The McCarthy Meltdown
or why he surrendered to the Tea Party
The story so far….
It’s in the hours and days following the quelling of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Everyone was freaking out — even a sizable percentage of the GOP. After nearly 3 decades of unbridled nihilism, the institutionalists within the Republican Party expressed shock, anger, and a fair amount of vitriol over what was a QAnon/White Supremacist/Tea Party/Trump cultist attempt to take over Congress — a rare moment of clarity. Even within the nihilist GOP leadership, institutionalists said the obvious:
Donald Trump was responsible for the insurrection1. Then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was, in fact, rather frank about it2.
The problem was that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wanted the Democrats to do their dirty work with a handful of rogue Senate Republicans throwing in just enough votes to convict Trump and deny him any future political power. An Impeachment conviction plus a disqualification from holding office in the future would have done that.
The Republican leadership got religion instead.
The Tea Party faction is running the House Republican caucus and gerrymandering is turning old guard Republican/mainstream conservatives into political dodo birds. Political darwinism requires institutionalists, never Trumpers, and Trump critics within the GOP to engage in a lot of sidestepping to remain in office; and in the case of politicians like Kevin McCarthy, to keep them in power.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol has now revealed that a cadre of Republican House Members - Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Lauren Boebert (R-CO) , Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) - were involved in phone calls to overturn the 2020 election prior to January 6th. Think planning and plotting. Greene and Boebert, who have taken bizarre QAnon-ish positions and tactics to push their agenda, aside, the one thing this group has in common is that they are members of the Freedom Caucus which began from the influx of Tea Party candidates begining in 2010.
Kevin McCarthy, who wants desperately to be Speaker of the House, has like former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan become prisoner of a group of Republicans who are anti-institutionalist, anti-rules, and anti-seniority. The Freedom Caucus/Tea Party movement made it possible for the rise of Donald Trump — “Tell us what we want to hear and go after anyone who tries to stop us” is their mantra and Donald Trump is their political god. Unfortunately, their obeisance to nihilism fed well into GOP congressional leadership — power beats philosophy.
After nearly 100,000 pages of documents and 1,000 witness interviews, the Committee is expected to begin public hearings soon. Due to some rather poor political decisions, Kevin McCarthy has put himself into political stalemate.
The Committee, in a moment of surprising media saaviness for Democrats, has employed a professional writer to put together the Committee’s report to tell the chronology of events that led to that terrible day at the U.S. Capitol (people were trying to kill Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi, breaking things, defecating on desks etc., so spare me the “normal political discourse” line being troweled out by the GOP). This is huge, insofar as anyone who read the Mueller Report knows that dense dullness does not lead to political change, — a well-written story of how Trump tried to overthrow the government will.
The Committee’s report and what is expected to be riveting hearings are going to be the beginning of Kevin McCarthy’s meltdown. McCarthy had options before the Committee was authorized to begin its work.
He could have gone with an independent commission. They are usually quiet and politically irrelevant.
He could have taken the task of appointing minority members of the Select Committee seriously and not picked people who were either involved in January 6th (Jim Jordan comes to mind)3, Tea Party acolytes, or Gingrich-esque bomb-throwers4.
So instead of having GOP insiders who could keep McCarthy apprised of the internal doings of the Committee and give him a track to push the GOP narrative (and no, “normal political discourse” is not going to sell); Kevin McCarthy is stuck with two anti-Trump Republicans, Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who have impeccable conservative records.
McCarthy would do well to consider this bit of wisdom from British chess grandmaster Nigel Short “Modern chess is too much concerned with things like pawn structure. Forget it, checkmate ends the game.”
McCarthy has given up too much to win the January 6th narrative and he lacks the grandmaster skills to know when a pawn sacrifice will aid him in winning the political chess game.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/us/politics/trump-mitch-mcconnell-kevin-mccarthy.html
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4946114/minority-leader-mcconnell-president-trump-practically-morally-responsible-january-6-attack-capitol
McCarthy ought to resign over his recent spate of lies. He should never be allowed to hold office again. Same with the Jan 6 Co conspirators...all of them. They should be asked who won the election and if there was massive fraud. If they answer as they have since the insurrection they should be thrown out.