It seems fitting that Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s chaotic Speakership-in-miniature ended on Tuesday with one final, catastrophic failure. As McCarthy (R-Calif.) looked on helplessly, the Clerk of the House confirmed what everyone in the House chamber already knew: By a vote of 216 – 210, McCarthy’s own party had pushed him over the ledge.
Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives for eight brief but exhausting months. Even by the standards of the GOP chamber’s nonstop chaos, though, McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster stood apart. The often-vitriolic speeches from pro- and anti-McCarthy factions revealed a party so deep in its own cultural revolution that the horizon line of rational governance no longer exists.
Just like so many cultural revolutions before it, the MAGA movement McCarthy won his Speakership by appeasing eventually came calling for his head. Now the Speaker’s chair is vacant — a fitting testament to a political movement that has spent much of the past year careening the nation from one avoidable national crisis to the next. It also leaves no question about how deeply the MAGA movement has embedded itself with the broader Republican Party. McCarthy’s fall completes that grim merger. The extremists now have the wheel.
The establishment GOP is clearly worried about what comes next. During a confrontational hour of debate on the motion, McCarthy’s defenders repeatedly warned that their far-right colleagues were sowing legislative chaos. Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas called McCarthy’s ouster a “disruptive overreaction,” “selfish” and “bad for America.”
The irony of such a dire scene isn’t lost on Democrats. Many of the Republicans who dismissed Democrats’ earlier warnings about the danger of the MAGA movement now lined up to call the House Freedom Caucus a threat not only to the Republican Party but to the functioning of government itself.
No Speaker captured the tense mood in the chamber like the visibly distressed Rep. Tom McClintock (Calif.). McClintock characterized the vote as a crucial turning point in history before pleading with Freedom Caucus colleagues to think of the country. “We are at the precipice,” McClintock said. “There are only minutes left to come to our senses and realize the grave danger our country is in. […] Dear God, grant us the wisdom to see it.”
It must have been a surreal moment for McCarthy, sitting silently in the House chamber, to realize his failed Speakership will soon become synonymous with dire warnings of imminent national decline. His only consolation may come in the knowledge that it will only get worse from here, as House Republicans now try to convince one of their colleagues to accept the most undesirable promotion in America.
Whoever walks into the Speaker’s office will inherit the same harsh reality that led to McCarthy’s ouster. The only difference is that McCarthy’s successor will have even less negotiating leverage against a House Freedom Caucus capable of removing an uncooperative Speaker at will. That’s a lofty amount of power, and caucus member Rep. Matt Gaetz has proven he can wield it effectively, assisted by the GOP’s razor-thin House margin. Any future Speaker will in effect become one member of the Freedom Caucus’s politburo — or they’ll quickly find themselves exiting stage (far) right.
Who that unlucky rube might be remains a mystery, but Gaetz (Fla.) did slyly remind a gaggle of Beltway reporters that the Speaker of the House doesn’t necessarily need to be a member of Congress. Within hours, “Nominate Trump” began trending on X, formerly Twitter.
It took Republicans 15 ballots to elect McCarthy back in January, when the full burn-it-all-down obstinacy of the House Freedom Caucus was still coming into focus. Now their do-over election could derail House business for days or even weeks as a party at war with itself battles to install a figurehead Speaker willing to play ball with the party’s extremists. Meanwhile, the American public will have a front-row seat to a real carnival of Republican dysfunction, as the threat of a government shutdown looms again in November.
It took less than a year for Kevin McCarthy’s GOP to rip itself to shreds. Now that the Freedom Caucus leopard is out of its cage, it won’t settle for just eating Republican faces. Democrats will need to use all of their newfound influence to ensure our next Speaker isn’t America’s last.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.