Kevin McCarthy Should Never Be House Speaker: Republicans Must Stop Being Willing to Lose
On January 3rd, 2023, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will face election for the role as Speaker of the House for the new…
On January 3rd, 2023, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will face election for the role as Speaker of the House for the new congress, with the Republicans having picked up a slim majority victory in the 2022 midterm elections.
Although McCarthy was able to pick up the party’s nomination for House Speaker in November by a 188–31 vote, he is still required to reach a 218-vote threshold to obtain the speakership, with the GOP set to only enter the new Congress with 222 seats. He faces pushback and obstacles from both the Democrats and from those within his own party who believe he has shown weak leadership and disloyalty to Trump and the MAGA movement.
In November current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed that she does not believe McCarthy will have the votes to pass the 218 mark, saying “No, I don’t think he has it. But that’s up to his own people to make decisions to how they want to be led or otherwise”. — So, what decision will Republicans make, will they rally behind McCarthy to demand new leadership?
Many House Republicans have voiced their concerns about McCarthy becoming House Speaker since the weak performance of the Republicans in the November midterms. Notably many dissenting voices come from the House Freedom Caucus, considered the most right-wing faction of the house which often opposes the Republican establishment and status quo.
Chip Roy (R-Texas), Freedom Caucus member stated his concerns over a McCarthy speakership from a pragmatic perspective, saying to Fox News in November that “In the private sector, if you don’t perform the way you should, usually there’s some sort of change”. Many Republicans felt as though the 2022 midterms should have been an easily won landslide victory, but the predicted “Red Wave” came up short, with the Republicans barely picking up a majority in the House and failing to gain a majority in the Senate.
Their concerns might be well-founded — if Republicans are unable to pick up a large majority under the Biden presidency amid increasing inflation, recession, COVID protocols, etc., one might reasonably wonder: When could they win a majority? It seems like these past midterms ought to have been a perfect storm to bring the Red Wave sweeping across America, but it turned out to be the opposite.
Roy is not alone in his concerns about McCarthy, he is joined by other Freedom Caucus members Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Bob Good (R-Virginia), as well as a challenge from Arizona Representative Andy Biggs. Gaetz argues that McCarthy has made missteps in the past which have eroded the trust between him and the further right members of the House, including not doing enough to stymie the Biden administration’s policy initiatives, not stopping the passage of budget bills like the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, advocating for amnesty immigration legislation, as well as his flip-flopping on President Trump and the 2020 election following the January 6 Capitol riot.
Are these Republican members of the House right to push for new and more conservative leadership? Or, are they making a fatal strategic mistake which will cost them a valuable opportunity to take back power over the House? Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) believes the latter, that Representatives like Gaetz and Roy who are demanding an upheaval of the status quo are making a mistake.
Greene says that “For anyone question Kevin, all you have to do is look at his public statements and promises. He’s on record with the most conservative plan of any potential Speaker in decades”. Fighting back against this sentiment, Gaetz claims that “Every single Republican in Congress knows that Kevin does not actually believe anything. He has no ideology”.
So who can we trust? Should we take MTG’s word for it, that McCarthy will deliver a more conservative agenda than this country has seen in decades? Or should we believe Gaetz, that McCarthy will be more of the same, a RINO cut from the same cloth as any other, who is complicit in the Democrats’ agenda and refuses to fight back and win?
I believe that the answer to this question is readily available, and that we need not delve deep into McCarthy’s history as Majority Leader from 2014–2019 under Boehner and Ryan, or at his stint as Minority Leader since 2019. We only have to take a look at the disastrous recent months to see that Gaetz is in the right on this issue, and MTG is either seriously misguided or is selling out for McCarthy in order to get favorable committee placements in return for her bending of the knee.
In my recent article, “The Republican Party is a Disaster: Midterm Failures, Respect for Marriage Act, and the $1.7T Omnibus Spending Bill”, I detail the ways in which the Republican party has shown themselves to be totally ineffective and in many cases working against any overt America first or conservative agenda.
We need only examine how they pinned blame on President Trump for their lackluster midterm performance, how Republicans stood behind the Respect for Marriage Act and codifying protections for same-sex marriage, how 27 Republicans voted to pass the omnibus spending bill, which funds the border protections of other nations while ours remains wide open, and gives $50 billion more aid to Ukraine.
As I said in my previous article, these are not only compromises achieved with some clever politicking in mind, or some hidden benefit which will be repaid to Republicans later. These are total failures, and there is no other way around it. The Republican party is failing. Even when we win elections, and win majorities, we cannot count on our elected representatives to put America first, or to stand behind any conservative moral convictions. Instead we get people like McCarthy who at every turn show themselves to be limp-wristed and self-serving.
Kevin McCarthy should never be Speaker, and frankly, the problem with the Republican Party does not start or end with him alone. 18 Republican Senators and 9 members of the House voted for the omnibus spending bill. 12 Republican Senators voted for the Respect for Marriage Act. There are systemic issues plaguing this Party, and they need to be remedied quickly and decisively if real conservatives can hope to achieve any sort of meaningful victory moving forward.
By meaningful victory, I do not mean electoral victory. Even if Republicans are able, through ballot harvesting measures and by broadening their coalition with multi-ethnic working class populism, it has been proven that merely having the “R” next to your name is worth little or nothing if you refuse to act as a bulwark against the Biden regime or the Democrats’ legislative agendas.
Reforming this Republican Party will not be easy, but we should be thankful that we have passionate and freedom-loving members of the House like Gosar (R-Arizona), Gaetz, and Roy willing to stand up against not only the Democrats, but against the traitors and liars within the Republican party, which is proving to be the more difficult of the two fights.
It is time for Republicans to stop being willing to lose, willing to compromise, and willing to sign legislation selling out America to foreign nations and interests.