When public officials no longer cater to a base and relinquish their partisan appeal, they have the potential to offer valuable insight into the true needs of their party. That was exactly the case when former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, met with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times Dealbook Summit event on November 29, 2023, a week before announcing his resignation from Congress. At the summit in New York, McCarthy and Sorkin covered a myriad of topics: artificial intelligence, support for Trump, re-election, and Biden’s age. Most compelling of all was a personal anecdote from then-minority leader McCarthy’s experience at the State of the Union address in 2019. McCarthy, fresh into his sixth term in Congress, was excited to lead a Republican conference in the House of Representatives and welcome a Republican President into the esteemed lower chamber of Congress—the House floor.
As Trump began the State of the Union with calls for “governing not as two parties, but as one nation,” members of both parties stood applauding in unison, forming a semblance of collective patriotism. It is likely at this moment that McCarthy surveyed the self-divided room, where Democrats stood on the left and Republicans on the right. As McCarthy saw it, one side looked like America. The other side looked like “the most restrictive country club in America.”
McCarthy, assessing the makeup of the chamber a couple of rows from President Trump and Speaker Pelosi, understood he was helping lead the side reflecting his self-described “restrictive country club.” It became his mission the next few years to change that by covertly pushing for diverse candidates—namely women and people of color—to win Republican primaries.
The pervasiveness of “country club” Republican politics, omnipresent in the South, will be the death of the Republican Party. McCarthy recognizes that the Republican party must diversify its electorate to attain minimum winning coalitions for nationally elected offices. Gerrymandered House districts will continue to see white interests disproportionately represented in the Republican Party. But as elections every four years become decided by seven or so states, Senate and Presidential races will be less and less competitive if candidates aren’t rigorously competing for a nonwhite vote. The United States, a nation made of immigrants, the melting pot of the world, is growingly more diverse. The Republican Party needs diversifying, not just in the normative sense, but to win elections.
McCarthy’s political tactics in leadership were often erratic. By cutting a deal with members that former Speaker Boehner called the “crazytown” caucus, Kevin McCarthy made unprecedented concessions to his Speakership. But in the end he had what he wanted, the title. As PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins describes his acquiescence to the fringe of the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy excelled in “political gymnastics,” ultimately somersaulting into the Speakership after 15 ballots, the most ever, yielding to crazytown. McCarthy made history then, and again 10 months later, when he became the first Speaker removed in all of American history.
Since his failed shot at Speaker in 2015 he has catered to a populist faction of his party. Brought into politics as a conservative institutionalist receptive to bipartisanship—not an overreaching reactionary—McCarthy became subservient to the fringes of his party, and his disingenuous rise to the top led to his ultimate political demise.
McCarthy recognized that the “most restrictive country club in America” was a Republican party largely made up of older white men. As described in Statehouse Democracy, a seminal work on the partisan nature of state politics, synonymous with “having a high income, being a Protestant, being white, being male” is being a Republican. McCarthy may be expressing moral concern that diversity and representation holds value in national politics, or that it is important for lawmakers to reflect the makeup of a multicultural, multiracial population. The American population is exceptional in its diversity, but the Republican party has, for the most part, not been. Coalition building in heterogeneous electorates ensures diverse interests are represented in government. While inroads have been made in Republican diversity, in specific instances like Trump’s 2020 appointment of Ric Grenell, the first openly gay cabinet member, or a general rise in Latine support for the GOP, Republican diversity still pales in comparison to Democrats. On the other hand, McCarthy is signaling that forging diverse coalitions is indispensable to securing victories in future elections nationwide. It is no longer a choice for the survival of the party.
McCarthy, a Republican from southern California, was destined to have a different conception of the GOP than other hardline conservatives in his conference. In comparing him with other Republican leaders like Majority Leader Steve Scalise, once McCarthy’s partner in the House, whose presence appeased the reactionary contingent of a divided Republican conference, one begins to understand McCarthy’s confliction in his own party. Scalise, a Republican from deep red Louisiana, is beholden to a vastly different electorate than McCarthy was responsible for in Bakersfield, California. Southern Republican politics wins elections in homogenous Southern districts. California Republican politics, at least for McCarthy, required advanced coalition building of diverse voters. The Western and Southern fronts of Republican politics represent varied interests, but to return to an era of electoral dominance, Republicans are better off following the California model. Ronald Reagan, the blueprint for successful Republican politics, hailed from California coalition building.
According to the long-standing electoral connection outlined by David Mayhew—which states that members of Congress are motivated primarily by re-election—members will legislate, lead, and act in a way that serves their voter base. In the case of Steve Scalise and many other Republicans, especially in the South, this leaves them indebted to white voters, not having to account for diverse coalition building. This may serve fine for Southern Republicans representing largely white constituencies, but is bad politics for the Republican party at large.
Parallels in victory margin and racial makeup as seen with Scalise’s district are widespread for other Republican members in the South. Republican Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama’s Fourth District has been in office for over 20 years, winning 84% of the vote in a district that is 82% white this last election. Another Republican, Representative Rick Crawford of Arkansas’s First District, won his recent election with 74% of the vote in a district that is 76% white. Today’s highly partisan and traditional Republicans are too comfortable in their presently constructed districts to consider catering to a diverse base. White Southern Republicans facing non-competitive elections in supermajority white districts should not be reflective of the national Republican party coalition. Unless deterred, Republicans will continue to take electoral blows across the country if Southern Republicans—whose interests are electorally beholden to white voters—dominate the national party agenda.
Republicans denying the importance of identity in politics will diminish any chance of Republicans winning future general elections, which is why McCarthy said so immediately upon his fiery exit from leadership. McCarthy has spearheaded the Republican Party’s push towards diversity in the last two midterm elections, and rendered results in many winnable districts Republicans otherwise wouldn’t contest. Wesley Hunt, a Black veteran now representing Texas’s 38th District, is a product of McCarthy’s sponsoring of diverse candidates in Republican primaries. As Rep. Hunt said himself, “If you don’t have people like me, and women, step up and say, actually, it’s okay to be a person of color and to be a Republican, then we’re going to lose the next generation.” Representatives like Young Kim (CA-40), Michelle Steel (CA-45), David Valadao (CA-22), and Juan Cisciomani (AZ-6), represent a cast of diverse Republican candidates elected in swing districts, some of which Biden won, that otherwise would have been doomed without McCarthy’s help. Though hardline conservatives blame McCarthy for poorer performance in the last midterm election, the fact is that more extreme Trump candidates lost, and if it weren’t for McCarthy’s devotion to diversifying the candidate pool, Republicans would have no majority hold at all. President Biden would be operating with unified control.
Republicans just forced out the primary figure in the party pursuant in expanding the party tent, diminishing the influence of sensible conservatism as a result. The fringe of the Republican party in the House ousted an experienced, self-made Republican and seasoned campaigner in McCarthy in order to appease their new ideological leader, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a budding great replacement theorist and accused sex trafficker. The Party is headed for collapse if measured leaders like Kevin McCarthy, whose sin was bipartisanship and inclusion, are demeaned and exiled in favor of boisterous racists like Matt Gaetz, someone whose rise in Republican politics is based in fear mongering and nepotism.
Kevin McCarthy does not believe that the Republican Party is a party whose sole goal is to serve the interests of white men. Neither do I. But as he looked across the chamber of the House on February 5, 2019, he saw the most diverse Congress in history, history his chamber wasn’t a part of. An overwhelming majority (90%) of racial and ethnic nonwhite members were Democrats, and just 10% Republicans. McCarthy made it his mission in the years thereafter to fundraise, campaign, and endorse diverse, qualified candidates to win Republican primaries. He found that these candidates, once past their primary, were popular in their home districts and won in the general election.
It was this involvement in primaries by McCarthy that made the Freedom Caucus draw out and give the gavel to McCarthy. In their list of concessions prescribed to his Speakership, they demanded “a commitment that leadership won’t play in primaries.” This was a rebuking of the foundation McCarthy laid for a Republican majority he now sought to reap the reward of. His expertise in Congress wasn’t rooted in leading committee work, patronage, or nepotism. His rise to the gavel was based on his ability to uplift Republicans to electoral victory. He was the Republicans’ greatest cheerleader in Congress, a fundraising workhorse. With Kevin McCarthy out, the fringe of the Republican Party is now in charge of this electoral task. The Republican Party underpinning today has to square exclusivity with inclusivity. Simple good electoral politics involves accommodation and coalition building, something the louder voices in the GOP don’t seem to be interested in. Diversifying the brand of conservatism was Kevin McCarthy’s strategy to win a next generation of voters who are growingly more active, progressive, and left-leaning. With his absence and the propagation of reckless and exclusivist demagogues, the Republican party is teetering towards obsolescence.
While the vengeance against McCarthy is complex, his forced ousting stems from his advocacy for greater diversity within his party, and serves as a punishment for rebuilding an often homogenous Republican electorate. McCarthy posed a threat to the most restrictive country club in America, and they demanded his resignation.
2019 State of the Union. Kevin McCarthy and his “country club”. An interesting scene that depicts a foreshadowing of a Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, behind the back of Kevin McCarthy. Source: Washington Post