Well, when McCarthy, in his struggle to gain the post, agreed to lower the threshold to file the motion to vacate the Speakership to one vote, it was just a matter of time before a GOP malcontent like the Trumpkin piece of work Matt Gaetz exploited it. Let me be clear: McCarthy is not beloved by us libertarians. Like Trump, McCarthy has one core political principle: political ambition. He was the surviving member of the infamous "Young Guns" with Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, The Young Guns posed their own Tea Party challenge to the mainstream GOP establishment, /focusing on limited government, fiscal conservatism, and entitlement reform. But the Tea Party soon got coopted by the immigration restrictionists, and Cantor found himself primaried in 2014 by Brat, chiefly on the issue. The lesson was not lost on an opportunistic Trump who supersized nativism to his signature issue. Speaker Ryan tried to make his peace with Trump, including long-sought tax reform but he found himself confronted with conference members challenging the "new mainstream"; Trump had no interest in unpopular entitlement reform or fiscal conservativism: the day of reckoning would occur after his Presidency. Trump wanted to increase military spending beyond hard-fought sequesters and was willing to make deals with Schumer and Pelosi to get it. Ryan could read the writing on the wall and retired in 2018, leaving McCarthy as the last Young Gun in GOP leadership. The GOP lost control of the House until the 2022 midterms. McCarthy was the most pragmatic of the 3 Young Guns and made his own peace with Trump, infamously flying down to MAL to kiss Trump's ring after J6. He fought against Trump's impeachments and supported election challenges in the House. But despite that, it took him 15 ballots and some significant concessions to win Speaker.
I do not underestimate the difficulties McCarthy faced in dealing with a Dem-controlled Senate and Dem POTUS holding a veto. I am a pragmatist knowing Dems were unwilling to accept austerity. I thought McCarthy was effective in getting Biden to negotiate after Biden swearing, he wouldn't on a debt limit deal. Make no mistake: it was more a uniparty bargain than a long overdue fiscal reform measure. Still. I thought when McCarthy engineered an improbable last-minute continuing resolution over the government shutdown opposed by his right-wing fringe, I honestly thought the Dems would prefer the pragmatist they knew versus the devil they didn't., i.e., risk the emergence of a more hardline Speaker. All they had to do was abstain enough votes to table or kill the motion. I suspect this was more political payback for things like McCarthy's concession to his fringe flank to initiate a frivolous impeachment investigation of Biden.
Fellow libertarian Justin Amash has no sympathy for the demise of the Young Guns and McCarthy in particular. He was particularly frustrated in his last few terms in Congress to open up legislative processes to members (for amendments and the like). He didn't like to be constrained to voting on legislation controlled by leadership. I am sympathetic to his point with an overriding principle of decentralization.
However, I mourn our democracy starting to take the appearance of coalition politics we've often seen in European and Israeli democracies with fringe parties exercising leverage for policy concessions. I have been fed up with partisan wars since at least the Bork hearings in the 80's. Most people don't realize but when I grew up in Texas it was a solid blue state; George W. Bush had a successful bipartisan record during the transition as governor. A big reason I supported him in 2000 was I hoped he could bring the same leadership to the USG. I was wrong, although I thought he could seize the moment after 9/11. I am not sure the next Speaker will be even as pragmatic as McCarthy
