Bill Thomas

U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthyWASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy is one of the few people who will become so animated when talking about congressional elections that he leans forward in his seat in mid-conversation and touches the arm of the person he is speaking to.

“I believe everyone is addicted to something in life,” he said in an interview with PolitickerCA.com, and the first term Republican congressman said for him “it just happens to be politics.”

McCarthy’s enthusiasm and energy for politics, coming at a bleak time for house Republicans, has made him something of a standout in his freshman class and the party in general. Already, the Bakersfield congressman has been placed in an advisory position at the National Republican Congressional Committee and has been tapped to head up the party’s Platform Committee at the national convention in September. He’s a member of the Young Guns, a group of Republicans whose mission is to prop up house challengers around the country.

U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy: File PhotoWASHINGTON -- Kevin McCarthy, the first term U.S. Congressman from Bakersfield who is widely seen as a rising star within the Republican Party, tells PolitickerCA.com that he would not take the reins at the beleaguered National Republican Congressional Committee should sitting chair Tom Cole step aside.

"I don't think that you change midstream. You create a strategy and you play out the plan. Does the plan have to adapt? Yeah the plan has to adapt. I think the strength Cole - he's been in the foxhole before," said McCarthy this morning while sitting in his office in the Longworth building, a block from the U.S. Capitol.