I've been meaning to start a thread on this topic for awhile, but haven't gotten around to it: There are a lot of things in American politics that piss me off, but I don't think anything can compare to the contempt I feel for Establishment Republicans and their utter spinelessness. They have spent the past six years repeatedly allowing Trump to humiliate and debase them; they're basically like Kevin Bacon in Animal House:
"Thank you sir, may I have another!"
At this point, is anyone actually a fan of these guys outside of their own family members? (Come to think of it, my cousin went to grad school with McConnell's daughter, and apparently it was widely known she didn't share her father's politics.) The MAGA types know they secretly loathe Trump and would dump him in a hot second if they thought they could get away with it. Meanwhile, everyone who hates Trump knows that, whatever they may say about him in private, they repeatedly enable his worst behaviors in public.
The thing is, McCarthy is caught up in a broader trend where House Speaker is an increasingly diminished role, especially on the GOP side. Boehner spent four years herding cats, and Ryan went from being regarded as a Very Serious Thinker to being Trump's caddy and pretending not to have read his tweets. Pelosi is still much more powerful than either of them ever were, but even she has far less sway over her party's restless left flank than she did her first time around. So McCarthy was never going to be mistaken for a strongman.
What really puzzles me is the presidential wannabes like Cruz, Hawley, Rubio or Haley. I mean, Cruz literally let Trump get away with calling his dad a murderer and his wife ugly. If my boss insulted my wife like that, I might manage to restrain myself from punching him, but I wouldn't continue working for him, and I damn well wouldn't go around publicly praising him. And these people think that after such stunning displays of weakness, voters are going to turn around say, "You know who I think can best stand up to Putin? That guy/gal who let Trump bully them over and over again!"