Kyrsten Sinema’s defection is nothing compared to Kevin McCarthy’s speaker vote nightmare

Schumer and Biden need to keep Sinema happy, but McCarthy has to keep defending the worst actions of Marjorie Taylor Greene to be speaker

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President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act on the White House South Lawn on Tuesday, flanked by many of the legislators who helped broker the bill – among them Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

Ms Sinema’s presence on the stage came despite her announcement last Friday that she would leave the Democratic Party to become an Independent. Of course, the contrarian Arizonan was a source of much frustration for the White House long before she officially defected; as Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns wrote in their book This Will Not Pass, during the negotiations for the ill-fated Build Back Better spending package, Mr Biden had as much difficulty understanding her as he did grasping his grandchildren’s use of TikTok.

At the same time, Mr Biden – to say nothing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – needs to keep Ms Sinema happy. For now, she will continue to caucus with the Democrats, which means they get a one-seat majority on Senate committees and the power to issue subpoenas. If her former party is to maintain this edge, it cannot afford a single defection from the caucus. Essentially, Mr Biden and Mr Schumer realize that the work of keeping her on side has more benefits than drawbacks.

Either way, Democratic leaders are in a much easier spot than their Republican counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. More than a month after the midterm elections, he has yet to lock in the votes he needs to become speaker. And while Democrats might have to deal with the headaches posed by Ms Sinema and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, at least they don’t have to deal with the kind of inflammatory and incendiary remarks that emanate from the more extreme corners of the House GOP conference.

Mr McCarthy has pledged that once Republicans retake the majority, extremist representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar will be put back on committees. Ms Greene has become one of Mr McCarthy’s key allies, and is key to his becoming speaker – but that means Mr McCarthy has to overlook or tacitly accept Ms Greene’s most indefensible comments.

Case in point: Over the weekend, the right-wing firebrand told the New York Young Republicans event about January 6 that “if Steve Bannon and I organized that, we would have won” and “not to mention, it would’ve been armed.” She later claimed her words were an example of “sarcasm”, and as Manu Raju at CNN later reported, Mr McCarthy took that defense at face value.

Of course, Ms Greene’s words are just the latest addition to a litany of appalling statements. Recall that earlier this year, she appeared at an event convened by noted racist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, with whom former president Donald Trump dined last month alongside Kanye West.

Meanwhile, Mr Gosar, whom the House censured after he tweeted a cartoon last year that showed a character with his face decapitating another figure mocked up as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, tweeted that he agreed with Mr Trump’s call to “terminate” the US Constitution. Like Ms Greene, Mr Gosar will likely face no ramifications from the incoming majority leadership – this despite the fact that his tweet literally contradicts the congressional oath of office to support and defend the Constitution.

Mr McCarthy’s inaction – which is itself a form of action – on this front means he will constantly be bombarded with questions about Ms Greene, Ms Gosar and other members of their ilk. Nonetheless, he appears to have resigned himself to the fact that he must cater to the most extreme elements in his party to secure the speaker’s gavel.

To throw into relief just how extreme these members are, Talking Points Memo has released a batch of texts that various House Republicans exchanged with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows while the Trump team were fighting to overturn the 2020 election. Among Mr Meadows’ correspondents was Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who wanted Mr Trump to declare martial law – and who is now one of the leading opponents of Mr McCarthy’s effort to become speaker.