Trump is currently polling waaay ahead of his republican competitors (it’s not even remotely close). This can only serve to tell any republican that the MAGA nutjobs are still running the show and will primary anyone who is not a nutjob out of office. McCarthy, who has been a loyal footsoldier the whole time, did this ONE thing wrong and that’s all it takes…he’s out (and good riddance IMO).
As someone mentioned upthread (here or in a related one) this is one side effect of such rampant Gerrymandering. Not sure how the republican party can fix that. I do not think they can.
Maybe wanting to having a functional government and not let the republicans take the whole thing down the tubes.
It’d be like being in a house where someone is threatening to burn the whole place down. Your reaction might be, “Fine…burn your place down. See if I care!”
Then you realize you are locked in the house with them and cannot get out.
Ruling coalitions routinely collapse in most democracies. This isn’t unusual, though it implies a big split within the Republican Party.
Centrist unity coalitions do happen: they involve power sharing agreements. McCarthy offered the Dems literally nothing.[1] Which is ok: Gaetz wants McCarthy’s lieutenant in charge, suggesting that this isn’t a policy dispute but rather a reflection of the Republican Party’s love of drama for the sake of drama.
Honestly, I don’t fully understand why the Dems should have settled for a low low price. I’m guessing the idea is that Dem support would be a poison pill for the GOP, since its increasingly unhinged base would turn on them. But I’m not sure what Yglesias is thinking. Anyway the point is moot: McCarthy offered nothing, reflecting his disinterest in centrist coalition government.
[1] Then there’s the whole going back on his word thing, as well as launching a bogus impeachment effort against Biden. See MulderMuffin and AOC, above. h/t Smapti.
I don’t think that’s going to matter as much as Trump thinks it will. The Republicans have put a lot of effort into rigging the outcome of elections. Trump himself knows this, as was demonstrated by his phone calls. But Trump’s a lazy idiot. He knows the system for rigging elections exists but he has no idea how it works.
And it probably hasn’t occurred to Trump that the people who know how to rig a general election are also going to know how to rig a primary election. Trump may be leading in the polls. But on Super Tuesday, Republican election officials will announce that DeSantis won the primaries and will be getting the delegates.
That’s a legitimate point. But the Republicans are already hurting the country. Propping them up will just let them continue to do so. The Democrats may have decided it’s better for the country to endure the short term chaos of the Republican party imploding in order to gain the long term benefits of getting them out of power.
Trump also ordered the House to let the government shut down. And while 91 Republicans listened, the majority did not. And then it was only 8 Republicans who agreed to kick McCarthy out.
Trump is far ahead of the other presidential candidates, but he doesn’t seem to command the party anymore.
If the Democrats had helped him stay in power he would have just gone back to what he’d been doing up until now, trying to appease the goal-posting moving lunatic fringe that are determined to shut down the government. Who needs more of that?
I was thinking during the multiple votes for Speaker that he must be a horrible politician. How can you get to that point in your career and not have the needed votes already in hand?
But that’s the thing - the catalyst for the current mess was the CR, which was attempting to have a functional government.
The lesson is pretty clear - while Joe Biden is in the White House, any Republican who helps produce a functional government, particularly with any significant help from the Democrats, is considered persona non grata by the FC.
Rather than “fine, burn your place down”, it’s facing down a squad of active arsonists who are throwing gasoline on you while you are trying to put out a fire. You need to first deal with the nutjobs throwing fuel on the fire if you want to have any chance of controlling the blaze. Hoping that you can maybe work with one of their many enabler buddies to corral them for you is insanity. There’s a whole squad of arsonists, not just one or two who can be sidelined.
McCarthy had nothing to offer the Democratic Party in return for their support. It’s that simple. McCarthy had not done anything to work with the other side of the aisle until his last budget compromise, which managed to leave out aid for Ukraine, the one item that Trump had insisted could not be in it. McCarthy then continued his Trump directed anti-Democratic Party campaign based on continuing Trump’s Big Lie. Supporting McCarthy would do nothing for the country or for the Democratic Party and the Democrats in congress would have been fools to save him from being hoisted by his own petard.
He’s probably thinks he’ll be on DJ Petard’s short list for VP now. He seems to be that stupid.
All it takes is five or six Republicans in purple or blue districts to become independent and caucus with the Dems to once again have a functioning government. Maybe the Dems hope that all this chaos will cause their voters to put pressure on representatives in purple or blue districts to do just that.
The very definition of the opposition party is voting against the House leader. If you are voting for them, you are part of the ruling coalition. This pattern is replayed across all democracies.
There’s an assumption in the Washington press corps that Republicans break things and Democrats are suppose to behave responsibly. The OP reflects this underlying assumption. Media expert James Fallows and Josh Marshall:
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On the other hand, retiring from the Speakership with strong support from 90% of your party sets yourself up for a lucrative lobbying gig. That had to be part of Big Kev’s calculations.
I’m sure that Big Kev could walk over to K Street and immediately command an eye-watering lobbying salary, but that’s not where his heart is. He’s been desperate to become Speaker his entire career. He did everything you were supposed to do to become Speaker – worked his way up the ranks of Republican leadership, busted his ass raising money for fellow House Republicans, recruited and supported strong Republican candidates in competitive districts, etc.
And it’s all been for naught. This is the second time he’s been rejected by his caucus (he had to abort a Speaker run when Boehner retired because conservatives revolted). Spending the subsequent years debasing himself to Trump gained him nothing. Some might see him as a tragic figure, but tragic figures are usually capable and moral before their fall.