The Economist April 30th 2022 United States 37The newMcCarthyism
M
ost politicianshave a defining characteristic and Kevin
McCarthy’s is not really believing in anything. The House Re
publican leader is voluble and clubbable, a relentless gladhander
and supremely effective fundraiser. Yet even among grateful Re
publican beneficiaries of his efforts, the coiffed Mr McCarthy is
not known to hold firm views on any particular issue.
Once ranked alongside the previous Republican Speaker, Paul
Ryan, as a probusiness “Young Gun” conservative, he now rails
against the Chamber of Commerce for “selling out”. Formerly as
relaxed about abortion as most Californian politicos, Mr McCarthy
these days claims to have been fiercely prolife for ever. Since he
emerged from the wilderness of Golden State Republican youth
politics two decades ago, the affable congressman has taken dif
ferent sides of most big questions and, as the architect of no major
policy, never threatened to settle any of them.
Political opportunism is not uncommon, especially in today’s
Republican Party. Mr McCarthy’s counterpart in the Senate, Mitch
McConnell, could teach Machiavelli a trick or two. The principled
views of Senator Ted Cruz might be listed on a postage stamp. The
party’s leading figure is Donald Trump. Yet Mr McCarthy’s fickle
ness stands out because of how clumsily he advertises it. He once
acknowledged in a television interview that his party’s serial in
vestigations into Hillary Clinton’s imagined tie to a jihadist attack
in Benghazi were a political stunt. He was taped joshing with Mr
Ryan about Mr Trump’s slavish loyalty to Vladimir Putin despite
having become one of the former president’s most sycophantic
defenders. And it now transpires that his role in covering up Mr
Trump’s role in last year’s riot on Capitol Hill was even more dis
honest than was previously known.
Mr McCarthy scuppered a bipartisan House investigation (that
he had helped instigate) of the insurrection. He then turned vi
ciously on the only two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinz
inger, who dared to cooperate with the Democrats’ alternative
probe. This was despite the fact that he had himself initially ac
knowledged Mr Trump’s “responsibility” for the violence. Indeed,
as theNew York Times has now revealed he went so far as to tell a
postinsurrection gathering of his House colleagues—including
Ms Cheney—that the then president should resign and that he per
sonallywouldtellhimtodoso.To Tucker Carlson of Fox News, he
sounded “like an msnbccontributor”.
You might think Americans have nothing left to learn of Mr
McCarthy’s hypocrisy. But this latest display is a big story in part
because, with defeat looming for the Democrats in the midterms,
he looks oddson to become the next House Speaker. It is also be
cause of how acutely the scandal speaks to the biggest source of
journalistic frustration in the Trump era. Most Republican politi
cians ridicule and deride the former president to journalists in
private, even as they grovel to him in public, including by excori
ating the critical coverage that they are themselves enthusiastical
ly contributing to. The arrangement could not be better designed
to erode trust in both politics and the media, two of the country’s
most precious and reviled institutions.
The chronology of Republican responses to Mr McCarthy’s
blunders helps illustrate his party’s fall. In prelapsarian 2015, ma
ny House Republicans claimed to be so scandalised by his accu
rate characterisation of the Benghazi investigations that they re
jected his bid to be Speaker in favour of Mr Ryan. For some this was
a pretext; hardright members considered Mr McCarthy an estab
lishment squish. But neither objection now pertains.
Defending Mr Trump has made his party shameless. There has
been no serious discussion in its ranks of what Mr McCarthy’s lat
est display of bad faith says about his fitness for America’s third
highestranking job. The scandal is being debated exclusively in
terms of whether he can survive it—which is to say, whether Mr
Trump is offended by it. Mr McCarthy was reported to have spent
the days after the Times’s story broke calling around House Repub
licans to assure them that Mr Trump was okwith it. And it seems
he is. Most members of the hardright, Mr Trump’s attack dogs in
the House, are still behind Mr McCarthy, in recognition of his ef
forts to curry favour with them. Where Mr Ryan sometimes held
them in check, Mr McCarthy defends Trumpist headbangers such
as Marjorie Taylor Greene—currently the subject of a hearing over
her role in the Capitol riot—against all comers.
Besides which, Mr Trump tends to prefer his lieutenants com
promised, because that makes them more beholden. The former
president intimated as much this week. Mr McCarthy’s trenchant
early criticism of him only makes the congressman’s subsequent
capitulation appear all the more complete, Mr Trump noted: “I
think it’s all a big compliment, frankly.” Indeed the particular way
in which Mr McCarthy is now damaged goods may suit Mr Trump
especially well. His first demand of the next Republican Speaker
will be to end all investigations of the Capitol riot. Mr McCarthy
would now be expected to act on that with even more alacrity than
he would otherwise have shown.Purging the competition
His latest scrape may, then, have actually increased his chances of
becoming Speaker. It has highlighted how little Republican com
petition for the role he faces, so long as Mr Trump stays his hand.
Mr McCarthy’s fellow Republican House leaders, including Steve
Scalise and Elise Stefanik, are similarly defined by their loyalty to
Mr Trump, and have been less useful to the former president.
Meanwhile, the lack of principled criticism of Mr McCarthy within
the party is a reminder that many House Republicans of indepen
dent stature, such as Mr Ryan, Justin Amash and Will Hurd, have
been driven out by Mr Trump. Ms Cheney, the only House Repub
lican whom Mr McCarthy has disciplined, for having daredtosay
publicly what he said in private, will probably soon join them.nLexington
Kevin McCarthy’s latest act of bad faith has probably boosted his chance of becoming Speaker