We Need to Talk About Kevin (McCarthy)
“Character is destiny,” arises from remote antiquity, around 500 BC, from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. It is a fascinating, complex idea, often quoted, but slightly examined. The dense notion embedded in the quote is that one’s inner character actually propels a person from birth to death.
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“Will Kevin get to 218” is what was being asked this morning on the third day of January 2023 as the House reconvenes. It is a question being asked by all the swells because the answer, even at this late date, is unexpectedly unclear. Who, at the end of the day, will be second in line to succeed the President of the United States? “I earned this job,” is the tentative (and testy) remark that Kevin McCarthy, ostensibly the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, gave to the press an hour or so before the first round of votes.
The Tea Party and the Freedom Caucuses, the outer right-wing extremes of the already unruly Republican House, are the causes of Kevin’s consternation. These Caucuses tend to be whiter, more Southern and more male than the rest of the House and they vote en masse in a block, which is the key to their strength. As a group that votes lock-step they have managed to extract incredible votes from House and Senate leadership. Further, the so-called “red wave,” which never crested on election night, has led to such a slim majority that McCarthy must depend on every single vote he can muster — even if that involves getting into bed with George Santos, the man without qualities. This thusness is what has led to these Caucuses having so much power over Kevin.
This unified Tea Party-Freedom block is a reaction to the Obama stimulus. The Tea Party goes back to February 2009, as a very white, very male, financial industry reaction to President Obama’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. Incidentally, by contrast, Progressives believed that the stimulus was tragically small. Whatever the case, Obama’s got through what he got through, navigating the Scylla of the Tea Party and the Charybdis of Paul Krugman at the Times.
From the right, CNBC’s Rick Santelli on SquawkBox preached The White Man’s Burden Blues from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And a movement was born. “Santelli drew rapturous applause from the floor traders—the ‘silent majority,’ as he described them—when he added that the government should ‘reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water," Andrew Kirell of The Daily Beast reminds us. Standing athwart History yelling Stop!
This event occurred at around the same time as McCarthy moved into a leadership position. It was, to be sure, a character-forming moment in the life of Kevin. Nine-termer Kevin McCarthy began in the House leadership over a decade ago as a lieutenant to former Speaker John Boehner. Boehner, a tragic-comic political figure himself, tried to get legislation passed through compromise, but met mighty resistance in the form of — guess who? — the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus, which would ultimately form the kernel of the Trumpist base. It would be the end of Boehner’s political career.
Kevin McCarthy’s entire Quest for the Speakership involves not making the same mistakes as his predecessors in House leadership. Thus McCarthy’s North Star is not based on Principle or even Philosophy, it is based on feeding the Beast that is his far-right flank, the flank that hurled his previous patrons into political oblivion. Kevin has seen, up close, what the Beast does when it is hungry (it feeds on its own members).
Borborygmus were (and are) the rumblings of the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus! In 2014, McCarthy vaulted to the number 2 position in the House after a Tea Party challenger took out Eric Cantor in a Virginia primary. And when Boehner fell one year later in 2015, it was because of the Freedom Caucus, a far-right bloc within the Republican Congress with a lot of overlap with the Tea Party. “McCarthy knows the reason he’s in this job is because the grassroots took out Cantor and the Freedom Caucus took out Boehner,” Adam Brandon, head of FreedomWorks told Reuters at the time. “He damn well better be paying attention.”
But all was not wine and roses for McCarthy. The Tea and Freedom Caucuses desire to shrink government to a size in which they can easily drown it in the proverbial bathtub. And McCarthy, to their understanding, still has the stink of Boehner on him; he insufficiently true-believer. McCarthy has had, as a result of this distrust, to prove himself to the conspiratorial far-right, which has what can only be properly construed as — how does one say this politely? — serious trust issues. “After the far-right House Freedom Caucus denied his ascension to the speakership in 2015, McCarthy spent years courting the conservative wing and worked overtime to stay in former President Donald Trump’s good graces,” Melanie Zanona and Lauren Fox write on CNN.
And so, in the days leading up to today McCarthy caved. He has made concessions of great magnitude. As of a few days ago he had given himself over to some of the most terrible, horrible, no good very bad Tea Party Republican demands. From Sarah Ferris and Olivia Beavers of Politico:
The 55 pages of proposed rules are highly procedural, yet critical to the inner workings of the House. They would, for instance, govern how party leaders bring bills to the floor and how to ensure transparency around what those bills include. But the biggest focus for Republicans lately has been the so-called motion to vacate — the same tool that conservatives effectively used to topple former Speaker John Boehner in 2015. And it could be a serious threat to McCarthy as his conference takes power this week with one of the slimmest margins in House history.
And so here we are.