Kevin McCarthy is as responsible as anyone for his own downfall
This week, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker of the House of Representatives in history to be voted out of office. It was a fitting end to his speakership, one in which McCarthy had served only at the pleasure of a nihilistic bloc of far-right Republicans. It was little wonder, then, that he seemed almost jolly as he announced at a press conference that he didn’t intend to run for the office again.
Far more galling was McCarthy’s attempt at the same event to present himself, in contrast to those who ousted him, as some sort of force for moderation and reasonableness. The truth is that McCarthy has been at the cutting edge of his party’s descent into madness, encouraging its worst instincts and indulging its most destructive personalities. People sometimes say that the congressional Republican party has become “ungovernable”. It’s more accurate to say that it has been deliberately radicalized – and that Kevin McCarthy played a key role in that process.
Take a look down the list of recent Republican outrages and you’ll find McCarthy implicated at every turn. Flirting with birtherism? Check. Joking about physically attacking Nancy Pelosi, even after a violent mob stormed the Capitol to search for her? Check. Angrily demanding that other Republicans defend Donald Trump after the leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump seemed to admit to committing sexual assault? Yep, that was Kevin.
Perhaps most egregious have been McCarthy’s attempts to aid Trump in subverting the 2020 election, and then to minimize the January 6 insurrection which followed. Just hours after the deadly attack on the Capitol, McCarthy voted to reject Biden’s lawful election, citing spurious conspiracy theories. Although McCarthy briefly condemned the violence of that day, he soon moved to reconcile with Trump and became a firm opponent of imposing any sort of accountability on those responsible. In one of his most outrageous acts, he released thousands of hours of Capitol security video to Tucker Carlson, allowing the Fox News host to cherry-pick footage and spin the attack as merely a peaceful protest.
McCarthy also defended and elevated the very worst members of his own caucus, declining to endorse their opponents in primaries or to marginalize them once they made it to the chamber. He was an early supporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who has supported QAnon conspiracy theories, called for prominent Democrats to be executed, and made racist and antisemitic remarks. Once she was seated, Greene emerged as one of McCarthy’s closest allies and his conduit to the Trumpian base. When Trump, Greene and other Republicans called for an inquiry into the possibility of impeaching Joe Biden over spurious allegations of corruption, McCarthy was happy to oblige.
Even on the more mundane issues of taxing and spending which ultimately led to his ouster, McCarthy did nothing to quiet his party’s worst instincts. The speaker supports the practice of using the annual vote on raising the debt ceiling to hold the government hostage, threatening an economy-wrecking default in order to leverage policy concessions. After using that tactic earlier this year to force Democrats into a deal which would cut spending, he then reneged on it and sent the country hurtling towards a government shutdown. His management of the chaos which ensued proved to be his downfall.
By actively working to radicalize the Republican party in so many different ways, McCarthy now bears as much responsibility as anyone else for the abject state in which the Republican party finds itself. Embittered and delusional, Republicans cannot pull themselves together enough to perform even the most basic tasks of governing. The speaker’s chair is vacant as the country heads towards another government shutdown, and Republican congressmen have gone back to their districts to nurse their wounds for a week. When they return there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to cohere around a new choice for speaker – or that whoever they pick will do a better job than McCarthy did.
Nobody should welcome this paralysis in the nation’s legislature. But if there’s a bright spot in all of this, it’s the fact that Democrats are well-placed to make hay from the Republicans’ selfinflicted wounds. Voters’ rejection of the Republican party’s radicalization is one of the reasons that Democrats did so well in the 2022 midterm elections. For all of the schadenfreude currently directed at Republicans, it’s Democrats like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi who deserve credit for denying Republicans a bigger majority and putting them in this bind to begin with. The struggle against Maga extremism has proven motivational for many voters,
and McCarthy only helped Democrats to make the case.
Ultimately, though, a two-party democracy cannot survive and prosper if one of its parties becomes so consumed by nihilism. It’s no surprise that Republican attacks on democracy and the basic norms of common decency make it so hard for them to navigate any task requiring compromise or reasonableness. But the corrosion that is eating away at their own ranks is unlikely to stop there. It’s also threatening to damage the country, be it through a catastrophic debt default or another outpouring of violence. That threat will remain until a critical mass of Republicans and their leaders will stand up and say: no more. Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t. Will anyone else?
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter
tors who represented a minority of the nation’s population. Third, these hardright justices are often deeply out of synch with a majority of the public. They’re far more opposed to abortion rights, business regulations, labor unions and government measures that advance economic and social justice.
Back in 1982 when I graduated from law school, many people thought the Rehnquist court was too conservative, but no one questioned its legitimacy. But then came the Bush v Gore ruling in which the conservative majority exerted its muscle in an extraordinary partisan fashion to deliver victory in the 2000 election to George W Bush – and thereby assure continued conservative control of the court.
At his confirmation hearing, John Roberts famously said he would merely call balls and strikes as chief justice. But that statement has proven to be flatly untrue, an unfortunate curveball. As chief justice, Roberts has repeatedly gone far beyond calling balls and strikes, often in rulings that increased the Republican’s chances of winning elections. In Citizens United, Roberts engineered an atom bomb of a decision that blew up our campaign finance system and overturned century-old rules that sought to prevent corporations and the mega-rich from having undue sway over our politics and government. In Citizens United, the Roberts court did grievous damage to our democracy, helping transform our nation into a plutocracy where billionaires’ money dwarfs the voices of average Americans.
Roberts also led the way in overturning a pivotal part of the Voting Rights Act that required Alabama, South Carolina and other states with a dismal history of racial discrimination to obtain pre-clearance from the federal government before they changed voting rules. Showing how out of touch he was with political realities, Roberts wrote a majority decision that essentially said that racial discrimination on voting matters was a thing of the past and that pre-clearance unduly interfered in those states’ internal affairs, despite their disturbing legacy of racism. That decision was one of supreme judicial arrogance, overturning a law that the Senate passed 98 to 0 and the House passed 390 to 33 to extend the Voting Rights Act for 25 years.
Roberts handed the Republicans another huge victory when he led the court in turning a blind eye to egregious gerrymandering. In doing so, Roberts gave a green light to brazen gerrymanders and minority rule, like that in Wisconsin where in a recent election, the Republican party won nearly two-thirds of state assembly seats even though its candidates received just 46% of the vote. The supreme court is supposed to safeguard America’s democracy for the ages, and we should all question the legitimacy of a court that in decision after decision has eroded our democracy in a way that favors one political party. (I should note that Roberts, embarrassed by the court’s headlong lurch to the right, recently sought to shore up the court’s flagging legitimacy by mustering a 5-4 majority to overturn an Alabama voting map that diluted Blacks’ voting power.)
Clarence Thomas’s corrupt behavior has raised concerns about the court’s legitimacy to new heights. As ProPublica reported, not only did rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow provide Thomas with a free nine-day yacht vacation in Indonesia, but Crow has ferried him around on private jets, purchased properties belonging to Thomas and his relatives and paid private school tuition for a grandnephew Thomas was raising. Separately, Thomas was flown to California to be the star attraction at a far-right Koch network fundraising weekend. Flouting ethics laws, Thomas disclosed none of this.
Thomas seems to see a judge’s lifetime tenure as a license to skirt ethics and disclosure laws as well as a lifetime pass to take lavish favors from whomever he wants, even people with cases before the supreme court. As for Alito, he didn’t disclose that billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the supreme court, paid for his luxury fishing trip to Alaska.
For decades, the nation’s law schools have taught aspiring lawyers about the importance of judicial restraint and humility, of not overreaching. At a time when so many Americans are questioning the court’s legitimacy, the court should try all the harder to act with restrain and humility – and caution. Instead, the conservative supermajority, enamored with its power, seems intent on acting boldly and overreaching to stamp its rightwing vision on our constitutional order. These unelected justices seem happy to hobble our democratically elected president, in ways large and small, and in doing so, to dangerously undermine our democracy.
Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer