“Bullsh-t.”
Maybe she shouted it, maybe not, but one way or another, Lauren Boebert didn’t agree with Kevin McCarthy’s contention that he “earned” the right to be House Speaker.
McCarthy had convened Republicans in the basement of the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to marshal support for a vote he ended up losing. Thrice. Boebert was one among 20 GOP’ers opposed to McCarthy. They’re a motley crew of election deniers and Freedom Caucus members. Five are newly-elected.
Among the rebels was Ralph Norman of “Marshall Law!!” fame, as well as Scott Perry (who allegedly promoted a Justice Department coup in a bid to invalidate Georgia’s Electoral College results), Andy Ogles (who has suggested trying Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi for “treason”), Paul Gosar (who was censured in 2021 for posting a video that depicted him murdering Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword), Anna Paulina Luna (a photogenic Air Force veteran who last week made a cameo on Steve Bannon’s podcast) and Matt Gaetz, who needs no introduction.
All opposed to McCarthy favored Jim Jordan for Speaker, a terrifying prospect opposed by, notably, Jim Jordan. On Tuesday, amid the laughable Republican melee, Jordan pleaded with defectors to rally around his erstwhile rival.
If the theatrics around McCarthy’s historically fraught Speaker bid are any indication of what the nation can expect over the next two years, America faces extreme peril. McCarthy is malleable. As Jonathan Blitzer wrote in December, “There are no red lines, core policy beliefs, or inviolable principles, just a willingness to adapt to the moods of his conference.” There’s nothing he won’t do. Somehow, that still wasn’t enough to placate a breed of extremism that Republican strategist Sarah Longwell recently likened to “the insane taking over the asylum.”
Among the concessions McCarthy made in an effort to pacify the party’s right-most flank: Agreeing to a rule allowing five lawmakers to call for a snap vote on his ouster at any time. He knows how perilous that is, because the procedure was leveraged against John Boehner around the time the Tea Party morphed into The Freedom Caucus. It was Mark Meadows — Trump’s chief of staff and the recipient of Norman’s “Marshall Law!!” text — who, on July 28, 2015, triggered the procedure to boot Boehner. McCarthy was expected to replace him, but then, as now, the Freedom Caucus sought to upend the leadership ranks. Paul Ryan didn’t even want the job. He had to be persuaded by Boehner.
In a way, then, history just repeated itself this week, but it’s important to note that although McCarthy disavowed the Capitol riot both publicly and privately, he was back in Trump’s good graces in no time. He’s remained in good standing with the party’s exiled chieftain since. Trump still supports McCarthy for Speaker, but in many ways, it was Trump who doomed him.
The Freedom Caucus pre-dates Trump’s presidency, but its members embody the fringe politics of Trumpism. For McCarthy, it’s tragic irony. Or tragicomedy. Mitch McConnell might’ve been Trump’s chief enabler, but McCarthy was chief groupie. Trumpism appears close to achieving something like independence from Mar-a-Lago. It now exists almost on its own, and its standard-bearers are in open rebellion against a man who risked a decadesold political career to show fealty to Trump.
“Nearly everyone who has pinned their political hopes on Trump has, for one reason or another, had it backfire on them,” The Atlantic‘s David Graham wrote Tuesday. “McCarthy’s case is just a vivid example.” That’s true but, again, it may be a unique example. And a harbinger. It’s not so much Trump, the man, who doomed McCarthy’s first three votes, but Trump the ideology. The burn-it-all-down mentality, the embrace of demonstrable lies for the sake of stoking division, various manifestations of dangerous extremism — all of it finds safe harbor among the lawmakers who humiliated McCarthy on Tuesday.
This raises very uncomfortable questions for a nation struggling to find its way. The intra-party intransigence on display among House Republicans this week bodes ill not just for the GOP, but for the US government more generally. It appears that some of those opposed to McCarthy have no interest in governing at all.
Americans have come to expect (embrace, even) gridlock. Obstructing the other party is, unfortunately, a badge of honor. What happened Tuesday in the House is something different. 20 people held the entire country hostage with no clearly enumerated demands. They took the first opportunity to sow chaos for the sake of chaos, and they did so by undermining the leadership bid of a man famous for glad-handing, eager to dispense favors and shamelessly loyal to the same former president whose banner the rebels generally carry.
All of this came just two months on from an election that found Americans rejecting a number of Trump-backed candidates, which seemed to suggest that without Trump on the ballot, Trumpism doesn’t fare as well. But this week’s soap opera showed that just a drop of Trumpism is enough to poison the well. What happened to McCarthy was yet another reminder that the presence of Trumpism on Capitol Hill in any form — whether it’s thousands of angry rioters or a small handful of rebel lawmakers — can paralyze the US government.
On Wednesday morning, Trump called on all Republicans to back McCarthy. It was a litmus test for the extent to which Trumpism has taken on a life of its own, and no longer heeds the calls of its namesake.
“There’s nothing he won’t do” is the core problem with McCarthy. He will say anything, change his mind in an instant, and go with the flow. In a word, he’s unreliable. You have a group of people who’s lives swirl in conspiracy theories who have made it their core belief that you can’t trust anyone. Here comes a guy who doesn’t even try to fight that instinct, you simply can’t trust him. What promises does anyone believe he wouldn’t back out of if it was convenient to him? Matt Gaetz et al apparently approached AOC (of all people) and asked her if there were Democrats willing to break ranks to vote for McCarthy. She, of course, shot down that notion quickly. Where did they come up with this idea? Well, McCarthy himself, he lied and told the people he’s trying to lead that he didn’t need their votes because he had Democrats lined up to vote for him.
That last story really sums things up for me. AOC, a person who is regularly attacked and ridiculed by the right both in media and by politicians themselves is viewed as more reliable than the man who has been selected to lead the House. This is the reckoning Republicans need and deserve after selling out for a con man who wanted to destroy the Constitution. Burn the party down and lets see if we can get back to some kind of normalcy in government.
There’s a video clip of their (Gaetz and AOC) conversation on the House floor, and her facial expressions are hilarious. Lip readers have conjured that their conversation was about as you said, but you have one detail wrong (a technicality). It was thought there were Democrats who would abstain from voting, thereby lowering the threshold for McCarthy to gain a majority, not that there were Democrats who would actually cast a vote in his favor.
Link to the short video clip: https://twitter.com/MachineSteel_/status/1610395901821952000
Thanks for the correction (and video link)!
Freedom caucus = childish brats in dresses and suits crying for attention in their cribs at the hospital, where their parents forgot to take them home after they were born. The biggest brat of all, Newt Gingrich, fathered them.
+1.
+15
Precisely the dots that need to be connected.
I don’t know that this tells us much about how the US government will function with Republicans in charge of the House. The margins are slim enough where it wouldn’t take many Republicans to cross over to keep the government functioning at a basic level. I think there will be some Republicans in battleground districts who realize that they have to play ball with Democrats and it’s not in their best interest to be associated with the reps that would rather burn it all down if they don’t get their way.
If anything, this is a perfect example of how badly Trump himself as opposed to Trumpism could screw over the Republican party in 2024. Trump would be toxic as the nominee, but as I’ve argued before, Trump would employ the same tactics as these McCarthy holdouts if he isn’t the nominee. When swing states are decided by tens of thousands of votes, the margins matter and Trump controls big enough margins to swing an election one way or the other. Imagine if he follows through on his third party threat or even goes so far as to tell other Trumpist candidates to run as third party candidates. He could turn a competitive election into a Democratic wave in a year when Democrats will be defending a lot of Senate seats.
In the meantime, I’m just sitting back and enjoying the show.
It gets even crazier- Trump has publicly stated that he supports Kevin McCarthy as House speaker!
Have a look at the events of the last two days in the PA legislature, where a compromise was reached on electing a D speaker. A sudden spark of sanity from the PA GOP, a group not generally known for that. Maybe a light will go on with their brethren in DC.
Sadly, Walt, I agree with everything you said. Trumpism is a festering sore upon our democracy.
Its not that the Taliban 19+ are simply trying “to sow chaos for the sake of chaos” or throw wrenches aimed as knives into the gears of gubmint, they are explicitly and forever anti-government. So whether they damage it near term, midterm or permanently, that is in their interest.
It all turns now on whether there are any other kind of Republicans from the Kevin crowd or the Chip Roysterers, and whether such mythical other kind of Republicans will seriously reach across the isle and yell, “HELP!”
H man thanks for your insight. The 20 or so Republican’s babies that keep voting down McCartney just show that the current Republican can’t govern.