How My Kevin shocked the world
Exhuming McCarthy's win
It seemed like Kevin McCarthy’s speakership was destined for failure.
Consider:
He became Speaker of the House in January after 15 votes, a painful process in which he was forced to make concession after concession to the most conservative elements in his party in exchange for their votes
Even once he won, he oversaw a minuscule four-seat majority, making every single vote a high-wire act.
It was hard to imagine a scenario where someone came into the Speakership with less momentum or obvious power. McCarthy seemed diminished from the very start, with little political capital and no way to accrue it.
Less than five months later, McCarthy has proven his doubters — me very much included — wrong.
On Wednesday night, the House passed a debt ceiling deal brokered between McCarthy and President Joe Biden. A majority of Republicans — 149 — voted for it, an unthinkable number even a month ago.
No, the process wasn’t perfect.
Earlier in the week the House Freedom Caucus threatened rebellion — and even suggested they might try to oust McCarthy from leadership. (Don’t believe them.). But, McCarthy easily put down that threatened insurrection.
On the rule vote — which governed debate on final passage — McCarthy needed to rely on Democrats to get a majority, a fact that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was quick to note.
And, in the end, more Democrats voted for the debt ceiling deal than did Republicans.
All true! And, all, in the end, immaterial.
(Sidebar: You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs.)
What matters is that McCarthy, much maligned as a toady to the Freedom Caucus and Donald Trump, in the end got a deal done in spite of those forces — a deal that he touted Wednesday night as the largest cut in federal spending in the history of the Congress.
Which is absolutely remarkable when you consider where he started.
There were grave doubts that McCarthy could even get a debt ceiling package through the Republican House — given that there were more than a dozen Republicans who had been in office since 2017 and NEVER voted for a debt ceiling increase.
McCarthy managed to get that bill passed by the narrowest of margins — 217-215 — barely avoiding a defeat that would have drastically weakened his negotiating hand with Biden’s White House.
As the Washington Post wrote of that initial vote:
For House Republicans, the outcome marked a realization of a risky wager they placed after assuming a majority this January: They bet they could use the debt ceiling, the legal limit on how much money the country can borrow to pay its bills, as political leverage. Since Congress must pass a new law to raise or suspend the cap, the GOP seized on the possibility of a looming fiscal doomsday to try to extract policy concessions from Biden.
Remember that until relatively recently the White House position on the debt ceiling was that they would accept NO bill that attached spending cuts (or anything else) to an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit.
In short: McCarthy bet on his ability to win a staring contest with Biden.
And he did.
While the final deal was far less than the most conservative elements of his conference wanted, it was FAR more than the Biden White House initially suggested they would give.
When the debt limit fight began, it was widely assumed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, would either preside over an economically and politically calamitous government default or lose his hard-won post in a right-wing mutiny after caving to Democrats.
So far, he has managed to avoid both outcomes while claiming some fiscal and policy wins.
Looking back at how the entire debt ceiling fight played out, there’s NO question that McCarthy was massively underestimated. This was seen, at least initially, as the fight that would expose just how weak he really was in terms of his power both within his conference and in Washington more broadly.
It wound up proving just the opposite.
McCarthy isn’t out of the woods, of course. He still has a fractious and tiny majority. And some of the most conservative elements of the party will be looking for retribution for the deal McCarthy cut with the White House.
But for a guy who started as poorly as McCarthy, it’s a testament to his underrated political skills that he even survived to have those fights. And he’s not just surviving, he is thriving.
Yes, Kevin McCarthy surprised many by negotiating in good faith, like and adult, and getting to a deal that would pass the House.
His greatest achievement and what was unexpected was how he played the wackiest members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” (that care not one whit about “freedom”).
He did so by letting them pack the nominal debt ceiling increase bill (by the aforementioned narrowest of margins) and then ignored most of its crazy parts (most of it) and greatly watered down the rest.
He ignored Trump when he went on CNN did his usual “own the libs” chant.
Kudos for Kevin for not being on the nut cases’ leash.
But, President Biden outmaneuvered him at almost every step. BIDEN showed what a skillful and astute deal maker he is.
First, he got the better of the GOP and negotiated away their biggest threat, right there on national TV at the state of the union address when he got literally ANY changes to Social Security and Medicare off the table completely.
This after the Republicans were threatening cuts to both as the ransom for their debt ceiling hostage throughout last fall and early this year.
Instead, he got the GOP to LOUDLY proclaim that there is NO WAY they would ever cut SS & Medicare. Despite the fact that they have been trying to do exactly that for decades.
Then, he gave McCarthy something he could say he masterfully (as you opine) “bet on his ability to win a staring contest with Biden” by getting Biden to move off his position to not negotiate the debt ceiling with budget cuts.
In reality, this was NOT a debt ceiling negotiation, it was a BUDGET negotiation that included an amazing suspension of the DL until after Biden’s first term is over.
This after the terrible GOP bill had it increased only until March 2024, so they could get a second bite at the hostage apple during the presidential election season.
There was always going to be a “negotiation” and some modest budget “cuts” come September to avoid a shutdown. President Biden just negotiated that early and not only took a government shutdown threat off the table for 2023, but for 2024 too!!!
President Biden masterfully gave something away that McCarthy prized greatly….to say he “won a staring contest” with Biden (‘see….we owned the libs’), with something that was going to be done no matter what (negotiate a budget deal) as soon as the GOP won a majority of the House.
If one compares what the DL bill the GOP passed with the final two year budget deal with DL suspension it’s obvious that the price for McCarthy to say he “won a staring contest” with Biden was massively more steep than what President Biden “gave up”….something he was ALWAYS going to do.
I HOPE that what we can take out of this is that when two politicians who may have radically different views can still negotiate with each other in good faith, positive things can happen, rather than the zero sum, "I win/you lose" scenario that has become our political norm for almost three decades now.