Middleboro Review and so on

  View in browser   BY  ELANA SCHOR House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in 2021. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images MCCARTHY’S MATH   — He hasn’t claimed the speaker’s gavel yet, but House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is already yoked to two brutal political narratives. They’re both prematurely baked — and they’re distracting his critics from what’s really at stake in the next Congress. The first premature assumption about McCarthy is that he’s somehow not savvy enough to lead the House GOP if it wins the majority in November. Demeaning his erudition is a popular pursuit in Washington ( practiced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi  herself), as if book-smarts have ever been a must-flaunt accessory in the party of  college C-student Ronald Reagan .    Yet even beyond that portrait of McCarthy as an intellectual lightweight, critics say he’s failed in his own efforts to clear his conference of conservative gadflies who could prove ungovernable in a future majority. ...