For years, Kevin McCarthy has wanted to be Speaker of the House in the worst way possible-and it looks like that is exactly what will happen. McCarthy, like the outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is a member of congress from California, but that is where the similarities end. Pelosi, is an extremely savvy and smart legislator with a deep understanding of how congress works and an ability through a combination of carrots and sticks, compliments and cajoling to keep a diverse congressional delegation unified on the most important questions facing that legislature. McCarthy has demonstrated none of that ability and already appears to be struggling to get enough votes from his own party to ensure his election as Speaker.

The main opposition to McCarthy comes from a faction of the GOP caucus known as the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus was formed after the Republican Party won a majority in the House in the 2014 midterms. The Freedom Caucus consists of the most pro-Trump, angry populist Republican house members and will have an estimated 44 seats in the next congress. Members of this august group include Louis Gohmert of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. In other words, despite Kevin McCarthy’s record of obsequiousness to Donald Trump going back several years now, a significant chunk of the Republican Party believes McCarthy is too moderate, and insufficiently loyal to Trump, to be Speaker of the House.

McCarthy recently displayed his continued fear of Trump in a recent interview. When asked about Trump’s meeting with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West who has recently been a font of ugly antisemitism, and Nick Fuentes a noted antisemite and Holocaust denier, McCarthy asserted that Trump had condemned both Ye and Fuentes. This, as the interviewer pointed out, was not true. Rather than condemn Fuentes, Trump claimed he did not know who Fuentes was when they sat down to dine together.

All of this comes on the heels of a midterm election where the Republicans fell short of expectations and rightly placed some of that blame on Donald Trump. That was followed by Trump’s formal announcement that he will run for president in 2024-an announcement that met with a relatively cool response from GOP leaders. This has continued to feed speculation that Trump’s time in the center of GOP politics is coming to an end.

Despite all that, McCarthy still acts as though he is afraid of the political influence that Trump wields. This is not irrational on the part of the would-be Speaker of the House. Although a good segment of the punditry has decided that Trump is no longer a major factor in the Republican Party, the reality on the ground is different. The continued influence of the Freedom Caucus demonstrates that the path the party leadership and power, for the moment, still runs through Donald Trump.

It is certainly possible that Trump’s presidential campaign will struggle to get traction, that major Republican donors will not support him or that influential GOP leaders at the national and state level will support other candidates, but some sense of perspective is useful here. The midterm election was less than a month ago. Three or four weeks after Trump incited a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021 there was a similar sentiment among GOP leaders and the media that Trump was finished. Back then it was not hard to find prominent Republican who claimed to want nothing more to do with Donald Trump. Within a few months, or even weeks, most of them, including Kevin McCarthy, reversed their position.

McCarthy has also indicated that the GOP led House will investigate the committee charged with investigating the events of January 6th. In other words, McCarthy wants the House of Representatives to discredit the work of the January 6thCommittee. This is part of an ongoing GOP effort to minimize the attack on the Capitol and Trump’s role in that, but it is also bad politics. Smart Republicans understand that talking about January 6th is unhelpful for the GOP, but those most loyal to Trump still want to do their cult leader’s bidding and try to show that Trump did nothing untoward on that day. McCarthy’s decision to pursue investigating not Donald Trump, but the congressional committee that has so effectively proven how Trump incited and encouraged the violence at the Capitol, is even more evidence that McCarthy is beholden to, and afraid of, the most pro-Trump members of his caucus.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is politically weaker than he was six months or even six weeks ago. His lackluster campaign announcement and relative silence on the campaign trail since then is further evidence of that. However, there are still ample indicators of the power and loyalty he wields is within the Republican Party-and you don’t believe that, just ask Kevin McCarthy.

Photo: cc/Matt Johnson

Lincoln Mitchell