Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, arriving in your inbox as a rare Friday evening dispatch. (It’s been a crazy week in this town!) Tonight, a look at Kevin McCarthy’s post-post-speakership dilemma, an only-in-D.C. saga of power gained, lost, and transformed. But first, two quick notes…

• Roe’s Midas Touch: You could feel the collective eyeroll in Washington when Jeff Roe’s political juggernaut, Axiom Strategies, tweeted that their own client, Mike Johnson, was now the Speaker of the House. It was one of those gratuitous flexes that would only peeve the political class, already annoyed with Axiom’s penchant for claiming credit even when it’s not due (but secretly jealous of the firm’s massive network). For what it’s worth, three of the eight members who put their names forward for speaker are Axiom clients. In fact, Axiom could claim the successes of over half of the conference, since well over a hundred members have written checks to the political conglomerate, even if the work is as minimal as sending out mailers or texts.

  But those who’ve actually been following Johnson’s career know that it’s Jason Hebert, a longtime Republican strategist, who could perhaps take credit for Johnson’s surprise ascension to the speakership. He’s been with him since the beginning—at least until his Louisiana-based firm, The Political Firm, was acquired by Axiom after the 2020 cycle, which underscores the fact that Axiom, itself, had little to do with Johnson’s elevation, except for his fundraising. But then again, who can really claim credit for the elevation of a guy who no one imagined would have been speaker just a few weeks ago? Either way, it was a fortuitous acquisition for Axiom that’s already paying dividends. In the meantime, Roe & Co. are only happy to highlight their client’s ascension.

• Phillips Enters the Fray: Another relative unknown, Dean Phillips, finally pulled the trigger on his Presidential run. He announced in New Hampshire, bucking Joe Biden, who is bypassing the state with the D.N.C.’s blessing and plans instead to start the nomination process in South Carolina. The gelato and distillery heir, who missed the deadline to register for the ballot in Nevada, has been engaging in a skittish dance with reporters, pitching himself as a youthful alternative and rattling off statements like: “I think I was three years old when he became a United States senator.”

  But age aside, what really distinguishes the two? After all, many of Phillips’ positions are centrist like Biden’s, though he is slightly farther to the right on issues like migration, crime, and curbing defense spending. (Biden’s team was quick to point out that he’s voted with the President 100 percent of the time.) It’s noteworthy that Phillips has hired Steve Schmidt, a former Republican consultant and McCain aide, to essentially primary Biden from the right. The real question: Could Phillips’ long-shot bid help Trump?

As I noted last week, McCarthy refused to go quietly into the night like Boehner or Ryan. Instead, he loomed even larger at conference meetings, won votes on secret ballots, and put his finger on the scale to nuke the ambitions of his enemy Majority Leader Steve Scalise in favor of Jim Jordan, who would need his fundraising infrastructure, political skill and vortex of relationships. (McCarthy raised $80 million last cycle working the billionaire circuit; Jordan raised $14 million in small-dollar donations off his Fox News hits.)

When Jordan fell short, according to NBC’s Ali Vitali, McCarthy floated a power sharing structure in which he would run for speaker again and keep Jordan around as an assistant speaker to placate the arch MAGA wing. McCarthy told reporters he wasn’t the one floating the idea, but rather the members who wanted him back. Anyway, then it became clear that Mike Johnson, whom McCarthy had not even contemplated in his calculations, was gaining momentum, and he started to lose his composure. At the closed-door conference meeting after Johnson was nominated as speaker, according to Vitali, McCarthy had two “outbursts.” “This isn’t how you elect a speaker!” he reportedly yelled.

When Johnson was elected on Wednesday, McCarthy’s closest allies and senior aides woke up to the harsh reality that it was time to pack up the speaker’s office. Instead of looking for a home in Johnson’s office, many of them are looking to the private sector, seeing no real role for their boss on the Hill. (So far, McCarthy’s floor director Christopher Bien has agreed to stay on.) “I’m sure Wednesday was pretty jarring for him. Let’s give the guy a minute to understand what it means for him,” said a McCarthy ally. “The vacate happened a while ago, so there were three weeks where it was like, what’s happening? It was unsure, can anybody get the votes to be speaker? And I think, for him, he was working for some members and trying to figure it out. I think it’s too early to tell what he’ll do, but it delayed the closure that would naturally happen quickly.”

Even though there’s a power vacuum around Johnson, who needs to increase his staff from 15 to about 50, the money train will still roll on at least from K Street as it always has. Those hard dollars will flow into campaign committee PACs. But that’s not where the major money is raised. McCarthy’s super power has always been his ability to tap into the network of billionaires, which is how he raised so much for his super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund. Now, I’m hearing that donors are in a tizzy wondering if they flushed millions of dollars down the drain by giving to McCarthy, and whether the new speaker will take their calls.

What’s next for McCarthy? Will he join Miller on K Street or work for one of the billionaires he’s cultivated as a political advisor? Or will he hold on, staying in Congress with the hope of taking back the gavel after buyer’s remorse really sets in? Whatever McCarthy does, he will need to make a decision before the end of the year, or else Gavin Newsom can decide not to hold a special election for his seat, depriving the Republicans of yet another red seat in their single-digit majority.