Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, who made history as the first speaker to be ousted from the post, announced on Wednesday that he would leave the House at the end of the year but said he planned to remain engaged in Republican politics.
Link is an NYT gift article that shouldn't be paywalled.
He should have known this would happen once he agreed that one person could motion to vacate. His only chance was for democrats to come to the rescue, but he dealt them in bad faith.
On the bright side, everyone got to see how disorganized the republicans in congress are. The downside is now we have a crazy religious lunatic with porn-monitoring software on his phone as speaker of the house.
This is how fascism advances, they eat their own, it's part of the life cycle. People like McCarthy think they're playing the game and that they're going to always have a seat at the table, only to realize that they're just keeping the seat warm for whichever next-level extremist stabs them in the back. Rinse and repeat until MCarthy seems tame by comparison to whoever is there in the end.
Yup, the right has been shifting the Overton Window for decades. It's why you see absurdity like people being "nostalgic" about war criminals like GWB. Unfortunately a lot of people need to actually see the worst thing happen to believe that it's coming down the pipe.