The fall of Kevin McCarthy shows that House Republicans can’t govern

OPINION: With McCarthy out as speaker, the House has been plunged into chaos. Until a new speaker is elected, the House is paralyzed and unable to vote on new spending bills or other legislation.

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

The Republican civil war between the far-right and farther-right MAGA extremists that resulted in the removal Tuesday of the incompetent Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives shows that House Republicans are incapable of governing.

McCarthy, R-Calif., is the first House speaker in American history to be ousted from office. He said he would not run for speaker again, acknowledging the hopelessness of any effort to regain the job he sought for many years and only gained in January.

The deposed speaker, who has served in the House since 2007, ought to resign his House seat and go back to California to reopen the deli he owned before entering politics. I’d wager he’s better at putting together a sandwich than he is at putting together a group of lawmakers capable of serving the American people. 

Unlike former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. (the first Black person to ever lead a party caucus in either the House or Senate), McCarthy was incapable of controlling the members of his own party.

Consumed by the desire to become the speaker to wield power, McCarthy foolishly accepted limits on his power in order to be elected to the office. One of his biggest mistakes was to give any single House member the power to call for a vote to remove him from the speakership. This proved to be his undoing when Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., called for such a vote Monday.

Gaetz and seven other radical Republican House members, who argued that McCarthy wasn’t extreme enough because he worked with Democrats last weekend to avert a government shutdown, voted to remove McCarthy as speaker. While 210 House Republicans voted to keep McCarthy in his post, the eight GOP rebels joined with 208 Democrats to kick him out of his role as leader of the House.

Like many Republicans in Congress, the eight rebels are primarily focused on gaining social media followers and getting on TV by making false and outrageous claims so they can raise as much money as possible in campaign contributions. In doing so, they follow the example of the man they bow down to as their real leader — disgraced former President Donald Trump, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite facing 91 felony criminal charges and several civil lawsuits.

Now the House has been plunged into chaos, without a speaker elected by members as the leader of the chamber. No one knows who will emerge as the next speaker or how long it will take to elect him or her. Until a new speaker is elected, the House is paralyzed and unable to vote on new spending bills or other legislation.

Why didn’t Democrats come to McCarthy’s rescue and join with Republicans to keep him in the speaker’s chair?

As Jeffries said in a letter to House Democrats, McCarthy wasn’t worth saving because he was unwilling to put partisanship aside and work with Democrats on bipartisan legislation in a governing coalition in the national interest. McCarthy never asked Democrats for help and regularly denounced and demonized members of the party.

Jeffries wrote that under McCarthy’s weak leadership, “the House has been restructured to empower right-wing extremists, kowtow to their harsh demands and impose a rigid partisan ideology.” He added that House Republicans “have unleashed chaos, dysfunction and extremism on hardworking American taxpayers.”

Here are just a few examples of the sorry record of McCarthy’s leadership in the House, where he repeatedly caved to the demands of extremists in his party:

• President Biden reached an agreement with McCarthy and congressional Republicans in June to limit federal spending in the fiscal year that began Sunday. But McCarthy went back on his word and demanded billions of dollars in additional spending cuts to avert a government shutdown after the most extreme Republicans said the earlier cuts he agreed to were too small. The cuts, which weren’t adopted, would have hit low-income families — including millions of Black families — especially hard.
• McCarthy said he wouldn’t launch an impeachment inquiry against President Biden unless the full House voted to do so. But when he realized the full House wouldn’t approve the inquiry, McCarthy authorized it on his sole authority. There is zero evidence that Biden committed any impeachable offenses. The impeachment inquiry is a political hit job and a waste of time and money. But Trump, who was impeached twice, demanded House Republicans impeach Biden as retribution and to weaken Biden’s reelection bid.
• McCarthy refused to authorize a nonpartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn Trump’s election defeat. He failed to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee appointed by Pelosi. He was one of 147 Republicans in the House and Senate who voted to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory. He remains one of Trump’s chief defenders in Congress. Trump calls McCarthy “my Kevin,” as if the now-former speaker is a little boy serving the former president.
• In finally joining with Democrats to avert a government shutdown at the last minute, McCarthy stabbed the brave people of Ukraine in the back, refusing to include aid for Ukraine to defend itself against invading Russian forces in the short-term government funding bill. Trump is hostile to Ukraine and has a bromance going with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the end, McCarthy fell victim to his burning ambition to become speaker of the House at just about any cost. Instead of standing on principle, he stood on his desire to attain power above all else.

McCarthy’s downfall was described by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Italian political philosopher, who said: “He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must fall with the greatest loss.”

Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, Senior Advisor at Purple Strategies, New York Times bestselling author, Chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and sought-after Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning media contributor to such outlets as ABC News, USA Today and TheGrio. She previously served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. Donna was the first Black American to serve as the manager of a major-party presidential campaign, running the campaign of Vice President Al Gore in 2000. She serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University and served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. She has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.

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