Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Strategic Victory

Commentary
The great debt ceiling negotiation of 2023 is over.
People will argue over how much the House Republicans got and how much President Joe Biden got in the final details of the legislation.
What people cannot refute is the narrow House Republican majority’s historic achievement of leading the debate in a city dominated by Democrats.
As I describe in my new book, “March to the Majority,” when we won in 1994, we had the momentum of the Contract with America. We had created a Republican tsunami which gained 54 seats in the House, led to Republican control of the Senate, and picked up Republican governorships and state legislatures across the country. Our 230-seat majority—and the emotional and psychological momentum of the first House GOP majority in 40 years—gave us legitimacy to force reforms. Speaker Kevin McCarthy didn’t start with that kind of momentum, but he has succeeded anyway….