Kevin McCarthy zigged and zagged; he attacked Trump, and then embraced him; he made promises he knew he couldn’t keep, and then unashamedly broke them. Nobody on either side of the aisle trusted him. When he offered the Democrats nothing in return for their support, they cut him loose. But what now?
The next Speaker will have the same dilemma that McCarthy did; the GOP doesn’t really have a majority in the House, just as the Democrats don’t really have a majority in the Senate. The Freedom Caucus is effectively an unreliable partner in a right-wing coalition that exists only to keep the left out of power and its members on TV. The GOP cannot govern with the extremists, but it cannot keep the left out without them. It loses either way. So what happens next?
The best possible outcome for America is a bipartisan coalition involving moderates of both parties. The much more likely outcome is a GOP Speaker who uses the same tactics as McCarthy to try to keep both the endangered moderates and the extremists united. If that happens, things will only get worse.