My Fellow Republicans: It’s Time to Grow Up
A former member of Congress has advice for his fellow Republicans who are considering ousting Speaker McCarthy.
I’ve been gone from Congress for more than 10 years now, and here’s my advice to the sitting members: Ten years from now, you’ll be embarrassed that you cavalierly threatened to shut down the government or to refuse to pay its debts. You’ll be embarrassed by overwrought pronouncements about the evil of the other side. You’ll want to have engaged on substantive issues like climate change. You’ll wish that you’d known the wisdom that Carl Sandburg recounted in his biography of Abraham Lincoln:
Several Northern congressmen in Lincoln’s office were calling for retaliation. They wanted hangings of “rebel” leaders. Representative James K. Moorhead was making a second and more vitriolic attack than his first when Lincoln leaned across his table, shot out an arm and pointed a long finger: “Mr. Moorhead, haven’t you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?”