Some political junkies were buzzing about this clip last night. “Ooooooh. McCarthy’s going to get it from the populists in his caucus! His Speaker chances are in trouble now.”
That’s silly. Tucker Carlson has jabbed at McCarthy in the past, to no apparent ill effect. If the MAGAs in Congress couldn’t or wouldn’t depose their leader before, how would they manage to do it now?
Last week audio emerged of McCarthy telling Republicans in the days after January 6 that he thought Trump should resign and that the Twitter accounts of the rabble-rousers in his caucus should be taken away. Last night new audio dropped, this time of him and Steve Scalise complaining about Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks using inflammatory rhetoric around the time of the insurrection. “Mr. McCarthy’s remarks represent one of the starkest acknowledgments from a Republican leader that the party’s rank-and-file lawmakers played a role in stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — and posed a threat in the days after the Capitol attack,” said the Times, correctly. America needs cooler heads to prevail right now, McCarthy and Scalise had argued during the call. Which was good leadership at the time.
But, McCarthy being McCarthy, he lacked the stones to do anything about it and now feels obliged to quasi-apologize to his caucus for having once displayed a sense of basic civic responsibility.
Recording of McCarthy talking about Gaetz pic.twitter.com/a2SmXgJCKt
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 26, 2022
Gaetz responded last night the way one would expect him to, grumbling about McCarthy and Scalise being “weak men”:
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) April 26, 2022
Then came Tucker, who was more annoyed about McCarthy wanting his own members banned from social media than he was about the newest tape. It’s hard to blame him: McCarthy’s transition from wanting MAGA congressmen deplatformed to whining disingenuously about Big Tech censorship is absurd hypocrisy even by the usual standards.
“Kevin McCarthy is a puppet of the Dem Party” pic.twitter.com/oNUExc5qL0
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 27, 2022
That’s the most popular cable news host in America, a man who might be running for president and has a better than zero chance of being nominated, calling for new leadership at the head of the House GOP caucus. Curtains for McCarthy?
Not at all. If it were Trump rather than Tucker calling him a tool of the Democratic Party, that would probably tip the balance of opinion against him within the House GOP. No one would want to risk bearing a grudge from Trump ahead of their next primary, especially Republicans who represent deep red districts (which is most of them). Trump could finish McCarthy off.
But there’s no reason to think he wants to. After the tapes appeared last week showing that McCarthy had wanted Trump to resign, he scrambled to call Trump and make amends. It worked. “He made a call. I heard the call. I didn’t like the call. But almost immediately as you know, because he came here and we took a picture right there—you know, the support was very strong,” Trump told the WSJ. “I think it’s all a big compliment, frankly. [Republicans] realized they were wrong and supported me.”
They didn’t realize they were wrong. They were right and they knew it, but they came around to supporting Trump anyway because they knew it would cost them their seats if they didn’t. But never mind that. The fact that Trump isn’t mad at McCarthy raises the question: Do they MAGA reps in the House have enough muscle of their own to successfully depose McCarthy without Trump’s help, especially if Tucker and other media populists are drumming up voter outrage about the leaked tapes?
No. Because contrary to popular belief, McCarthy does have two very strong bits of leverage in his quest to become Speaker:
1. Most House Republicans don’t want the caucus to be run by bombthrowers and cranks, fearing that they’ll be tarnished by association ahead of their next races in 2024.
2. Most House Republicans have said worse things about Trump than McCarthy has and they’re all spooked that they might be on tape somewhere as well.
To put that another way, although all House Republicans fear crossing Trump, only a smallish minority truly admire him. Those who do will represent maybe a quarter of next year’s Republican House majority. The other three-quarters have no reason to want that quarter empowered by having someone like Jim Jordan in charge of the House. So McCarthy is an acceptable alternative to them, a guy who presents a moderate establishment face to the public but who can also serve as a lightning rod for the grievances of noisy Trumpers in their ranks.
Go figure then that at this morning’s conference meeting McCarthy was received very warmly indeed:
At meeting, McCarthy defended his leaked remarks as saying they had to discuss every scenario — and tapes only included a portion of his comments and don’t have full context, per several sources. He contended it is a distraction and an attempt to divide them. He got a standing O
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 27, 2022
Source in the room confirms McCarthy received a standing ovation. “He’s widely supported. Will be speaker,” the source added. https://t.co/6K0GnK8OpL
— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) April 27, 2022
Normally, a caucus on the cusp of a large House majority would have the knives out for a weak leader, with ambitious schemers looking for ways to oust him and clear their path to the top job. But in the GOP of 2022, I doubt anyone apart from the hyperambitious Elise Stefanik would want McCarthy’s responsibilities. He has to somehow advance the interests of the majority of the caucus while managing the culture-war provocations of feral populists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and also accommodating whatever political whim Trump might have on a given day. Even Jordan doesn’t want that headache, telling reporters this week, “I’m for Donald Trump being the next president and Kevin McCarthy being the next speaker.”
Unless McCarthy does something between now and January to alienate Trump, no one will stop him from taking the top job. No one will even try. Sorry, Tucker.
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