Ousting Of Kevin McCarthy From House Speaker Role Leads To Outpouring Of Schadenfreude And Memes

Yesterday, the United States House of Representatives took the unprecedented step to remove Representative Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, leaving the House without a leader just weeks before it needs to agree on a budget in order to prevent a government shutdown. While this is concerning for the immediate future of the U.S. government, many online concede it is also very funny.

Around 5 p.m. EST yesterday evening, all Democrats present in the House plus eight hard-right Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz, voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. The anti-McCarthy Republican caucus had long been angry at the former Speaker, believing he did not oppose President Joe Biden staunchly enough and was not proactive in pushing their agenda.

Democrats uniformly distrusted and disliked McCarthy, coming to a head last week when McCarthy sprung a 70-page stopgap spending bill that would temporarily avoid a government shutdown and gave Democrats no time to read it. Democrats begrudgingly voted in favor of the bill, but just days later, McCarthy went on national television and blamed Democrats for bringing the government close to the brink of a shutdown — seemingly trying to throw Democrats under the bus when they'd essentially bailed him out. McCarthy is also leading an impeachment inquiry against Biden, which Democrats find baseless.

Ahead of today's vote on an effort to oust SpeakerMcCarthy</a>, the House Democratic Caucus watched McCarthy&#39;s interview with <a href="https://twitter.com/margbrennan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">margbrennan on Sunday, where he attempted to blame House Democrats for the near-government shutdown.WATCH: pic.twitter.com/IwwnMYZitK

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 3, 2023

For the "sin" of working with Democrats, Republican Matt Gaetz brought forth a resolution to vacate McCarthy, and it passed quickly, as Democrats apparently had no interest in continuing to work with him.

To online spectators, the dramatic politicking in the House and the ousting of McCarthy was cause for schadenfreude, as many viewed the fiasco as the result of a series of missteps from McCarthy, who already appeared compromised as he attempted to grant concessions to both the hard right and more moderate factions of the Republican party.

Much of the memes about the ousting stemmed from a McCarthy tweet posted Monday in which he defiantly posted "Bring it on," apparently expecting the impending vote to remove him to fail.

These are likely the tip of the iceberg for memes that will come out of the chaos in the House in the coming weeks. In January, McCarthy's 15-round bout to become House Speaker was widely memed, even in Congress itself, as one bored Democrat dropped a Leeroy Jenkins reference in the proceedings.