Members-Only Article
It’s all coming down to the final showdown in Kevin McCarthy’s seven-year effort to recover the job he thought was his in 2015. We discussed some of these issues yesterday. Given the difficulty of coming up with any plausible explanation of how McCarthy can get 218 votes, you’re now going to hear lots of fantastical proposals about how McCarthy’s failure to get 218 votes might set the stage for a “bipartisan” speakership vote in which some number of Democrats cross the aisle to vote for McCarthy or some “moderate” alternative.
This is not going to happen. For many of you that’s probably obvious. But I thought it might be worth running through the insurmountable obstacles in the way of such an outcome.
1: The biggest reason this will not happen is one that is too little discussed. Any Republican speaker who becomes speaker with Democratic votes will be instantly discredited among basically all Republicans. A Speaker McCarthy or any other Republican speaker would instantly become radioactive in GOP politics, and it wouldn’t even happen because that radioactivity would be obvious in advance. The price of five Democrats crossing over would be losing at least one hundred Republican votes, probably more.
2: There would actually be a decent number of Democratic votes, for better or worse, for a true “bipartisan” speakership. But only if it were actually bipartisan. That would mean commitments against government shutdowns and debt ceiling hostage taking — at a minimum. Those asks would be dead on arrival for at least half the Republican caucus. Probably a lot more. That simply won’t happen. It’s telling that Dems might be tempted if the compromise candidate would simply rule out parliamentary terrorism. But it’s moot because that’s unforgivable in GOP politics.
3: The principle of McCarthy’s leadership has been acceding to any and all demands of the House Freedom Caucus. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s true. There’s a reason Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan are his biggest advocates. This has always been the centerpiece of his leadership of the House Republicans from the moment he took over the caucus leadership. It’s the key he used to pick the lock Boehner and Ryan could never pick. He “solved” the problem of how to deal with the Freedom Caucus by turning over management of the House to the Freedom Caucus. It doesn’t seem to have helped enough. They’re still knifing him. But it ensured that Democrats don’t like McCarthy. There’s zero affection for the guy. It’s not just feelings. It’s hard to see what saving a McCarthy speakership would achieve for Democrats. He’s committed to the full scorched-earth agenda. It’s highly unlikely Ds would have done this service for Boehner or Ryan. But it would have been marginally more plausible.
