A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 , 2021
the election “because it wasn’t
constitutional,” according to a
person familiar with the ex-
change who spoke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to describe the
private conversation. McCarthy
later signed the document after
many of his colleagues went pub-
lic with their support. (A McCar-
thy adviser contested this ac-
count, saying the leader always
wanted to litigate legitimate chal-
lenges to the election.)
Then came the Capitol riot. A
week afterward, McCarthy an-
nounced that Biden had “won the
election” and clapped back at his
own party members who falsely
claimed antifa was responsible
for the attack. He also said that
Trump “bears responsibility” for
the insurrection and should be
censured.
He embraced a “fact-finding
commission,” only to later object
to the bipartisan one that Rep.
John Katko (R-N.Y.) negotiated
with Democrats because the
scope did not address other inci-
dents, including the killing of a
Capitol police officer on April 2 by
a man who rammed his car into a
barrier outside the building. A
McCarthy adviser blamed Demo-
crats for poisoning the process.Courting Trump
McCarthy maintains that the
pressure has not ruffled him. He
has launched a set of House task
forces to develop a sellable policy
agenda to run on next year, one
that is likely to lean heavily on the
Democratic embrace of tax in-
creases for the rich, reduced en-
forcement on the border and the
perennial boogeyman of govern-
ment control.
His grooming of a new class of
candidates to topple Democrats
comes after a banner year of
recruitment in 2020 that helped
Republicans flip 14 Democratic
seats, even as Trump lost the
popular vote by 7 million.be censured after the Jan. 6 attack
on the Capitol by the president’s
supporters, only to later visit the
former president at his Florida
resort to solicit his help in next
year’s campaign. He called for a
fact-finding effort to investigate
the insurrection, only to block a
bipartisan investigation because,
he said, its scope did not extend
beyond the attack.
Trump has complained to allies
about McCarthy’s support of his
censure, and recently told a talk
radio host that he planned to
push the minority leader to stop
financially supporting Republi-
cans who voted for his impeach-
ment. A spokesman for Trump
denied that McCarthy had ever
cursed at Trump, as McCarthy
told donors.
“I have a great relationship
with Kevin,” Trump said in a
statement to The Washington
Post.
McCarthy’s delicate alliance
with Trump has the potential to
deliver Republicans a major vic-
tory in 2022 that reclaims Con-
gress as a step to retaking the
White House in 2024. Democrats,
faced with internal dysfunction
and declining approval numbers,
hope it will backfire, and some of
McCarthy’s former allies have
joined their call.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Mc-
Carthy’s former leadership depu-
ty, whom he first supported and
then pushed out and sought to
isolate because of her criticism of
Trump, argues that McCarthy has
chosen a path that threatens both
the party and the republic.
“You can be pragmatic when
it’s, ‘A re you going to eliminate the
SALT deduction?’ ” she said, re-
ferring to the debate over state
and local taxes. “But you can’t be
pragmatic if the issue is, are you
going to allow antisemitic and
racist bigots to play a role in your
MCCARTHY FROM A
matization of American decline.
Then when Trump arrived, he
embraced Trump’s agenda to
“prime the pump” and the debt
rose another $8 trillion, or
36 percent, including spending
on the federal government’s re-
sponse to the coronavirus pan-
demic. McCarthy supported in-
creases in the debt ceiling under
Trump but opposes them now
during Biden’s presidency.
The most jarring recent turn-
abouts came as McCarthy navi-
gated Trump’s election tantrums.
Two days after the election, Mc-
Carthy went on television to em-
brace Trump’s fantasies about the
vote count, saying without proof
that “President Trump won this
election” and falsely warning
Americans of the potential theft
taking place.
“Do not be quiet. Do not be
silent about this. We cannot allow
this to happen before our very
eyes,” McCarthy told Fox News
viewers, in a clip that his office
helped go v iral by embedding it in
a tweet.
A day later, he quietly repudiat-
ed his own words in a little
n oticed interview with David
Wasserman, a journalist for the
Cook Political Report, who tweet-
ed that McCarthy said he never
meant to declare Trump the win-
ner but was arguing that Trump
deserved credit “for helping us
win House seats.”
Weeks after that, McCarthy
told one colleague that he would
not sign a December amicus brief
to a lawsuit from the Te xas attor-
ney general seeking to overturnfully in control of how he present-
ed the Republican future.
McCarthy put up an impromp-
tu panel of House candidates he
was backing in the 2022 midterm
elections, all of them veterans,
including two former Navy
SEALs, a female Army Reserve
judge advocate general and an
African American former Army
helicopter pilot, all of them unit-
ed in their disdain for Democrats
and their dismay at the U.S. with-
drawal from Afghanistan.
Even from his days in Sacra-
mento, transcending the ideo-
logical divides that have riven his
party has been a goal. McCarthy
positioned himself as a bridge-
builder for the last two Republi-
can speakers, Ohio’s John A.
Boehner and Wisconsin’s Paul
Ryan, helping communicate the
concerns of the party’s newcom-
ers with leadership. It’s a role he
has tried to maintain since.
“He pays attention. He knows
my wife and kids,” said Rep. Jim
Banks (R-Ind.), the head of the
conservative Republican Study
Committee and a close McCarthy
ally. “He has a pulse on where the
majority of the conference is.”
That h as meant riding the wave
of the Republican Party’s multiple
transformations over the past
15 years, taking the positions that
seemed necessary at the moment.
During the Obama administra-
tion, amid the tea party uprising,
McCarthy would lead Republi-
cans on field trips to the Bureau of
the Public Debt to watch govern-
ment traders auction off Treasury
bills and savings bonds — a dra-gets thicker,” McCarthy said of his
high-wire balancing act, in a re-
cent interview before addressing
Republicans at a state party din-
ner in Nashville. “The path gets
easier.”The high wire
The plan for McCarthy, from
the start of his career as a Califor-
nia legislator and party leader,
has been to build teams that can
win.
“Look, I don’t get to hire the
people who work here. I don’t get
to fire them. I just have to inspire
them,” McCarthy says, dismissing
his opponents’ criticism. “A nd it’s
constant work. It means one day
they may be mad at me. The next
day, they are not.”
He is a master of the glad hand
and a compulsive connecter, rare-
ly dining alone or spending idle
time without someone on the
other end of the phone, often one
of the dozens of members he
checks in with regularly. He
spends days jetting to far-flung
locales, people who know him say,
to see some of the country’s top
donors. Several Republican offi-
cials said he fundraises far more
than any other elected official in
the party. He often has stacks of
polls on his desk, trying to suss
out how to win certain districts.
The party that he says he hopes
to build was on display over the
summer, when he hosted his top
donors for a retreat in Jackson
Hole, Wyo. For a rare moment, in
a high-altitude ballroom where
jeans and boots were encouraged
over suits and ties, McCarthy wasparty and not condemn them?
Are you going to allow insurrec-
tion to go unanswered?”
Former Republican congress-
man Bill Thomas, who previously
held McCarthy’s California seat
and first hired him into politics,
went further, calling McCarthy a
“hypocrite” for indulging in
Trump’s election falsehoods.
“Republicans led by Kevin Mc-
Carthy voted not to accept the
Pennsylvania electoral college
votes,” Thomas said in January.
“It was as though they went on an
extended lunch and came back to
resume their mission: Reinforce
by your votes the lies of the presi-
dent.”
On his far-right flank, mem-
bers of the Freedom Caucus have
begun staging news conferences
to demand that he take more
radical action. Even some of the
party’s 2022 candidates have be-
gun to criticize him.
“If it’s true, and it continues to
be true, that Kevin McCarthy is
backing supporters of the im-
peachment, then no, he won’t get
my vote,” said Florida state Rep.
Anthony Sabatini (R), a Trump
acolyte who is running for Con-
gress outside Orlando. “It’s taking
sides against a new Republican
Party that is emerging.”
Thirty-four years after the
o netime Bakersfield, Calif., deli
operator was rejected for a con-
gressional internship for his
home district, McCarthy has told
others that he is willing to bet his
house that Republicans recapture
Congress next year.
“The further I get out, the ropeMcCarthy eyes a Republican House
takeover — and a role as speaker
TOP: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-
Calif.) speaks in his office on Capitol Hill with other
Republican members of Congress on Sept. 22.
ABOVE: Pistachios stamped with the phrase “Team
McCarthy” are seen in a b owl in the congressman’s
office. RIGHT: McCarthy walks up a private stairwell
to his of fice on Capitol Hill.PHOTOS BY JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST