At a three-day Florida retreat, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy begged his House colleagues to close ranks and stay unified.
On Monday's day of retreating unity, in vintage McCarthyese he also gutted Rep. Liz Cheney, telling Politico that "when leaders try to go out, and not work as one team, it creates difficulties." Perhaps another difficulty is the House minority's #1 leader publicly berating the party's #3 leader.
In a further exhibit of McCarthy's self-contradictory gibberish, he first told a reporters' gaggle that Cheney's leadership tenure is properly a matter for the party's House caucus; then, getting personal, he said that "if you're sitting here at a retreat that's focused … on the future of making America in the next-century [a tautological doozy, that], and you're talking about something else, you're not being productive."
How was Liz being unproductive? By telling a couple truths, of course. On Monday she said to the New York Post, "I do think that some of our candidates who led the [Trump] charge … not to certify the election, you know, in my view, that’s disqualifying." She also told Politico, pace McCarthy, that any congressional examination of the events of Jan. 6 should focus on — the events of Jan. 6. "If we minimize what happened … and if we appease it, then we will be in a situation where every election cycle, you could potentially have another constitutional crisis."
But do keep in mind that Ms. Cheney remains a Republican through and through, thus her urge to sputter, at a retreat press conference, this whopper: "As we look at '22 and '24, we're very much going to be focused on substance and on the issues." She added that "we are the party of competence." Oh my. My, my.
In other news from the lighter side: The three-day Retreaters didn't invite Trump, compelling that Republican maiden of prodigious cogency, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to tweet: "Remember when Republicans lost the House in 2018 because a bunch of them distanced themselves from President Trump? Not inviting President Trump to the GOP retreat is the same stupid behavior."
See: Cheney, Liz; "We are the party of competence."