The Oct. 3 ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a man brought down as much by his own ambition as by the hard right of the Republican Party and the united Democrats, who refused to oppose it — echoes ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, to say nothing of the Hindu/Buddhist principle of karma and Randy Rainbow, who parodied McCarthy’s pathetic groveling for the speakership in a takeoff on “Les Misérables’” “Master of the House.”
Unlike the unctuous, manipulative innkeeper of that song, McCarthy was never anything but naked in his desire for the job, which may have been his first mistake. When you want something that desperately, you’re always going to be prey for those like Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who hold out a scintilla of hope that they can help you get it — for a price. Thus, you’re also going to wind up offering something to everyone to attain, and retain, power. As McCarthy nemesis Rep. Matt Gaetz — not the sharpest knife in the drawer and himself the subject of McCarthy-instigated investigations into alleged sexual misconduct, drugs, bribery and campaign-finance violations — suggested in his remarks, when you try to use people whose only commonality is their hatred of you, you begin by being untrue to them and end by being untrue to yourself.
Needless to add, when you really need these people, they will not be there. So it was naive to think the Democrats would come to the rescue. McCarthy offered them no concessions. They in turn stood by and did nothing. There’s no point in blaming them. It’s up to the Republicans to elect a Speaker. That person needn’t be a Republican. That person doesn’t even have to be in Congress. This is all on the Republicans, who have succeeded in making the controversial Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi look like the shrewd politician she is.
Say what you want about Pelosi, but she can count and she knew how to keep her caucus in line and run the House. When she was attacked by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the other members of the progressive “Squad,” Pelosi didn’t flinch. She deployed them like some liberal, lipsticked, high-heeled Furies in a modern-day “Oresteia.” But then, Pelosi is a grandmother who knows how to tough-love the kids. She has real cojones. McCarthy’s must be in Greene’s purse.
Pelosi’s successor, the cool Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, is content to let McCarthy and the Republicans twist in the wind, knowing it’s only a matter of time and a few votes until he’s speaker.
The irony is that in averting a temporary government shutdown, which precipitated his downfall, McCarthy may have been doing something statesmanlike, noble even. But here’s where karmic comeuppance kicks in. It is less the Judeo-Christian “you reap what you sow” than more impersonal, like physics.
You swing a pendulum away from you, and it comes back to you with equal force. “You reap what you sow” holds out the possibility of redemption. Karma says, Nothing doing. The evil you do in this world, you pay for — no matter how honorable your life may be subsequently.
McCarthy may have thought he was being a real leader, but a real leader would’ve never have put himself in McCarthy’s position. By playing all sides against the middle, he assured himself of having no allies — not President Joe Biden, with whom he could’ve had the kind of relationship that Tip O’Neill had with Ronald Reagan; or the Dems, who feel betrayed by the Repubs’ Biden investigations, or the hard right.
But such is McCarthy’s longing for that job thar he is going to run again. He’s like the guy who keeps pestering a woman to marry him. He won’t take “no” for an answer. He’s never understood that the only way to have real power is to reject being controlled by it.