See the Movie Clip a GOP Rep. Allegedly Showed Colleagues to Motivate Them on Debt Battle

There are probably many movie clips that come to mind when someone asks you to pick one that could motivate others. There's the classic from "Braveheart." Or the Al Pacino monologue from "Any Given Sunday." Even a few from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy are good. But one movie that probably doesn't come to mind is the Boston-based crime drama "The Town" -- the recent heist movie staring Ben Affleck.

Apparently, though, that's the movie GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy (the House Majority Whip from California) chose to use in order to motivate his colleagues over the debt battle. But more than motivate, McCarthy reportedly wanted to encourage unity among the GOP members of Congress. Behind closed doors, then, the Washington Post reports he decided to send a message with the dramatic clip:

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party’s vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, “The Town”, trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.

One character asks his friend: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later.”

“Whose car are we gonna take,” the character says.

After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides.

“I’m ready to drive the car,” West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full -throated support for the plan.

The relevant clip is below. It contains a line the Post left out, where Ben Affleck's character says, "and we're gonna hurt some people." That's because the conversation comes just before the two characters brutally rough up some thugs:

Liberal blog TPM was baffled by the move, the movie, and the story:

It's not clear if House Republicans fed an edited script to the Post, if the Post omitted the "hurt some people," line themselves, or if GOP leadership actually edited the clip itself when it was screened. But I also can't fathom why they find this scene particularly inspirational -- and even if they do, why they decided to feed it to the press.

But the movie apparently failed to do its job. Late last night House Speaker John Boehner went back to the drawing board to write up a new plan after it was apparent he didn't have enough votes.

Maybe "Braveheart" would have been better: