Last Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning, sleepless souls around the nation suffered through the spectacle of sad-sack Kevin McCarthy finally capturing his Holy Grail, the speakership of the House of Representatives. It was a uniquely unedifying spectacle. By the end it became downright uncomfortable watching McCarthy ritually humiliated hour after hour by members of his own party before they finally deigned to give him the gavel he has so desperately coveted for so long. But then, this is a common practice among Republicans these days. Just look at the way former President Trump treated his own vice president, Mike Pence, a man who ostentatiously abased himself for four long years only to be thrown to a slavering mob (at least metaphorically) when he refused to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. Like McCarthy, Pence also keeps coming back for more, and apparently plans to launch an extremely quest for the presidential nomination in a party that holds him in total contempt. As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte writes on Monday morning, the Republican display over the past week was only a preview of what’s likely to come. As she puts it, “House Republicans are going to spend the next two years using taxpayer money to wage war on not just democracy, but truth itself.” Even without the side deals McCarthy made with the 20 insurrectionist Republicans who opposed him through most of 15 ballots, the GOP majority was poised to produce a two-year spectacle designed to leave the nation…