people.

[StClone]

4. Holding office and beholden to those who got you there

The R backers want this evershifting, nightmare of crazy to destroy our Government as they cheer our diminished Democracy's slide into autocracy or corpocracy. Take gun violence, the arms industry billionaires love the mass slaughter as sales go up, and mentioning a law to stop gun violence, is even better for business.

[C_U_L8R]

3. He has that deer in headlights aura

An incompetent jerk.

[yankee87]

5. McCarthy leader?

Let's face it, McCarthy is not the leader, it's Greene of Jewish space lasers. I have zero confidence the McCarthy can get anything done. He has shown himself to be weak and feckless.

[diva77]

6. He reminds me of the Sean Penn character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

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