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It stands to reason that Democratic members of Congress would not hold Kevin McCarthy in high regard. House Republicans didn’t care for Nancy Pelosi, and House Democrats weren’t fond of Paul Ryan or John Boehner. There’s no great mystery here: House speakers from the majority party tend not to have a lot of support from members of the minority party.
As a matter of routine, day-to-day governance, this tends to be inconsequential. The House tends to operate by majority rule, so speakers don’t often need support from their opponents.
There are, however, occasional exceptions.
As McCarthy’s far-right detractors plotted to take him down, there was considerable attention paid to the divisions within the GOP conference, and for good reason. But as a vote to oust McCarthy by way of a motion to vacate the chair neared, scrutinizing Republicans offered only part of a larger picture — because it was the Democratic minority that would help dictate the outcome.
If the California Republican lost a mere handful of his own members — which has long been inevitable — it would fall to Democrats to either keep the gavel in McCarthy’s hands or help take it away.
Or put another way, as McCarthy really needed to understand, he would be dependent on at least some Democratic support. They wouldn’t have to like him, necessarily, but they would have to trust and respect him enough to let him remain in office.
This was evident on Sunday, when McCarthy appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” but he nevertheless suggested that the government shutdown that his party nearly created should be blamed on the Democratic minority.
It was a striking moment: With a vote on his speakership poised to happen, Congress’ top Republican, knowing he’d need Democratic backing, thought it’d be a good idea to take a bizarre shot at his Democratic colleagues that was badly at odds with reality.
As Tuesday's drama unfolded, several Democrats referenced this “Face the Nation” interview, explaining that the GOP leader’s dishonesty served as a timely reminder that McCarthy was simply not an honest broker.
This is not to say that McCarthy would’ve been fine had he shown greater restraint on Sunday. On the contrary, McCarthy had 10 months to demonstrate to Democrats that he was a serious and honorable leader, even if they had substantive disagreements over policy.
We now know that he failed to do so.
The list of partisan transgressions is not short:
- McCarthy struck secret deals with his radical members to gain the gavel. He adopted a package of rules for this Congress designed to empower some of the same far-right members who tried to derail his leadership bid.
- He unfairly stripped several House Democrats of their committee assignments without cause.
- He made sensitive security footage available to a far-right media personality as part of a campaign to rewrite the story of the Jan. 6 attack.
- McCarthy orchestrated a debt ceiling standoff, threatening to crash the economy unless his party received some kind of reward. He also abandoned key elements of the debt ceiling agreement he struck as soon as it was politically convenient for him to do so.
- He pushed a historically rare censure resolution against Rep. Adam Schiff of California because the California Democrat told inconvenient truths the GOP didn't want to hear.
- He launched an evidence-free impeachment inquiry that’s impossible to take seriously, while also opening the door to impeaching members of the White House cabinet after having said that he wouldn’t.
- He needlessly politicized the National Defense Authorization Act.
- He endorsed a ludicrous effort to “expunge” Donald Trump’s impeachment.
If McCarthy was going to get any support from Democrats, it was likely to come from members of the New Democrat Coalition, which is made up of more moderate members from competitive districts. And yet, when Rep. Annie Kuster, the chair of the contingent, announced her position ahead of the vote, the New Hampshire Democrat said in a statement, “You are only as good as your word — and time and again, Speaker McCarthy has proven that he is not a man of his word. He is simply not trustworthy.”
McCarthy sealed his fate, not on Tuesday by failing to make credible offers, and not on Sunday with a dishonest interview, but incrementally over the course of the year. There were steps he could’ve taken to prevent this outcome, but he spent months prioritizing the whims of the same members who helped push him aside, burning bridges with the Democrats who could’ve rescued him.