Kevin McCarthy is cornered

On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) finally acknowledged that the far-right House Freedom Caucus had beaten him. In rushing to announce a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, McCarthy gave his hardline colleagues exactly what they wanted — and did away with the last remaining reason for keeping McCarthy in his job.

It didn’t seem to faze McCarthy that his decision violated his own public pledge to put any impeachment inquiry to a vote of the full House. Nor was he moved by concerns from fellow Republicans, including Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) that there is no actual evidence implicating Biden in any wrongdoing. McCarthy was playing for his job, and in that moment nothing else mattered.

The Speaker’s humiliating appeasement of the Freedom Caucus only emboldened their most vocal members. In a searing rebuke from the House floor, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) lambasted McCarthy for violating the terms of the power sharing agreement he agreed to in January. Gaetz promised to be a daily thorn in McCarthy’s side until he surrendered completely to the demands of the Freedom Caucus. There’s no reason to doubt Gaetz’s commitment to the bit.

Meanwhile, even McCarthy allies like Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) expressed deep unease with the Speaker’s gambit. Bacon recommended against an impeachment inquiry, telling reporters there simply wasn’t evidence of any Biden crimes and that “escalation and response is not healthy for the country.” Like a growing number of House Republicans, Bacon expressed doubt that McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry could even pass.

McCarthy may find a way to hang on to his job, but make no mistake: The House Freedom Caucus is now doing all the speaking.

The inquiry will be led by two Freedom Caucus members who have made a habit out of humiliating the GOP on national television: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), notable mainly for bungling the party’s Hunter Biden investigation, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who mainly exists as a right-wing cable news entity. Neither member is known for their seriousness or intellectual rigor. It hardly matters — McCarthy never had the freedom to appoint anyone else.

If a day of humiliation wasn’t bad enough, McCarthy also faces a procedural hurdle he himself played a leading role in crafting. When then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) floated Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry back in 2019, McCarthy and Republicans scrambled to create a roadblock. The result was a legally binding 2020 decision from the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) that flatly declared “the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation” with a floor vote before the White House would acknowledge any impeachment-related subpoenas. Whoops!

McCarthy now finds himself cornered both politically and procedurally — unless, of course, he’s going to argue that the Trump administration was wrong in a finding of fact he once vehemently supported. Without a floor vote, the Biden administration can use the Trump DOJ’s declaration to safely swat away impeachment-related subpoenas. That will outrage Jordan, who already has plans to fire off a wave of demands for documents and official records. McCarthy’s only option would be that floor vote — another embarrassment he’s dead-set on avoiding at all costs.

It couldn’t be any clearer to McCarthy’s friends and foes alike that he was pushed into this against his will. His decision to move forward was clearly improvised, and caught Senate Republicans by surprise. McCarthy’s colleagues in the upper chamber didn’t hold back in criticizing his baffling lack of political sense.

“It’s a waste of time. It’s a fool’s errand,” one Senate Republican sniped. “They’re all acting like children.”

One thing is clear: Kevin McCarthy is in dire need of allies — and those seem to be few and far between. Even his right-hand woman, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA.), left McCarthy holding the bag alone, choosing instead to jet off to a dinner with Trump.

For all of his reputation-destroying efforts to placate the insatiable demagogues in the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy finds himself exactly where he started in January: fighting to control his own fate. The Freedom Caucus may make good on its frequent threats to hold a vote that ousts McCarthy from the speakership. They might not. With Comer, Jordan and Gaetz clearly in control of House business, such a formality hardly matters anymore.

Kevin McCarthy is cornered on every front. Unfortunately for him, he’s the last guy to notice.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.