Kevin McCarthy’s defenestration is characteristic of a party without any organizing principle beyond the former president.
Kevin McCarthy’s defenestration is characteristic of a party without any organizing principle beyond the former president.
I t wasn’t long after eight insurrectionary House Republicans joined with the entire Democratic caucus to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership that the truth dawned on McCarthy’s fellow members: No one can unite the GOP conference. Indeed — from its rank-and-file voters to its federal officeholders — no one can unite the Republican Party. No one, that is, save Donald Trump.
“I nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the House,” declared House Freedom Caucus member Representative Troy Nehls on X (formerly Twitter), within minutes of McCarthy’s announcement that he would not seek reinstatement to the role from which he’d just been defenestrated. Representative Jim Jordan, who has floated himself as a potential successor to McCarthy, was open to the prospect. “If he wants to be speaker, then that’s fine, too,” Jordan said. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to back Trump for the speakership as well as for the presidency. In an appearance on one of the media outlets in which the MAGA right silos itself, Green promised that she would “force” the country to acknowledge the degree to which it loves Trump.
The former president is aware of the effort to draft him into the speakership, and he’s played it coy. “All I can say is, we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party,” Trump told reporters who gathered around him in one of the courtrooms where he’ll be spending most of his time between today and Election Day 2024. “If I can help them during the process, I would do it.” As this dismissive tone suggests, Trump is unlikely to acquiesce to the demands of a movement that has deprived itself of all other viable alternatives to his commanding presence. But Trump’s ascension to the speakership is a useful hypothetical, at least insofar as it illustrates the cognitive cul-de-sac in which the party’s loudest voices have gotten themselves stuck.
For over a decade, the activist wing of the Republican Party has been at war with the speakers it is fortunate enough to be in a position to elect. The distinctions in style, ideology, and affect between John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy are so broad that it’s fair to conclude that the only thing uniting them in the minds of their critics is the job they all held.
Speakers set the legislative agenda. They harmonize the wildly disparate demands of their fractious majorities. They move legislation amenable to the majority of the majority, and they stall legislation that is not. Invariably, speakers wield their power to persuade and cajole, and they frustrate the ambitions of members who see the institution in which they serve as a stepping stone to bigger jobs. The speaker’s job is to move the ball downfield, which is why the office has become a source of frustration among Republicans who insist that they cannot advance the ball because of the fifth columnists with whom they are surrounded.
It would certainly be entertaining to see Donald Trump perform in a role that pits him directly against this ethos, to which he owes his own political career. Only the stone-hearted can fail to see the humor value in a scenario in which Trump is compelled to denounce the antics of the House Freedom Caucus because it is blocking passage of a rule that would allow the chamber to pass a bill Trump himself only understands he’s supposed to care about. If Trump did occupy that role, it would compel him to pursue successful legislative strategies if only because he would own the party’s failures.
Maybe the cult around him is so strong that it would force the House’s more recalcitrant members to sacrifice their ambitions to his. Perhaps the dynamic that has locked the House’s most intransigent members in conflict with the party’s leadership would still pertain. Regardless, if nothing else could, putting him in charge of the House GOP conference might finally convince Republican voters that Trump is the obstacle to all that is righteous and good.
That is extremely unlikely, not just for the above reasons but because of the simple fact that Donald Trump does not want competing power centers within the GOP. The almost total ruination of the party’s federal leadership apparatus outside the Senate — the members of which must contend with a 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation and, therefore, cannot work their will alone even in the majority — is a defining feature of the current GOP. Diffusing and disaggregating power across the GOP only diminishes Trump’s centrality, and he won’t consent to that. Since his ascension to the top of the House conference would only put the lie to the notion that the party fails solely because its leadership has no stomach for the “fight,” it will never happen.
The fact that his name is being advanced by the most slavish elements within the House GOP serves only to shed light on the utter vacuum of governing authority within the Republican Party. And that is a condition that satisfies its members and leaders alike, few of whom have much interest in governing anything.