The man who would be the Speaker of the House had already taken a victory lap before a single vote was counted. “I’m better prepared now,” he recently told New York magazine. “If I’m not accepted by the body that has this script this time, nobody’s accepted,” he boasted to Punchbowl News. The failed frozen yogurt shop owner from Bakersfield, California, envisions himself finally standing as the hero of the Horatio Alger success story at the top of the greasy pole. McCarthy is now trumpeting that he has won the confidence of the far-right Liberty Conference that previously opposed his elevation. He keeps his leader, his nerdy former nemesis Jim Jordan, as a great friend. “Probably my biggest advocate is Jim Jordan,” he said. From his gilded tropical palace, Trump will call in dictations that will turn the House into the caucus of 2024 McCarthy’s bravado reveals a hint of insecurity. The talk of the steakhouses is that it won’t last long. Donald Trump’s minions of horned madmen and militias were unable to take over the Capitol on January 6th. But when the 118th Congress is sworn in on January 3, the Trump coup will have overcome more than a police roadblock to enter a new phase. That’s because Trump will become, for all intents and purposes, the de facto speaker of the House. Although when Nancy Pelosi ever so gently hands the gavel to Kevin McCarthy, “it would be hard not to hit her with it,” McCarthy said to wild laughter from a Republican crowd in 2021. Ultimate power will rest in Trump’s hands. From his gilded tropical palace, he will call Jim Jordan and other colleagues, who will turn the House of Representatives into his 2024 presidential campaign committee, virtual law office and knife for revenge. The House will be his hammer. Trump is still atop the party, defying the bitter Republican finger that blames him for the midterm debacle. Rupert Murdoch’s overnight order to Fox News to campaign for Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis can’t suddenly cancel the Trump show that Murdoch was instrumental in producing, even though for years he reportedly privately called him a ‘fucking idiot’ . Trump is hardly dislodged. In the 117th Congress, 147 Republicans out of 213 refused to certify the results of the electoral college. The fringes of the slim new Republican majority will be uniformly suffragettes, who will complement the Freedom Caucus before which McCarthy hides. When the “red wave” was revealed to be a mirage, with votes still being counted and the Republican House majority still uncertain, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida called McCarthy a “McFailure,” pledged his undying loyalty to Trump, and called for a challenge. to McCarthy as speaker. Jason Miller, a former Trump official and backbencher, took to Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to say that if McCarthy “wants a chance to be a speaker, he needs to be much more vocal in his support of President Trump.” . Bannon, acquitted on appeal of his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 committee, responded that “the dude-centric nature” of the House and the Republican party would intensify. “McCarthy, even as he tries to walk a fine line, has been chronically underestimating himself.” Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters When Trump’s mob ran down the halls of the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence!” and “Nancy! Gay!” and was a few feet away from storming McCarthy’s office, desperately reaching out to Trump at the White House to ask him to call it off. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than , what about you,” Trump said, according to reporter Robert Draper. “Am I upset? They’re trying to kill me!” McCarthy screamed, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” In the days after the trauma, McCarthy floated the idea of cabinet members invoking the 25th amendment to impeach Trump — then defended Trump from impeachment, which didn’t preclude Trump from calling him a “pussy” and in January 27 he flew to Mar-a-Lago to bend his knee in supplication. McCarthy, even as he tries to balance on a fine line, is chronically self-deprecating. Occasionally, he tries to cover his bare ambition with a transparent fig leaf. In May 2020, when Trump falsely claimed that Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and MSNBC host who is critical of Trump, had murdered a young aide in 2001, even though he was 800 miles away when he fell and fatally hit her head, McCarthy responded with a statement that he must have thought demonstrated his political decency. “I wasn’t here with Joe Scarborough,” he said. “I don’t know exactly about the matter itself.” But humility in the service of self-interest is not faith. Trump, who remembers every trifle as a small greatness, has taken the small measure of McCarthy as “my Kevin.” He knows that McCarthy believes, as McCarthy said at the 2017 House Republican convention, that Putin is “paying off” Trump — “swear to God.” He will never be seen as loyal enough, nor will he be trusted to do absolutely everything he is ordered to do, especially when those orders are about to besiege the Justice Department in an attempt to interfere with its investigations of Trump. Kevin McCarthy’s McCarthyism, like McCarthyism before it, is rooted in personal ambition, but in Kevin McCarthy’s case it is motivated more by a desire to keep up than by the wild instinct shown by Joe McCarthy, with Roy Cohn he whispers in Trump’s ear before walking into it. Kevin McCarthy always knew the score: that Republican delusion, from little white lies to big lies, is born of pure cynicism. Occasionally he accidentally spills the beans. His urge to spout the truth was rampant in 2015 when he spoke about the House Benghazi investigation, revealing its political intent: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we created a special Benghazi committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.” McCarthy surely knows that the Republicans’ hard-hitting culture war is hypocritical. When it comes to Trump’s pick for Georgia senator Herschel Walker — who is facing off against Sen. Raphael Warnock in a runoff and who allegedly paid for girlfriends’ abortions, he allegedly abandoned both his legitimate and illegitimate children and allegedly committed violence against him. ex-husband – McCarthy has maintained radio silence. McCarthy will dutifully issue blanket approval for House committees to launch a thousand inquiries His passivity in the face of evil is the price he willingly pays to maintain the virtuous glow of the culture war. While he goes through every cowardly act, his performance does not inspire confidence in his own team, who see through the cellophane man. He has to dance faster and faster just to stay still. McCarthy will dutifully issue blanket approval for House committees to launch a thousand inquiries. Democratic groups involved in voter turnout efforts will be investigated. Democratic lawyers who defend voting rights will be targeted. Progressive nonprofits involved in elections and criminal justice will have their nonprofit status challenged. Secretaries of State who have disappointed Trump election naysayers will be pressured. Officials in the Biden administration, from national security to homeland security, will be called upon to challenge their policies. Military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which has already been attacked by the pro-Putin Republican group, will be squeezed. No “blank check,” McCarthy said. Companies and banks that invest in green energy or adopt diversity and equity policies will be under pressure. Tech platforms will be drawn before the public eye for filings about alleged political discrimination against conservatives, to intimidate them into following the lead of Elon Musk, who attended McCarthy’s private political retreat in Wyoming last August. (“Elon believes in freedom. Elon is a businessman. Such an American success story,” McCarthy said.) Summons will fly. And, quite predictably, the House will create a federal budget showdown to shut down the government in an attempt to push through its draconian policies, as Republicans did in the past as a tactic against Bill Clinton in 1995 to 1996 and against Barack Obama in 2013. The House could then impeach President Biden – and possibly Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, among others. Writer Barton Gellman recently laid out the upcoming strategy in The Atlantic. “McCarthy wants to oversee Benghazi-style subpoenas and hearings to weaken the president ahead of the 2024 election, not call for Biden’s ouster,” Gelman writes. “But there is no reason to believe that McCarthy can resist the GOP’s impeachment drive once he gathers power.” “Jim Jordan has released a dense 1,050-page compendium of conspiracy theories – 1,050 rabbit holes he promises to go down.” Photo: Michael Conroy/AP Gelman further quotes Ted Cruz, from the senator’s recent podcast, as pushing for Biden’s impeachment, “whether it’s warranted or not,” as payback for Trump’s two impeachments. Like many Republicans, Cruz uses the word “guns” the same way Republicans adopted the word “grooming” to accuse public school teachers of trying to convert transgender children. “Democrats have weaponized impeachment,” Cruz said. “They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because…
