If they could shut down the government, it would reflect poorly on McCarthy’s leadership and give them an opening to defenestrate him. If he was forced to keep the government open with the help of Democratic votes, the effect would be the same. Their target was always McCarthy. But when a shutdown was averted at the last minute, with the House managing to advance only a “clean” spending bill that did little more than sacrifice aid to Ukraine, the Right’s mutineers took a victory lap and claimed that this was always their objective.

In the hours before the Senate reluctantly consented to the House’s final attempt to avoid a shutdown, restive Republicans tried to suggest that it was, in fact, Senate Democrats who sought a federal work stoppage, and only over something as tawdry as helping preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty. “Are Democrats willing to shut down the govt [because] of not enough Ukraine funding?” Representative Nancy Mace asked pointedly. “Sounds like it.” The faction’s allies in the Senate — J. D. Vance, most notably — worked tirelessly to incept the idea that the shutdown showdown had always been over a piddling $6 billion item in $1 trillion-plus measures to keep the government open. Ultimately, Democrats acquiesced again, and the crisis was briefly averted.

But the crisis was the goal. So, the Right’s hardliners pursued their strategy to oust McCarthy from leadership anyway.

[This is where Democrats will rue their folly in uniting with Gaetz on the decapitation. No successor to McCarthy can now cut any deals that include funding for Ukraine, which means a 14-month stoppage in financial support for a country suffering a war of conquest started by Russia. Nor will they be able to get any deals on any other issues that address Democrat priorities. Who’s going to trust Hakeem Jeffries after he paid back McCarthy for moving the clean CR with a knife in the back? — Ed]