After Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker by the Freedom Caucus, he seemed quite clear about his intentions. He was done. He wasn’t leaving Congress, but he wouldn’t run for Speaker again. But then Hamas invaded Israel and the world was turned on its head. Today, McCarthy held a press conference to address the situation with Hamas and he was asked if he would consider returning as the Speaker. His answer was less than clear. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. What wasn’t addressed was whether or not he could get the votes to take back the gavel even if he wanted to. (National Review)

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday appeared open to running for the speakership again, despite having said last week after his ouster from the role that he would not run again.

The former speaker held a press conference Capitol Hill Monday to lay out a five-point plan for responding to Hamas’s barbaric assault on Israel over the weekend.

Asked during the conference whether there is any scenario in which he would consider another speakership bid, McCarthy replied: “This is about a moment in time. This is about what America’s going to do.”

What he actually said was, “That’s a decision by the conference. I’ll allow the conference to make whatever decision. Whether I’m speaker or not, I’m a member of this body. I know what history has had and I can lead in any position it is.”

That wasn’t really helpful. What he’s basically saying is that if the entire GOP caucus votes for him, he would be willing to take the job back. But who is going to vote for him if he’s not even running? Several of the Freedom Caucus members who voted him out have once again stated that they will not support his return. So we could be right back where we were in January with an endless series of votes and no winner. That doesn’t sound like much of a plan.

We would probably be far better off if everyone just settled on Jim Jordan or Steve Scalise and got back to work. And now there’s even more to be done with the situation in Israel coming to a boil. That was the original reason McCarthy called the presser to begin with. He was laying out a five-point plan for responding to the attack by Hamas and it actually sounds pretty good, though I doubt Joe Biden will go along with all of it. He wants to:

• Rescue the American hostages
• Stop appeasing Iran and refreeze their money if they were behind this attack
• Demand the extradition of the leader of Hamas
• Resupply Israel militarily and expand the Abraham Accords
• Reinstate a maximum pressure campaign against Iran and pursue American energy independence

That all sounds good to me, but the House can’t really do any of that by itself. Biden will have to send in the military to rescue our hostages, but he’s said nothing about it so far. I doubt he’ll claw back Iran’s money because that would be admitting that he had made an error, and Joe Biden never does that. We can demand the extradition of the Hamas leader until we’re blue in the face, but unless he agrees, it would be tough to pull off. Biden might agree to more arms and supplies to Israel, particularly since we raided the stockpile of arms we had for them in January and gave it to Ukraine. And Joe Biden doesn’t want to hear a peep about producing more oil, so that one is a non-starter also.

Still, I give McCarthy credit for laying out a viable plan. If nothing else, it will draw a stark contrast for the public between the goals of the GOP leadership and Biden’s bumbling.