The McCarthy Mystery & G.O.P. Family Therapy

Happy Thursday, and if you live on the East Coast, I hope your lungs are alright and your air purifiers are working. Tonight, a quick peek into the latest populist shenanigans in Congress, as House conservatives stage yet another hostage crisis over Kevin McCarthy’s ideological apostasy, and what it would take to start things up again.

(Also, a correction: I wrote on Monday that “Magadonia” was coined by the DeSantis campaign. I was immediately informed that it was, in fact, coined by Donald Trump in an all-caps Truth Social post on June 2. My sincerest apologies to my readers for misgendering the origins of this term.)

After losing out on their defining opportunity to hold Kevin McCarthy over a barrel—the global economy and America’s credit rating, be damned—the House conservatives are pissed… at everyone: the speaker, the Democrats, and themselves, too.

TINA NYUGEN

Among the many plot twists and all the made-for-television drama surrounding the multi-day speakership election of Kevin McCarthy, perhaps the greatest drama has been the enduring mystery of what the dexterous Republican promised to the 20ish conservative members who repeatedly blocked his path to acquiring the House gavel. Indeed, the private handshake deal that led to their acceptance of his speakership was so secretive that it was never committed to paper. Even members of McCarthy’s own leadership team remain in the dark.

Of course, the McCarthy mystery was renewed this week when 11 angry Republicans, several of whom had blocked his speakership, voted to bring all House business to a halt, presumably in protest of the debt ceiling bill that McCarthy negotiated and passed without their support last week. On Wednesday, McCarthy conceded that nothing would get done until their grievances could be addressed, telling the media that his conference would essentially adjourn until Monday. “There’s a little chaos going on,” he said.

The precise cause of this latest recalcitrance remains unclear. Perhaps it had something to do with Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s No. 2, ostensibly threatening to block a gun-related bill written by Rep. Andrew Clyde, a member of the so-called Taliban 20, if he didn’t vote to pass the debt limit package. Scalise, for his part, told Punchbowl that he had been misinterpreted, tossing the hot potato of blame to McCarthy. “Whatever commitments were made, [the conservatives] felt like he misled them, and broke promises,” said Scalise, who remained a curious foil during the endless negotiations in January.

Indeed, several members of the resistance bloc have described their protest as principled retaliation for McCarthy’s budget deal, which they viewed as so frustratingly establishment-friendly that it passed with majority Democratic support. “[H]e cannot govern without a unified caucus,” Rep. Ken Buck, a member of the original 20, tweeted on Thursday, alleging that McCarthy had broken a promise to keep government spending at 2020 levels.

And perhaps the contretemps is as simple as that. But a protest is only as useful as the demands that come with it, and nobody seems to agree on what the group wants. As I noted last week, no one appears ready to pull the trigger on the Motion to Vacate, which would likely defenestrate McCarthy. Even the most virulent among the hardliners seem to recognize that this maneuver might appear reactive. Despite threats from members of the 20, such as Buck and Dan Bishop, to push the button, there was, apparently, little appetite among the majority House Freedom Caucus to cross that specific Rubicon. It’s a tacit acknowledgment, though one that a conservative warrior would never voice, that there isn’t enough momentum yet to dethrone McCarthy without it looking like pure spite.

Furthermore, eliminating McCarthy would jeopardize the utility provided by his vulnerability. So what do they want? “There are a few members who aren’t actually in the Freedom Caucus, and I’m not quite sure what they’re concerned about,” McCarthy said Wednesday. “This is the difficulty. Some of these members, they don’t know what to ask for. There’s numerous different things they’re frustrated about.”

Family Therapy Time

Sans actual source material to refer to, or proof that any actual promise was breached, both sides have been free to craft their own narratives. House G.O.P. leaders have claimed the conservatives are throwing a needless tantrum—or, as McCarthy delicately put it, that they’ve made a “miscalculation or misinterpretation of what one said to another.”

The hardliners, meanwhile, can argue to their voting base that McCarthy abandoned conservative values in the debt limit negotiations. “The answer for us is to reassert House conservatives as the appropriate coalition partner for our leadership, instead of them making common cause with Democrats,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the conservatives who froze the floor, told reporters.

On the most prosaic level, my informed sense here is that the protesting hardliners are really just pissed at everyone—at the establishment, at McCarthy, and possibly at themselves—for getting steamrolled during a debt ceiling showdown that was supposed to be their defining moment. In fact, a conservative activist close to the 20 described their mood behind the scenes as “pissy,” elaborating that they felt disrespected by leadership and shortchanged by the bipartisan deal that McCarthy had made with Biden. “It’s more emotional than point-by-point,” the activist added.

But even he didn’t know what it would take to bring conservatives to an accord with leadership, other than some family therapy. “No one knows. They are just pissed. It’s going to take some close-door venting sessions, diplomacy and some gives,” he continued. “And I’m not sure what the gives are.”

The Vibes Are Off

These are familiar frustrations for conservative hardliners—not to be confused with garden-variety Republicans—trying to dictate sweeping and inflexible policy without the broader support of the conference, let alone the Senate or the White House. Whereas an establishment figure like McCarthy might shrug that compromise and pragmatism are part of politics, as he ultimately did during the debt ceiling standoff, the modern-day conservative—educated in right-wing academia, bred in right-wing think tanks and drawing support from right-wing activists and media institutions—is focused primarily on scoring ideological wins by any means necessary. Alas, Congress is an arena governed by byzantine rules and featuring opposing parties. Members of the 20 may have been ecstatic when they extracted from McCarthy the ability to initiate a Motion to Vacate with a single vote—and equally despondent when their leverage failed to produce the desired result.

That betrayal may come to haunt McCarthy’s speakership. Although his MAGA allies Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene have suggested that the hardliners and leadership could hammer out a more acceptable outcome during the appropriations process, outside allies have been signaling that minor adjustments won’t appease the far right. “The whole thing is a shiny-object waste of time now. Just going to turn into an omnibus with endless gimmicks to protect the bureaucracy,” Russ Vought, the chairman of Citizens for Renewing America and a major influence with the 20, tweeted right before the hardliner group seized the floor. “Don’t give it credibility until leadership is brought to account.”

But accountability is impossible without knowing what McCarthy promised, or what his opponents want—and, for whatever reason, neither side has publicly articulated the details. Even close allies and congressional insiders have been left with little information and no hard proof of McCarthy’s alleged violation of the power-sharing agreement, other than that he dared to strike a deal with Democrats.

For now, the Freedom Caucus has retreated to the safety of right-wing media, casting McCarthy as their unfaithful, cheating boyfriend—quite literally. “We’re gonna force him into a monogamous relationship with one or the other,” Gaetz put it to Steve Bannon, adding that they refused to see him “go jump in the backseat with Hakeem Jeffries” in the future. But then again, maybe McCarthy was an ethical non-monogamist all along—emotionally loyal to the right, but open to exploring with others—and the 20, lusting after a relationship with power, never properly nailed down his commitment.