[Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]

Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) is getting bad reviews.

“Gaetz has very few friends in the conference,” said his fellow Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez. “Gaetz maybe has a couple of friends in the delegation. But I’m not one of them.” And Gimenez spoke for many other House Republicans.

Gaetz led a successful and unprecedented effort to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California), and there appears to be a broad consensus that Gaetz has really stepped in it now, and made things even worse than they were before. Democrats, who voted unanimously for Gaetz’s motion to remove McCarthy as speaker of the House, are chortling over Republican confusion and disunity. Meanwhile, even patriots who are sympathetic to Gaetz are saying that he has jeopardized the Republicans’ slim majority in the House, risked handing the leadership over to the Democrats, and proceeded without a plan: Gaetz himself is not a candidate, and no one seems to be in agreement over who should follow McCarthy into the speaker’s chair.

When acting speaker Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) took the chair, he banged the gavel down with petulant force, signaling a distaste for the whole affair that he never manifested as millions of unvetted migrants entered the country, or as the national debt and inflation skyrocketed, or as the Biden regime weaponized the “justice” system to persecute its political enemies. McHenry made it clear: what angered him was not any of that, but the removal of his friend McCarthy.

So the whole thing was a disaster, no? Gaetz should have left well enough alone, right? Wrong. In fact, Gaetz has won a rare victory for the American people, and should be congratulated and thanked accordingly.

The removal of McCarthy from the speaker’s chair was historic not only because it has never happened before. For the first time ever, the American people struck back against the ruling oligarchy, and made it clear that they would no longer stand for the politics-as-usual that has brought the nation to this period of deep crisis.

For years now, indeed, for decades now, and with very few exceptions, the far Left has set political policy in the United States. On occasion, patriots have refused to go along, but almost every time their opposition collapsed into capitulation, with a few minor details adjusted but the larger principles of the Left’s initiative left intact.

This capitulationism has been the hallmark of the Republican Party since at very least 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Republican to be elected to the presidency in twenty years, made it clear that he would not make any effort to roll back Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which set the nation on the road to socialism and the ever-expanding federal government that grows more intrusive and authoritarian by the day. Instead, Republicans would stand for the march toward socialism to be pursued a bit more slowly, a bit more responsibly, a bit more carefully, and that was all.

Seventy years later, McCarthy pushed four frivolous, big government spending bills through the House, and according to CBS News, “said a continuing resolution would be needed to avoid a shutdown.” Gaetz responded: “A vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the Green New Deal, a vote to continue inflationary spending, and the most troubling of fashions, a vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the election interference of Jack Smith. We told you how to use the power of the purse: individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis and that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.”

Gaetz added: “Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January. And, since then, he has been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement.” And so now he is no longer speaker of the House. McCarthy apparently agreed in January not to join the Democrats in continued out-of-control government spending, and to stand aggressively against the Democrats’ weaponization and politicization of the justice system. Instead, he gave us more of the same: government of the Washington establishment, by the Washington establishment, and for the Washington establishment.

McCarthy’s ouster is a signal to whichever Republican may follow him as speaker: patriotic Americans are fed up. The time for conciliation, compromise, and appeasement are over. The enemies of America have captured the Democrat Party and made the Republicans into controlled opposition. It’s time for some genuine opposition to the sinister agenda of these corruptocrats. Matt Gaetz has made a mighty effort to restore the voice of the American people in their own government. For that, every American owes him a debt of gratitude.