Kevin McCarthy Under Fire
Kevin McCarthy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
When the January 6 riot happened, Andrew and I were talking on Twitter. Andrew opined that if Congress had held impeachment hearings that night, Donald Trump would have become the first President removed from office. The Republicans were so furious over what had happened, it might have gone through, which is probably one of the reasons the MAGA caucus dragged the counting of electoral votes into the wee hours.
Well, that theory got a bit of confirmation this week when reports emerged that McCarthy had said he was fed up with Trump and was going to ask him to resign. McCarthy denied it. And then the recordings came out:
On a phone call with several other top House Republicans on Jan. 8, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” He faulted the president for “inciting people” to attack the Capitol, saying that Mr. Trump’s remarks at a rally on the National Mall that day were “not right by any shape or any form.”
During that conversation, Mr. McCarthy inquired about the mechanism for invoking the 25th Amendment — the process whereby the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office — before concluding that was not a viable option. Mr. McCarthy, who was among those who objected to the election results, was uncertain and indecisive, fretting that the Democratic drive to impeach Mr. Trump would “put more fuel on the fire” of the country’s divisions.
But Mr. McCarthy’s resolve seemed to harden as the gravity of the attack — and the potential political fallout for his party — sank in. Two members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet had quit their posts after the attack and several moderate Republican governors had called for the president’s resignation. Video clips of the riot kept surfacing online, making the raw brutality of the attack ever more vivid in the public mind.
In the conversations — including some with supposed RINO traitor Lynn Cheney — McCarthy notes that an impeachment resolution would certainly pass the House and notes that there was a good chance it would get through the Senate as well. McCarthy also talked about taking away the Twitter accounts of radical members like Lauren Boebert to stop them from spreading lies about the election.
Ultimately, the fear of angering Trump’s supporter eroded the GOP’s will. The delay in hearings meant that Trump survived the impeachment. And by the end of January, Republican leaders were reconciling with Trump and deciding to focus their criticism on Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden, neither of whom, I should note, where anywhere near the Capitol on January 6. And now most of them have completely returned to the Trump camp, being unwilling to even countenance hearings about January 6 and repeating his lies about the 2020 election.
That this has come out only months before McCarthy hopes to become Speaker of the House is pure justice. Becoming Speaker is Kevin McCarthy’s lifetime ambition and one he has long felt was just within his reach. With this recording however, MAGA-ites were refused to support him because he talked about forcing Trump out of office. And what few conservatives remain in the GOP will refuse to support him because he didn’t follow through. It couldn’t be a more suitable fate for a man who has spinelessly let Trump take over the party and chickened out of every possible moral stand he could take.
This is the kind of thing I’m thinking of when I say the GOP really has become subservient to conservative media. I don’t think McCarthy or any members of Congress are necessarily particularly bright and I think it’s a mistake to assume they are. But I also don’t think the majority are so dumb, even on the GOP side, that deep down they don’t understand just how shameful what Trump did in his last days in office was. This shows that they do.
It wasn’t the sour grapes of Hilary or Al Gore arguing a plausible if ultimately losing case to the Supreme Court. And yet they know that you can’t turn the hero of the TV show into a villain at the last moment. That would alienate the viewers, and listeners, and ultimately the advertisers. So they go back to nihilistic play acting, and pretending the handful of them in the ranks who are so stupid they can’t distinguish between internet memes and reality are normal, and kowtowing to a sad, leathery old reality tv show host playing politics for no reason other than to build his pathetic, washed up brand.Report
It’s been a hell of a ride, but it’s time to acknowledge that the primary experiment has failed. It’s all well and good to let voters choose between two candidates vetted by people who know what they’re doing, but it’s just nuts to let them choose the candidates, especially in a multi-candidate, winner-take-all election.Report
So just to be clear you are advocating for a return to machine politics with all its attendant corruption?Report
I think there’s a strong case for finding a better way. For example I don’t think the way the 2020 Democratic primary process shook out was bad, and it definitely wasn’t dysfunctional in that the candidates consolidated behind the most viable, sanest person in the contest. One could make some interesting observations about that person turning out to be Joe Biden but the theory behind it makes sense.
Compare it to the 2016 process for both parties. One was an anointing that resulted in the most embarrassing upset in modern times, and a strong contender for the worst in the history of the country. The other allowed a dangerous buffoon to pick off win by win through cynical media exploitation against opponents that kept carving up the plurality of voters that might have eventually defeated him.Report
I look forward to the legal fights between the national parties and the state legislatures.Report
I would submit that HRC’s nomination was a unique event distinct to her particular background and that it is both near impossible to replicate and moreover, in having happened once, night impossible to do again.Report
sadly, i think dynastic politics are still a big hit in america, so we could see this happen again. after all, how many decades of political involvement have the kennedys and bushes clocked?
though it is certain hrc will never run again…Report
George P. Bush (JEB!’s kid) is running for Texas AG as we speak. But he lacks one of the key qualifications for the office, not currently being under indictment.Report
No, and it’s not at all clear to me why you believe that one follows from the other.Report
So you don’t see Party bosses huddled in back rooms picking candidates as corruptible machine politics returning? Fascinating.Report
If you got a way to fix primaries, we are all ears!Report
Not necessarily machine politics butt giving the parties more control over who stands for election like in other democracies.Report
That’s a distinction without a difference – especially since most of those are parliamentary democracies.Report
Our heavily institutionalized parties are the underlying problem, and primaries don’t fix themReport
Right now we have taxpayers paying for the workings of 2 private entities. If the Dems or Rs want to be internally corrupt, then who am I to say they can’t be?Report
Certainly the GOP’s winner take all system seems to have some serious problems. I do not think the Democrats similar but slightly different process has fared as poorly.
The question in my mind, though, is if this is because of the rules and structures of their respective processes or if it is simply because of the underlying cultural problems for the GOP as a party vs the Dems. Like, if we switched the rulesets but left everything else unchanged I am not certain the outcomes would be different. But possibly so. Has anyone run the numbers on how Trump would have done in ’16 if the primaries had all been proportional?Report
Exactly.
Its easy and correct to assert that the rules and mechanism of American politics are flawed.
But seeing those flaws as the primary or even secondary driver of our problems is to ignore the elephant in the room.
It treats Trump and the 2016 election as some quirky aberration instead of a genuine reflection of the will of the people.
Right now, Trumpism is metastasizing all around the country with DeSantis and Abbot and a dozen other governors and legislatures replicating the same authoritarian instincts.
What we are seeing is a very large percentage of the American electorate who want to wage culture war and are willing to destroy democracy to get it.Report
It treats Trump and the 2016 election as some quirky aberration instead of a genuine reflection of the will of the people.
I thought I was clear on this point, but if not, let me say it explicitly: The current system is bad specifically because it gives too much weight to the will of the people. With better voters, the current system would give better results. But since we don’t know how to make better voters, the next best thing is changing the system to minimize the impact of voter ignorance.Report
Some of this is the different party makeups. The Democratic Party is much less cohesive than the GOP, which has many downsides, but one major upside is it’s very hard to herd cats off a cliffReport
I’m inclined to agree. Also the Democratic Party voting masses do not viscerally loathe their own party’s leadership, money and thought cadres as is the case on the right.Report
Biden was a solid pick.
HRC less so.
Obama was a total unknown. Not Bush.
Kerry and Gore were both pretty solid.
That’s good choices 3 out of 5.
I view Obama as a problem because you have to base the choice, and thus the evaluation of the choice, based on what was known at the time.
I’m also pretty concerned about the 2nd and 3rd places behind Biden. Warren and Sanders weren’t viewed as smurfs crushed by Biden as joke candidates, they were viewed as serious players and serious potentials.
Yang hit the radar as a joke. What’s his name… the gay mayor, hit the radar as running for VP.
Trump is an extreme example of a charismatic demagogue taking control of the system. I don’t see what stops Team Blue from having the same problem. Does Team Blue do what the voters want even when the party leadership doesn’t want it? Obama was able to unseat HRC, so clearly yes.
The core problem is normally letting the masses choose should favor the likes of Obama (fresh new leader liked by the masses) over HRC (party insider who has little else to go on other than corruption).
As stupid as it sounds, Trump being able to step in is probably a feature of the system, and we probably want that because he’s extremely rare while corrupt insiders are not.Report
It is very hard to see what we’d change to keep Trump from running. Very high profile, very rich, charismatic guy who has years to set stuff up.
Short of smoke filled rooms I don’t see how he get stopped… and he’s pretty comfortable corrupting smoke filled rooms so even that might not work.Report
I’m on record on the site as saying the Presidential systems as a whole have failed, but abolishing Primaries would certainly help.Report
In the same week this came out, Marjorie Taylor-Green has been labeled a hostile witness in the administrative head to determine if she can run for her seat again. Like InMd says, these people have to keep playacting to keep their power, and no matter the evidence they stick to their stories. McCarthy may well be doomed as Speaker but he’ll never admit he dug his own graveReport
This is why I keep saying that America is in a very dark place, and likely to get worse before it gets better.
For the majority of Republicans, their only objection to the insurrection is that it failed. And they are wholly committed to not letting it fail the next time.
Just under half of the American electorate voted for Trump.
Of that half, the vast majority believe in various bizarre conspiracy theories- that the election was stolen, that there is a vast ring of pedophiles running government, that vaccines contain microchips or that they don’t work or any other freakish theories.
When almost half of the electorate is detached from reality, terrible things happen. The old adage about those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities comes to mind.Report
When I look for confirmation of this I get news that’s over a year old. Makes me hopeful the insanity has died down so it’s not interesting to report any more.
That’s largely what happened after the Bush v Gore election. It took a while for the tribal passions to die down but they did go away.Report
This article demonstrates that the insanity has only deepened.
The day after the attempted insurrection, perhaps some portion of the Republican voting base might have opposed it. But over the past year they have all closed ranks and now firmly support it.
Here is a poll from December showing 80% of Republicans believe the election was stolen, a number unchanged from April 2021.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/07/republicans-big-lie-trump/
And even for those who don’t believe it, like the Republicans here at OT, does any of the madness matter? Will it cause them to stay home, or vote third party, or vote Democrat?
Or will they trudge loyally to the voting booth and pull the level once against for the Republican ticket?Report
Trump has lost my vote for good. We’re deep into insanity with that guy and he refused to accept an election.
Your link is interesting. Ignore the GOP, 31% of independents and 4% of Dems think the election was probably not legit. For “all respondents” we’re at 33%.
This makes me a lot more sympathetic for Team Blue’s various insanities. After you get something in your head that follows what you want to believe, a ton of people can’t shake it.
So the human animal is a lot less sensible, especially on tribal stuff, than we like to think.Report
A quibble- just under half of the American electorate -that voted- voted for Trump. That makes a significant difference.Report
When you ride the tiger it’s very hard to get off. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. In a kind universe Trump would vent his spite at McConnell, The Governor of Georgia and the GOP’s preferred candidates leading to the GOP underperforming this year in those races and Stacy Abrams winning in Georgia. I don’t think we live in that kind universe though, Dems will have to try and bring it home themselves.Report
Where’s the story about Kevin McCarthy being under fire? I was expecting a story about Kevin McCarthy being under fire.
I guess in a meta sense, the article is firing at Kevin McCarthy…Report
Wow, it’s such a surprise that a GOP officeholder showed no guts or integrity and knuckled under to Trump.Report