"The end of Kevin McCarthy."

The Democrats miscalculate.

What discord will follow? The vote on 3 October. (Clerk of the House/ Wikimedia Commons.)

Marshall Auerback

7 OCTOBER—Schadenfreude might well be how the Democrats are feeling with the removal of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker earlier this week, but buyer’s remorse is almost certain to follow, given that whoever succeeds McCarthy will almost certainly be more beholden to the dissident faction that brought down the speaker.  In the words of the Bard, “Take but degree away, untune that string, / And, hark, what discord follows!” Or, as the former speaker himself put it: “I don’t regret standing up for choosing governance over grievance. It is my responsibility. It is my job. I do not regret negotiating; our government is designed to find compromise.”

But however viscerally satisfying McCarthy’s ouster must now feel to the Democrats, they could well be making a major miscalculation if they assume the ouster of Kevin McCarthy does serious damage to Republican chances of holding the House in 2024. The resultant chaos could well leave voters with “a pox on both your houses” mentality, spurring greater cynicism and, more important, substantially more political dysfunction.

It says something about the state of American politics that Kevin McCarthy’s  actions over the past couple of days have been characterised as “statesmanlike”, by no less than The New York Times. So, the Grey Lady (which usefully tells us what we are supposed to think) has implicitly rebuked the Democrats. The fact remains that McCarthy’s actions did prevent what would likely have been a protracted government shutdown with deleterious impacts on the U.S. economy. 

That he has now fallen means that when the 45–day funding resolution runs out (by 17 November), President Biden and Congress will still need to pass yet another “continuing resolution,” which will almost certainly be problematic, given the renewed empowerment of the GOP’s radical right. In effect, the tail will continue to wag the dog.  Shakespeare’s dictum from Troilus and Cressida, a tragicomedy marked by astute yet cynical observations about politics, never seemed more apposite.

Beyond the likelihood of a prolonged government stoppage come mid–November, the fall of McCarthy has significant implications for American politics going forward. Blogger Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has noted the likelihood of a U.K.–Brexit style dynamic taking over the political process, as it relates to the de facto control of American policy by the GOP’s radical right: “The hard Brexit radicals, often called the Ultras, had more than enough votes in their solid bloc to deny [Prime Minister Teresa] May a majority... Their disproportionate power, their dogmatism, and relentless messaging enable them to refine what for the general public had been a Rorschach test Brexit into a very hard Brexit being normalized and then institutionalized.”

Likewise in the U.S., a small cohort of radical Republicans now have the whip hand in Washington, and could therefore drive policy in a much more economically destructive direction, if their goal is to use the shutdown to drive the Republican agenda going forward in manner significantly at variance with what American voters would like to see.

One important distinction between the Brexit “Ultras” and the MAGA Republicans who championed the ouster of McCarthy is the comparative lack of ideological cohesion amongst the GOP relative to their “hard Brexit” counterparts in Britain. There is certainly a segment of the “Freedom Caucus” Republicans who initially opposed McCarthy and who champion a shutdown as a means of shrinking government via radical fiscal cutbacks, including hitherto sacred entitlement programs such as Social Security. But the motives of the person who introduced the motion to remove the Speaker’s gavel from McCarthy, Matt Gaetz, are less clear: Was it an intense personal dislike of McCarthy that drove him?  Or, like some of the GOP fiscal austerians, were Gaetz’s actions driven by a sincere belief that a shutdown was the only way to achieve cutbacks in spending?

The one factor that does seem to have animated the actions of dissidents who have long gunned for McCarthy’s scalp is Ukraine, specifically opposition to the seemingly perpetual gravy train to Kyiv. Paradoxically, the dissidents here do not represent fringe opinion, but rather, reflect what an increasing number of Americans voters believe. A CNN poll taken in August shows a clear majority of Americans opposing more U.S. aid for Ukraine in the war with Russia.

When then–Speaker McCarthy first secured the continuing 45–day spending resolution, he was forced by his party to omit funding for Ukraine, thereby creating panic in Washington. That request had long been a non-starter for the White House and several Democrats in Congress, some of whom had already shown themselves prepared to go to the extreme of denying the replenishment the federal Disaster Relief Fund if funding for Ukraine was not guaranteed. Ultimately, though, the Democrats acceded to McCarthy’s proposals despite the Ukraine omission, no doubt because the political optics of refusing to fall into line were horrible if it led to a government shutdown.

Such dogmatism, while likely playing well in the streets of Kyiv, would have left the Democratic war party enthusiasts vulnerable to the charge (made effectively by Senators J.D. Vance and Rand Paul, among others) that their government cared more about paying the salaries of Ukrainians than it did American government workers.

But U.S. support has gone well beyond paying Ukrainian salaries.  As journalist Glenn Greenwald has argued, “The U.S. is not only spending tens of billions of dollars to prop up the Ukrainian military, but also spending tens of billions more to prop up Ukrainian businesses, industry, and internal infrastructure—the kind of support that Americans can only dream of from their own government.”

Congress has so far approved $113 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Given the scale of humanitarian disasters that have recently occurred on the home front (Hawaii, Florida, New York City), it would seem perfectly reasonable for American voters to ponder why these funds couldn’t be used at home—say toward infrastructure to prevent chronic flooding in New York City. (Coincidentally, a report commissioned two years ago by the New York City government estimated it would cost around $100 billion to fix the city’s sewer and drainage infrastructure.). Alternatively, the funds gong to Ukraine could fund additional southern border security measures to control an increasingly chaotic immigration situation (which even Democratic politicians, such as New York Mayor Eric Adams, are now decrying as their social services are overwhelmed). At least former Speaker McCarthy partly sought to address these concerns by explicitly linking future Ukrainian funding to additional resources for border security.

But now everything is off the table. A new speaker will not be selected before 11 October, and a likely government shutdown looms in November, with even less chance of resolution, given the probability of a less politically malleable speaker than Kevin McCarthy. The Hill summarises the likely future state of political play in Washington:

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.

Incredibly, the Democrats have passed up an opportunity to dictate terms and help shape the debate in their direction, including on the Ukraine question. They could have provided a vote this time and threatened to withhold support on any future occasion, in effect neutralising the GOP’s shutdown extremists by making McCarthy’s political survival subject to their votes . 

The former speaker’s alleged untrustworthiness is irrelevant. In fact, to withhold support now after McCarthy relied on them on the budget (and thereby avoided a gov't shutdown) makes the Dems looks as untrustworthy as they allege McCarthy was—the explanation used to justify their nonsupport of his House speakership. Supporting McCarthy here would have forced the speaker to work across the aisle on everything. That may have ultimately taken him down, but given today’s circumstances, what's the message to his successor? It's "never cross the radical right!"  It empowers the likes of Matt Gaetz. Is that what the Dems want?

The end of the McCarthy speakership also likely presages a possible end to the perpetual Ukraine gravy train. Regarding Ukraine, , at the very least there will be far more political scrutiny demanded. Given how much political capital the Democrats have expended on sustaining Kyiv, it’s hardly likely this is a propitious set of circumstances for them. Nor for their Pentagon allies, who, as they are wont to do when threatened with cuts in their already ample defense trough, are now warning Congress that they are running low on money to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and have already been forced to slow down resupplying troops.

McCarthy’s response to that had been a demand that any further aid to Kyiv be matched with clear accountability as to where the dollars have been spent, and what the ultimate endgame is in Ukraine for NATO. That’s a pretty unassailable position, even though most in Congress (especially the perpetually Russophobic Democrats) have been cowed in uttering as much, lest they be tarnished as “Putin puppets”. (Where have we heard that before?) In fact, most Democrats (and a significant number of Republicans) have actually voted down such accountability proposals.

Prior to this latest threatened shutdown, even the Biden administration had conceded that the issue of additional aid for the Zelensky administration was politically problematic, with figures privately voicing concerns about the scale of corruption in the country, to say nothing of the ongoing whitewashing of the presence of neo–Nazi battalions in Ukraine’s armed forces.

All in all, then, Democrats therefore could well be making a major miscalculation if they assume the ouster of Kevin McCarthy will have no political blowback for them. . Or, perhaps they are simply making the cynical assumption that their paymasters in the boardrooms of Raytheon, Lockheed, et al. will ensure that those who dare to stop the endless money spigot directed to the military-industrial complex will ultimately pay a political price. Maybe that’s a fair bet. It’s never been politically wise to take on America’s powerful defense establishment, as President Eisenhower presciently warned the nation, on 17 January 1961.

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