Kevin McCarthy’s undoing underscores a bigger problem — the inability to govern itself — that risks imperiling the party’s chances in 2024.
There’s no House speaker, Republicans are tearing each other to shreds over Kevin McCarthy’s ouster and another shutdown deadline is less than six weeks away — with no leader in a strong enough position to guide the party through.
The history-making spectacle that played out on the House floor Tuesday amounted to “stepping on a rake” heading into an election year, as one Republican lawmaker put it.
Asked how voters are viewing the party’s speakership debacle, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) offered a guess: “Are you guys nuts?” she said. “That’s what they are thinking.”
McCarthy’s loss to eight rebel Republicans is the latest and most acute example of a party now so wracked by division that it cannot govern itself. The GOP’s tiny House majority and poor communication across the Capitol has rendered it feeble. Outside Congress, the party’s presidential frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, spent the day in court.
McCarthy’s undoing leaves the only part of government Republicans control rudderless, making it harder to operate day-to-day, let alone tackle big challenges. Without a speaker, the House has no clear path through next month’s upcoming government funding fight and no one to orchestrate a strategy against the White House.
“It’s one thing to burn the building down,” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.). “It’s another to put it back together.”
The longer the disarray drags on, the tougher next year’s elections may become. Several battleground-seat incumbents openly acknowledged on Tuesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) successful drive to boot McCarthy “weakens our position,” in the words of one of them, Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.).
And Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can’t necessarily fill the void. After facing his first leadership challenge last fall, he is often at odds over strategy with the 10 Republican senators who opposed him; he’s also faced health issues and speculation about both his future and the Senate GOP’s. While not always aligned with McCarthy, he said Tuesday that he was “pulling for him.”