This age, McCarthy’s misadventures make clear, is not defined exclusively by former President Donald Trump. Recall that the first time McCarthy contested the presidency — eight years ago, before giving it up in the face of right-wing opposition — happened before Trump entered the presidential race and became the major figure in the Republican Party. This time, McCarthy even stumbles as he holds Trump’s endorsement.
The fact that McCarthy’s backlash both before and after the Trump presidency is a reminder that Trump was someone who exploited the politics of contempt but was not the cause of it, and suggests that he may be relevant not only at a glance to certain questions about the future of the conservative movement. .
McCarthy and his allies had signaled before voting began that he was prepared to push vote after vote, for days if necessary, to crush the opposition and gain justification for his desperate plea, in a closed-door meeting that closed on Monday , that “I won this job. Early Tuesday night, after McCarthy lost a third vote, this strategy looked increasingly problematic. In fact, the Californian demanded that his own party match him in terms of tolerance of televised public humiliation. Yet no viable alternative to such self-abasement had emerged.
You have to look through the smoke of the past few years to remember a time when the conservative movement was shaped by an instinctive deference to authority—to establish priorities and values. When it came to electing leaders, the old adage was that Democrats should fall in love, while Republicans just hold the line.
On the third ballot, 202 Republicans were willing to do so, including members who privately questioned his leadership in caustic terms. But 20 were not, and decisive. This minority faction acted with a justified confidence in its allegiance to the organizing principle of contemporary conservatism: contempt for any figure who does not equally share an attitude of contempt or who does not express it with sufficient purity.
McCarthy, of course, had done his best. He had spent years raising money for his party. He had muzzled his feeble impulse to stand up to Donald Trump after the January 6 riot. He turned on his former ally Liz Cheney to kick her out of the party. Cheney’s experience has shown that taking a stand has a political cost. McCarthy’s experience may soon show that refusal to take a stand is, too.
McCarthy had made so many concessions to his party’s Freedom Caucus that he made sure the presidency was a step above a token post, with little ability to set an agenda or use anyone for him. promote.
Surely, he had imagined, all these gestures of reconciliation would suffice. But the evidence so far is that they have simply reinforced the image of opponents – and apparently some supporters – that he is a politician with no real convictions, with little ability to inspire fear or respect.
Congressional leadership requires carrots or sticks. For the opponents, McCarthy had neither what they wanted nor what they feared. Who has these things? In a telltale sign of the times, Representative Guy Reschenthaler, who wants to join McCarthy’s leadership team as chief deputy whip, said the answer could be right-wing commentators“We’ll see what happens as Tucker [Carlson] and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating those guys. Maybe that will move him.
Help with fundraising? A born publicity hound as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) can easily raise money on his own and is not worried about falling out of favor with the party leadership as he has had many such favors in the early days. What about budget packages to show voters at home that their congressman really has influence? A sincere ideologue like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) doesn’t care about those things. He thought McCarthy wasn’t a true conservative in 2015, and he hasn’t changed his mind in 2023.
Gaetz and Roy are, in fact, good windows into the composite nature of the anti-McCarthy coalition. Part of this is caused by disruption in itself – partisan conflict and playing the angrier faction of the Republican mafia generates more media attention and interest than serious coalition-building work and governance.
A Republican House said my colleague Olivia Beavers: “I like shit shows and this is a shit show to watch.” Another wing of GOP dissidents is so driven by a sincere anti-government belief that it will never get around to supporting someone it sees as a dealmaker.
But if it’s McCarthy’s opposition, what about his support? He ran in part on attributes — his fundraising prowess, his compliant manner with GOP colleagues — that would be entirely relevant to a position as the head of the Republican National Congressional Committee, dedicated to helping win the election. One thing he didn’t check: anything close to a big idea about governance.
This makes McCarthy’s candidacy different from the candidacy that brought Newt Gingrich and his team of “revolutionaries” to power a generation ago after the 1994 election. Nor is McCarthy committed to such a thing as sunny conservatism. who evangelized Paul Ryan on Paul Ryan’s behalf, though he could do little about it in his four years as a speaker from 2015.
McCarthy’s misadventures show that a purely transactional approach to political power has natural limits. They also show that a contemptuous approach to politics has so far not reached its limits.
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