Kevin McCarthy: Bargain Basement Faust

There are few more transparent, pathetic, and destructive examples of blind ambition than Kevin McCarthy’s crusade to become Speaker of the House, followed by his desperate efforts to keep the job.  To even be considered for the post, he first had to go on all fours at Mar a Lago to appease Donald Trump.  He was then willing to endure the public humiliation of a fifteen-vote marathon in which he was bullied into granting increasing concessions to a bloc of archconservatives who openly loathed him, including allowing any one of them at any time to demand a vote for his ouster. 

In his fawning courtship of the holdouts, McCarthy could not have helped but be aware that he was demonstrating appalling weakness, even impotence, to slither his way into a job almost legendary for the strength of his predecessors, including Nancy Pelosi, the slight, eighty-plus-year-old, iron-hard woman he had spent years deriding.  McCarthy gave in so often, one got the impression that had he been asked to sacrifice his children, he would have asked for time to weigh the decision.

McCarthy supporters defended his toadying up to Matt Gaetz et al by assuring their fellow Republicans that, once in the position, McCarthy would use the power of the speakership to control the far right and push an agenda that, while aggressively conservative—whatever that means in today’s politics—would not be so extreme that it would spell suicide for Republican House members from swing districts.

He has done no such thing.

Just recently, McCarthy surrendered to demands from the far right that the House initiate a high-risk impeachment inquiry against President Biden.  If, as is likely, especially after a disastrous initial hearing, the committee uncovers no tangible evidence that Biden personally profited from or provided material support for his son’s questionable business dealings, the resulting backfire will give a boost to Biden’s wobbly campaign for re-election rather than derail it. 

In addition, motivation for the inquiry seems solely to be revenge for Democrats’ pursuit of Trump—who was actually guilty—rather than a genuine desire to discharge Constitutional responsibilities.  Even Ken Buck, a sometime member of the Gaetz faction himself, begged his colleagues to shelve the idea, and not for any love of Joe Biden.  McCarthy could have squelched the proceedings but refused to stand up to Shadow Speaker Gaetz.

But a stillborn impeachment pales next to McCarthy allowing Gaetz to flex his muscles once more in a headlong campaign to shut down the government unless he and his fellow nihilists achieve ridiculous spending cuts, this after voting to wildly increase spending during the Trump years. 

But that is the point.  The Gaetz faction has no real agenda, no plan for governing—they don’t even seem interested in doing so.  What they want is power and to be in the spotlight, which, as devoted Trump supporters, seems right in character.  Gaetz was even reported to be courting Democrats to join in a dump McCarthy vote, an initiative unlikely to garner much support.  McCarthy, as is his wont, has refused to directly confront either Gaetz or the consequences of a government shutdown prompted by…nothing.

The irony is that for all McCarthy’s willingness to put himself on public display as a human amoeba, it may make not a scintilla of difference in his ability to keep his job.

Republicans’ stunted five-seat margin in the House has come under increasing threat.  In 2022, Republicans won in eighteen House districts Joe Biden carried in 2020, one of which is New York’s Third, where George Santos’s improbable victory is unlikely to be repeated in 2024.  Democrats, on the other hand, won just five seats in districts carried by Donald Trump.

In addition to retaking Santos’s seat, with the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to revisit Allen v Milligan, Democrats seem certain to add a seat in Alabama.  Allen’s reach may well go further, since similar rulings have been made by lower courts in Georgia and Louisiana, and by a state court in Florida.  In New York, where an outside contractor drew a map that allowed Republicans to pick up four seats, including Santos’s, a new map is likely to be drawn for 2024 much more favorable to Democrats. 

While there are surely vulnerable Democrats, there are fewer of them and with Republicans’ inability to shake themselves free of the burn-it-down wing of their party, flipping blue seats red might be a tall order.

McCarthy is aware of the hole his party is digging itself into but is powerless to stop it.  Or chooses to be powerless.  Instead, he has returned to his usual tactic of trying to spin his failures and blame Democrats, particularly their insistence that the United States not abandon Ukraine to what would surely be Russian genocide.  (Just what this country needs—another key ally that realizes that American promises are worthless.)

This ploy will work with the Republican base—almost anything will work with the Republican base—but whether anyone else will be persuaded by McCarthy’s shallow, self-serving rhetoric is questionable.

And so, if current trends hold up over the next thirteen months, Kevin McCarthy’s tenure as Speaker may be brief, ineffective, and remembered mostly for the pain he inflicted on the nation. 

After all his groveling, it turns out McCarthy can’t even do Faust right.  When you sell your soul, you’re supposed to at least have a little fun before payment comes due.