It appears there will be no holiday reprieve for Kevin McCarthy in his increasingly frustrated endeavor to get himself elected Speaker of the House, raising the odds for a chaotic floor battle when a new Congress convenes on January 3. Earlier this week, an aggrieved McCarthy went on the offensive by compiling a list of 54 supporters who have declared themselves “Kevin Only,” including Marjorie Taylor Greene, in an attempt to break the resistance of the five or so #NeverKevin holdouts that are effectively blocking his bid. Instead, it appears to have had the opposite of the intended effect. 

Hours after providing the list to Axios, Rep. Matt Gaetz, the loudest of the McCarthy holdouts, took the stage at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest to fully double down. “I take no joy in sharing this with you but I’m going to tell you now what every single Republican member of Congress knows in their heart, whether they’ll admit it or not,” he thundered in front of a crowd of 11,000 screaming youth activists on Monday. “Kevin McCarthy believes in nothing. I’m serious about that.”