The Daily - A Crisis of Kevin McCarthy’s Own Making

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

This episode contains strong language. Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in four years. The transition is shaping up to be chaotic. Today, the 118th Congress will gather for the first time in the Capitol, yet there is still a question mark over who is going to be the Republican speaker of the House. Why is there still a fight over leadership?Guest: Catie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Representative Kevin McCarthy is struggling to break through a wall of entrenched opposition to his speakership from hard-right lawmakers even after agreeing to weaken his leadership power.Mr. McCarthy has so far faced no viable challenger. But if he is unable to secure the votes, an alternative could quickly emerge. Here are the Republicans to watch. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. In just a few hours, Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives. My colleague, Katie Edmondson, has the story of why there's still a bitter fight playing out over who will be their leader. It's Tuesday, January 3rd. Katie, Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

So in this case, a new year, 2023, brings a new Congress, I believe the 118th Congress, which we'll gather for the first time today in the Capitol. Can you set the scene for us as someone who has seen new Congresses come and go? It's a really exciting day in the Capitol. Lawmakers who are going to be sworn in, who just won in November, come to Washington with their families often for the first time. You have little kids, you know, wearing tiny suits and fancy dresses running around the House floor. It's really a time of celebration. And it often can be a kind of powerful moment, too, because there is a peaceful transition of power from one party to another party having control of either chamber.

And that's what we're going to see today in the House with Republicans taking the majority for the first time in five years. And what is that transition shaping up to look like? And what is that transition shaping up to look like? Well, it's been a rocky road. And at this point in time, it seems like it is going to be a fairly chaotic transition, at least over in the House. Obviously, Democrats held on to the Senate, so we won't be seeing any change in power over there. But in the House, we are seeing a lot of drama play out right now over who is going to be the Republican Speaker of the House. We are seeing a lot of drama play out right now over who is going to be the Republican Speaker of the House. And obviously, the Speaker of the House is one of the most powerful roles in government. The Speaker is second in line to the presidency. They really set the agenda of what

the House is going to spend its time doing, and they control committee assignments. So it's a hugely impactful position. The American people deserve a Congress that focus on their needs. In November, our country faces a clear choice. And Michael, you know, I think if we spoke in September or October even, we would have said sort of without any doubt that the person who had a lock on the Speaker was Kevin McCarthy. This is a national referendum, a referendum on inflation, illegal immigration, indoctrination and humiliation abroad. Kevin McCarthy, who then was the minority leader, who has been in leadership for years and years. Why do you want to be Speaker? has been in leadership for years and years.

Why do you want to be Speaker? Well, for the country, I want to win the majority so we can have a new plan and implement it. The expectation was that House Republicans were going to sweep into victory on a huge margin in November. We're going to win the majority, and it's not going to be a five-seat majority. And then Kevin McCarthy would get a pretty big vote for speaker. And today was supposed to be an easy day. Obviously, we know that's not what happened. Republicans did not

win in a lot of elections that they expected to. And so Kevin McCarthy came in with a really brazier, thin majority. It's essentially five seats, give or take. And the result of this now is that the hard right faction of his party, who has never really liked him, now has an enormous amount of power to try to dictate the terms of not only who is speaker, but how that speaker might get elected. And so the result is that McCarthy is having to work really hard to try to win over this hard right faction. And it's kind of fitting in a way because really that has been the hallmark

or the defining issue of his time in Congress. Well, let's talk about that career in Congress and how it is that McCarthy got to this point where he may or may not become Speaker based on his complicated relationship with the far right of his party in that chamber. So Kevin McCarthy is from California. He's from one of the rare Republican pockets of California, a town specifically called Bakersfield, which is a farming and oil town. And so Kevin McCarthy gets his start in the state legislature, where he is always in the minority because he is a Republican in California. But even being in the minority, he was known as a

pretty popular guy in the state legislature, known for being really affable, really outgoing, kind of a back-slapper who would really get to know his colleagues, really made a point of remembering details about them. And he was really known as someone who was fairly moderate, someone who was able to cut deals with Democrats. And of course, this was by necessity because he was always in the minority. And so the image that comes out of these years is him really as sort of a dealmaker. But when he arrives in Washington in 2007, he looks around and realizes that his party is not in a bipartisan dealmaking mood and that in fact, the Republican Party is starting to undergo a revolution. President Obama, are you listening?

It began last February with an offhand slap at President Obama's stimulus plan by a cable commentator speaking from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. We're thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. Are you capitalists? This was around the time when there was really sort of a populist fervor that was starting to take grip in the party. It was anti-government, anti-spending, anti-tax. The tea party, when you boil it down to its essence, is a backlash. It is a backlash from people who work. And that bubbled into the Tea Party movement,

which was fueled in part by the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009 and by the election of President Barack Obama. Right. You know, if media's not doing its job, if government is just taking over every single thing it can, and we now have an unfettered liberal. The radical left has got control of the process. And what does McCarthy do with that populist fervor? Well, you know, McCarthy, who again came out of the state legislator being this pretty moderate guy,

looks around and sees that something really significant is happening in the party and sees it as a chance to stand out and gain power. America is at a crossroads and Washington remains out of touch. And so he actually links up with two other young Republicans, Congressman Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. And the three of them worked together to try to harness this movement in time for the 2010 midterm elections. Eric Cantor, Kevin

McCarthy, Paul Ryan, joined by common sense conservative candidates from across the country. Together, they are ready to make history. Together, they are the Young Guns. They've become known as the Young Guns. The whole concept of Young Guns is about ideas. They write a book. We talk about the wrong policies of the Democrats, but we also talk about the wrong policies that the Republicans have of why they got fired. Laying out essentially an anti-tax and anti-spend manifesto that they in turn use to try to recruit populist candidates who they think will win them the majority. Campaign 2010 proved to be an historic election for the Republican Party and a decisive defeat for President Obama and many of his fellow Democrats.

defeat for President Obama and many of his fellow Democrats. And so that allows House Republicans to take control, to take the leadership reins, and it sweeps McCarthy himself into House leadership as the whip, as the lawmaker who is responsible now for getting enough votes to pass Republican bills. But that sets him up for some challenges. Explain that. Well, when you're in the majority in Congress, there are certain basic tasks that you have to do. You have to pass bills to fund the government. Sometimes you have to pass bills to raise the debt ceiling.

There are very basic functions that the majority just has to get done in order for government to run. But of course, McCarthy had just recruited all of these candidates who wanted to shrink federal government. Who are anti-government, right? Exactly. And so for McCarthy to be the whip trying to convince Republicans to vote for some of these bills now put him in a really difficult position. And this really all came to a head during the fiscal cliff showdown in late 2012 and early 2013. Budgets for the Pentagon and some entitlement programs will be slashed at the beginning of next year. Republicans and Democrats have said they will try to avoid that fiscal cliff at all costs. Essentially, there were a number of tax cuts that were set to expire.

Automatic tax increases for everyone, massive budget cuts, and a huge reduction of the federal budget. And the concern was that the United States was going to be plunged into economic chaos if Congress did not pass some type of new tax law. What started out with hope and optimism for a deal devolved quickly into uncertainty about the way forward. I'm talking about the fiscal cliff bill. And so, I mean, after months of back and forth and negotiations between mostly Senate Democrats and Republicans. The Senate was finally able to get a bill together and pass it. But over in the House, the Republican majority, a lot of the lawmakers were just absolutely fuming. GOP lawmakers immediately expressed concern

about its lack of spending cuts. The tax bill that the Senate had passed would actually increase taxes on many Americans. Right, which is not exactly a Tea Party-approved strategy. Actually, the exact opposite of what they had just run on. So they are absolutely furious. They are saying that they cannot support it. absolutely furious. They are saying that they cannot support it. And of course, as whip, it is Kevin McCarthy's job to try to get them in line to support this bill. But I think something happens as these Republicans are just an absolute revolt, which is that McCarthy realizes that really their viewpoint is becoming sort of the dominant belief in the party. That's where a lot of power is. And so McCarthy does his job.

He helps Boehner whip for the bill. The vote will rise. Sufficient number having risen. Recorded vote is ordered. Members will record their votes by electronic device. This is a 15-minute vote. John Boehner has written about this in his memoir. He was on the House floor.

He was watching this bill rack up the votes to pass when he sees two of his deputies, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, vote against the bill. And at least in Speaker Boehner's retelling, this came as a complete shock to him. And he writes, actually, I mean, Speaker Boehner's retelling, this came as a complete shock to him. And he writes, actually, I mean, Speaker Boehner was known to use colorful language.

He writes that when he was watching this play out on the house, he couldn't believe it, and he yelled out, are you shitting me? And that he tries to go to McCarthy on the house floor to confront him, but that McCarthy and Cantor scurry off the house floor before he can get to them. And I think this is kind of a classic example of McCarthy trying to have it both ways, right? He ensured that the

bill would be able to pass, that he wasn't going to be a crucial vote. But at the very end, when he knew the bill was going to pass, he votes against it so he can say that he opposed it. Right. But I mean, it was somewhat a savvy move by McCarthy because he was right that the right flank of his party had power. And they had so much power, in fact, that shortly after that vote. So this morning I informed my colleagues that I would resign from the speakership and resign from Congress at the end of October. resigned from Congress at the end of October. They moved successfully to oust John Boehner as Speaker, which left a leadership vacuum that McCarthy then tried to step into. But again, they were still really distrustful of him. They saw him as kind of an establishment stooge. They knew that he had been Boehner's whip. And so when he tried to throw his hat into the ring

to succeed Boehner, they essentially blocked him. Hmm. They saw him as someone, like you said, who wants it both ways, not necessarily as a like-minded Tea Party ideologue. That's right. So it turned out that undermining his boss is not at all sufficient to show these hard right Republicans that Kevin McCarthy is on their side because they don't support him for speaker. Exactly. This was really sort of the first lesson in a very long line of lessons for Kevin McCarthy about just how extraordinarily difficult it is to win over the loyalty of this hard right group of Republicans, to win over the loyalty of this hard right group of Republicans,

particularly when he has to keep trying to contort himself to their will. And I think we see just how painful and messy those contortions become when Donald Trump comes on the scene in Washington. We'll be right back. So how does Kevin McCarthy deal with the rise of Donald Trump? Well, Trump obviously somewhat immediately becomes a magnet for hard right house Republicans. They love him and Trump loves them back. And McCarthy again looks around, reads the room, and realizes that it would be to his political benefit if he himself backs Trump. I've always said that I will support whoever

becomes the Republican nominee, and that's what I will. And so he does that pretty early at a time during the 2016 campaign when Paul Ryan, who was speaker at the time, was pretty vocal about his skepticism of Trump. McCarthy actually embraced him. Would you be willing to back up Donald Trump then? Yeah, I want to unite this party. And it got to the point where even when the Access Hollywood video was leaked, he not only stood by Trump, but he actually scolded some of his Republican colleagues who were discussing withdrawing their endorsement. Right. And of course, the reason Republicans were discussing withdrawing their endorsement was because this video was seen as an almost certain moment

where candidate Trump was going to lose that presidential race. He'd been caught on video saying that it was okay to assault women if you're a celebrity. So that would have put McCarthy in pretty unusual political territory to keep backing Trump through that moment.

That's right. And with McCarthy embracing Trump, everyone really in the conference was able to rally around him. And of course, we know that Trump ultimately prevailed. And Trump really became kind of a unifying factor for what had been this very fractious conference of House Republicans. And Trump himself would often talk about how much he liked McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy, where's Kevin? There's my Kevin. He would call him my Kevin.

Our Kevin, do we love Kevin? Wow, what a job. And that really sent a signal to, again, a lot of these hard right members who had given McCarthy a hard time that, you know, Trump and McCarthy at least were, you know, pretty good buds. Of all the nicknames that he's come up with, Mike Kevin sounds pretty good, Mike Kevin. I came with you. It's all right with me. All right. Goodbye, Mike Kevin. But where things started getting extremely difficult for McCarthy was, of course, after the 2020 election, when Trump lied about winning.

If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. Right. How does McCarthy navigate that? Well, initially, he goes out and fox and says that Trump did win. And President Trump won this election, so everyone who's listening, do not be quiet. Do not be

silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. So sort of gives hard right house Republicans the red meat of election denialism. Exactly. But in kind of classic Kevin McCarthy fashion, he wants it both ways. No one thinks that he actually really wants to overturn the presidential election. But come January 6th, lawmakers are faced with the choice of voting to certify Biden's election or to overturn it.

And for a lot of members, this is really sort of a tormenting vote for Republicans. And they're asking McCarthy, how should we vote? What should we be telling our constituents about this vote? What should we do, basically? Please tell us what to do. And McCarthy won't really give them any guidance. He didn't tell his members that they needed to stand by Trump and vote to overturn the election, but he also wasn't really giving them any cover or argument for why they shouldn't. He tells them it's a vote of conscience. There are members who are not sure of how he himself is going to vote. And of course, when it comes to the vote itself, he votes to overturn the election.

And so what happens with McCarthy when that day turns into a violent attack on the Capitol? Well, McCarthy is absolutely furious with Trump, both in private and public. He blames him directly for inciting the insurrection. He says that Trump's behavior is atrocious. And he says, I'm sick of this guy. And he tells lawmakers that he plans to ask Trump to resign. And then he goes out on the House floor and publicly says, the president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters.

He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump. Accept his share of responsibility. Quell the brewing unrest. And ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. Right. I remember that speech, a pretty unambiguous message of disapproval from Kevin McCarthy towards Trump, and really a kind of line in the sand moment where he's saying, we can't come back from this with Trump. Yeah, exactly. But he somewhat immediately backtracks after that speech when it's clear that it did not go over well at all with the hard right members of his conference.

And within three weeks time, he actually travels down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. The latest example, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He met with the former president at his Florida resort yesterday. And he ends up appearing side by side with him in this moment that is immortalized in a photo. United and ready to win in 22, McCarthy tweeted after the meeting. Right. And the process makes this pretty epic backflip on Trump being responsible for January 6th. Yeah, that's right. And it just keeps happening over and over with McCarthy in the months after January 6th. You know, at one point, he expressed an openness to the concept of having a bipartisan committee

investigate the attack on the Capitol, but then he ultimately opposes it. Right. And then we saw it happen again when Liz Cheney was under attack from the right for speaking out against Trump and his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol. Right. McCarthy at first defended her when those hard right lawmakers were calling for her to step down from leadership. But then McCarthy changed his mind and threw his support behind ousting her from leadership. Right. And then the common theme here in all these public moments of really contradiction, especially around January 6th, seems to be a profound willingness by McCarthy to really say or do whatever he has to do in the moment to survive that moment vis-a-vis these hard right House

Republicans. Very clearly, there's almost kind of nothing he won't do or undo to please this group of lawmakers. Yeah, I mean, it's just a string of contortions. He's essentially willing to try out a position until it's clear that he's at risk of alienating the support of the right-wing flank, and then he immediately will backtrack from that position. So I think, Katie, that brings us more or less to now, this moment, we should say we're talking to you on Monday afternoon, where Kevin McCarthy is supposed to be the presumptive Republican House leader and yet is facing a huge problem actually getting elected. And what's a little confusing about that is that every story you've told us so far in this conversation seems to end with Kevin McCarthy

trying to please these hard-right House members who now apparently still won't vote for him. So how does that work? Why won't they just give him the love he so desperately craves from them? And what is it looking like for him to try to win them over despite their opposition? Well, I think to start, you have to understand these lawmakers that are giving him a lot of trouble really are disruptors.

And they see that as their primary role in Congress is to kind of tear down the place. But I think beyond that, they have an inherent distrust of McCarthy in large part for all of the reasons we've just been talking about. They see him as someone who is willing to contort his position over and over and over again. So there's sort of a well of mistrust between this group and McCarthy. And that's part of the reason we've seen him offer the group really just a whole laundry list of concessions. He has toughened up his language about starting potential impeachment proceedings against the Homeland Security Secretary. He's promised some hard right lawmakers some pretty plum committee assignments. But probably the crown jewel of all of those concessions came over the weekend when

he said that he would be willing to enact a rule change that essentially would allow any five lawmakers to set up a vote to oust him as Speaker. Wow. And that was one of their top demands, but I think it was really a sign of his desperation and of his realization that the clock is ticking. Now, so far, they've rejected that because they actually want the threshold to be just one lawmaker. In their mind, any single lawmaker should be able to call for a vote to oust the Speaker at any given time. Right, which would be pretty extreme and unusual. Absolutely.

So McCarthy's answer to hard-right House Republicans not trusting him in part because he's made himself hard to trust because his strategy of constantly switching positions has kind of backfired his answer is to basically just kind of keep switching positions and see what sticks on the dartboard of giving these house hard right republicans what they want yeah and at least so far, it has not been a successful strategy. I think it really speaks to how entrenched these Republicans are, that he offered them a pretty significant concession and he seems to have not picked up a single vote from that concession. So given that McCarthy hasn't, at the time we're recording this, secured the votes necessary to become Speaker, with very few hours left before that vote, what do we think could happen on Tuesday when the voting starts? Well, I think first it's important to note that this type of scenario is extremely unusual.

Normally, the election of the speaker on the House floor is a pro forma ceremonial event. But what you're going to see happen is that lawmakers will congregate on the House floor. The House clerk will do the roll call. And each lawmaker, they need to say a name. They need to vote for a person. And if McCarthy is unable to get a majority of those votes, then lawmakers

have to vote again. And the idea is they will just keep voting until someone, whether it's McCarthy or someone else, gets a majority of the votes to become speaker. And so there's not a ton of precedent for this, because actually the last time that a Speaker wasn't able to sew up the vote on the very first time lawmakers voted was in 1923. So we're talking about a once-in-a-hundred-year event occurrence. Right. So there could be a scenario in which there's one vote, McCarthy doesn't get it. There's another vote, he doesn't get it. And on and on it will go in a kind of humiliating cascade of not becoming speaker. That's right. And at that point, you have to imagine that there will be other lawmakers, ambitious lawmakers, who start thinking, well, if Kevin can't get to a majority, maybe I can. And who might throw their hat in the ring to emerge as sort of a consensus candidate. Right. And is such an alternative candidate emerging beyond McCarthy?

Not yet. What the hard right flank of lawmakers has said is that they believe it is going to need to come to McCarthy failing on multiple ballots before someone feels politically safe enough to put their name out there. But so far, and this has worked in McCarthy's favor, so far there's no viable other candidate that has emerged. So the way Kevin McCarthy is likeliest to become speaker is by making a final set of contortions familiar to us now based on the biography you have just outlined in which he makes himself the kind of leader that these hard-right House Republicans require, despite the fact that there are only a small, tiny group of them demanding he be this way.

Yes. Even if he is able to win the speakership, it will be because he has made a series of concessions that will leave him an extremely weakened, disempowered speaker. Right. And we should say perhaps not just weak and disempowered, but someone whose speakership is likely to be shaped in this really disproportionate way by a right wing of his party that more and more seems to be rejected by the voters, right? I mean, this is the Trump wing, the Tea Party, you know, populist hard right wing of the party

that we just saw lose in a major, major way in the election in November. That's why Republicans have such a thin majority. And that means that this speakership, this chamber of the House, is headed in a direction that most Americans and even most Republicans don't really want. And yet its leader will have to keep performing for this small group of hard right Republicans. Yeah, and that will affect all of his decisions about what to prioritize in this coming Congress, what hearings to have, whether they embark on impeachment proceedings for President Biden or any number of his cabinet officials, it will absolutely dictate what type of legislation they pass, including whether or not they pass, again, sort of the nuts and bolts of

governing that we talked about. And so it's a hugely consequential dynamic. And as you've told us, this is really a bit of McCarthy's own making. When we think about his relationship to this wing of the party, recruiting candidates like this, empowering them through concessions, and now realizing how hard it is to govern when they have the power. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, he has helped shape a House Republican conference that is extraordinarily difficult to govern. And one of the reasons why he is currently in the position to be able to lead them is because he made so many contortions and concessions that, again, created this really unwieldy party.

And so it's somewhat fitting that he potentially is going to become the leader of this group of lawmakers who don't really have an appetite to be led. Well, Katie, thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. The first round of voting for Speaker of the House is expected to begin today at noon. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, Ukrainian forces struck a major blow against the Russian army using American-supplied rockets to strike a building where a large number of Russian soldiers were sleeping.

According to Ukrainian officials, the attack in eastern Ukraine killed as many as 400 Russian soldiers. Russian officials put the death toll at about 60, but both sides agreed it was a significant military achievement for Ukraine. And in Rome on Monday, tens of thousands of people paid their final respects to former Pope Benedict XVI, who died over the weekend at 95 and is now lying in state inside St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Benedict, who led the world's 1.6 billion Roman Catholics for eight years, stunned the

church when he resigned in 2013, citing his declining health. In doing so, he became the first living Pope to resign in nearly 600 years. Today's episode was produced by Will Reed, Michael Simon Johnson, and Alex Stern, with help from Rachel Quester. It was edited by Paige Cowett, contains original music from Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Winderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.