Dana Milbank recaps future "mis-speaker" Kevin McCarthy's speech delivered yesterday to a flock of flighty neoconservatives. Some of the tortured oratorical highlights:
"We must engage this war of radical Islam if our life depended on it because it does," [McCarthy] opined.
"I have visited Poland, Hungria, Estonia," he said, and also "visited in our, uh, the allies in the Arab Gulf."
McCarthy called for "an effective politically strategy to match the military strategy," and he lamented that "we have isolated Israel while bolding places like Iran." He blamed President Obama’s White House for "putting us in tough decisions for the future," but he voiced hope that a "safe zone would create a stem the flow of refugees."
Russia’s hybrid warfare became "high-bred warfare."
Kevin McCarthy may well become constitutionally second in line to the presidency; or, more directly, the House's reincarnation of the Oval Office's predecessor.
Milbank observed that "With the death of Yogi Berra, the new speaker may become the most famous mis-speaker in America. But in a sense, it may not matter what he says, because his colleagues won’t be listening to him anyway."
Upon reading that, I was about to object by counter-observing that McCarthy's muddlement is precisely the kind of conservative genius that would warrant heedful respect from his colleagues. This observation, however, was unnecessary. Milbank was ahead of me. "[McCarthy's] garbled language, by confusing everybody, could help him blur the differences within his caucus."