This Congress has the insane rule that a single person can force a vote of no confidence in the speaker. McCarthy fought hard against this rule being included (first vote of a new Congress is agreeing to rules. He wanted to be speaker without this rule, but didn’t have enough of a margin to win without the hardliners). He knew, going in to this Congress, that one crazy person has insane leverage over him.

So, if he tries to work with a moderate group, his speakership is immediately threatened. This is why it took so long to elect him as speaker. He knew the position it would put him in and tried every single angle he could to prevent the single motion of no confidence rule.

Not McCarthy’s fault directly, but he’s been set up to be one of the least powerful, least effective speakers ever.

There is a way to bypass McCarthy via a discharge petition. Get enough House members to sign it (218, I believe) and the bill goes to the floor whether McCarthy wants it to or not.

The downside is that this takes time to accomplish (for various reasons). I think the Democrats are already starting that as a backup, but it won’t be done before the government shuts down.

Without the discharge petition, the only way the House can vote on a bill is if McCarthy says they can. And the only way McCarthy will say they can is if the Freedom Caucus approves it.

First you’d have to find moderate Republicans in the House, they’re a very rare breed that are nearly extinct.

Ok, so there’s a lot going on here.

Democrats are voting no on all the proposals in the House, because they’re a divergence from the spending levels McCarthy himself negotiated in May to avoid hitting the debt ceiling. Hard-line Republicans are voting no on the budget proposals from the House and Senate because they’re not enough of a divergence and only gives them some of what they asked for (even though what they’re already getting is a non-starter in the Democrat-controlled Senate).

McCarthy could present the stopgap bill from the Senate, or a bill that adheres to the previously negotiated spending limits, and they would almost 100% pass with support from moderate Democrats and Republicans overriding the no votes from the freedom caucus and a few progressive Democrats, but McCarthy is afraid to do that because the wing nuts are threatening to oust him from the speakership if he doesn’t cave to their demands.

Making matters worse, House Democrats are pissed about McCarthy opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden over baseless allegations, so they have even less desire then normal to accommodate McCarthy in his efforts to renege on the very deal he negotiated less than 5 months ago.

The Democrats have zero responsibility for this mess, and zero desire to rescue a feckless and ineffective speaker from the consequences of his own dumb choices. And make no mistake: the only way this ends is McCarthy growing the balls to tell the wing nuts to get fucked, or the house bypassing him entirely with a discharge petition. The only variable is whether that happens before or after a government shutdown, and it looks like that’s going to be after at this point.

In short, blame partisan primaries. Bipartisanship is seen as aiding the manifestation of evil here on Earth. And that can cost any GOPer the race, even to a no name challenger.

This holds true even for Biden district Republicans, because their most active voters either subscribe to a cult of Reagan or cult of Trump world view. These cult voters dominate low turnout primaries, even when their overall numbers aren’t very large.

We could reform elections and have non partisan primaries or even RCV. But that would sap power away from political parties and cultists. Where is the fun in that?

Maybe you didn’t mean it this way, but I think it’s weird to frame it as if it’s the dems who are responsible for this shit. They give the reps an inch and they’ll shut down the government because they just decided that they wanted five more inches.