Kevin McCarthy is doomed

Rock meet hard place.

(House Speaker Kevin McCarthy)

This, from Punchbowl News this morning, pretty much sums up where House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is at the moment:

Talk about a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation!

Let’s reset for a minute: At issue is whether Congress will continue to fund the federal government. If they do nothing, the government will run out of money on September 30 — and close, officially, on October 1.

At the moment, the drama is in the House where Republicans — “led” by McCarthy —are trying to find some sort of agreement that can pass so that they can begin to negotiate with the Democratic-controlled Senate. (Yes, this bill is just the prelude to a larger — and likely more contentious — negotiation!)

The problem? McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes — and there hasn’t been a proposal yet that united his conference. Which means, at least in theory, that he might have to lean on Democratic votes to get something passed and keep the government open.

The most recent Republican attempt at a solution — announced over the weekend after talks between leaders of the House Freedom Caucus (conservatives) and the Main Street Caucus (moderates) — appears to be on its last legs after a number of the most conservative members of Congress came out against it.

McCarthy, for his part, is in the words of Politico’s Playbook, getting “mean.” Last week, in a private gathering of the Republican conference, McCarthy dared his detractors to file a motion to vacate —essentially to hold a vote to remove him as speaker — telling them: “If you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the fucking motion.”

This week, he’s mocked Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz — his leading antagonist among conservatives — and told off a retiring Indiana member who criticized him as a “weak speaker.”

That behavior may have made McCarthy feel better in the near term but could complicate his medium-to-long-term chances of holding onto the Speakership.

The situation is this: McCarthy, as one of his many concessions to conservatives during his marathon 15-vote path to the speakership earlier this year, allowed a motion to vacate to be brought up by a single member of the House.

Such a motion would have “privileged” status in the House, meaning it would take precedence over all other legislative matters and be given a vote. At which point McCarthy could be removed by a simple majority of the chamber’s 435 members.

Which, it’s worth noting, poses a HUGE strategic question for Democrats. Because, if they wanted to, they could all support the motion to remove McCarthy and, with what would likely be a handful of votes from the House Freedom Caucus, the Speaker would be gone.

And, make no mistake: There is zero love lost between McCarthy and Democrats. But, it’s not at all clear — at least to me — who might fill the void left by McCarthy’s removal.

“The motion-to-vacate question is a hypothetical one that's not before us,” House Democratic Leader Hakim Jeffries said last week. “We've had no discussion about it, and I don’t expect us to have any discussion about it.”

The reality here is that McCarthy made this bed knowing, I have to believe, that at some point he would have to sleep in it. That there would be a reckoning — and it wouldn’t end well for him.

The job of the Speaker — of either party — is to find time and ways to compromise. The Freedom Caucus has zero interest, politically or otherwise, in compromising. In fact, it’s bad for business.

Witness, just as one example, the demands by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for keeping the government funded and open:

No Speaker — including Marjorie Taylor Greene — is going to be able to deliver on all of that in such a short period of time. And, not for nothing, the proposals laid out by Greene in her tweet X are not widely shared by a majority of the House Republican conference.

But, again, don’t feel sorry for Kevin McCarthy here. He knew all of this when he put himself forward to be Speaker. (He even brought Greene into his inner circle of advisers!)

The writing was very much on the wall! But he wanted the job bad enough to accept that, one day, it would all come crashing down on him.

It remains to be seen if this is that moment. It’s possible that McCarthy finds a way through this morass, passing some sort of measure — likely a short term one — that simultaneously keeps the government open and allows him to keep his job.

But, even if that does happen — and, to be clear, the prospects look decidedly dire right now — the fundamentals of McCarthy’s speakership have not changed.

He made a deal with a group of people whose goals are antithetical to his job as speaker. He needs to find compromise. They view compromise — any compromise — as capitulation.

It does not take a political expert to realize the tension built into that relationship. And the impossible bind that McCarthy willingly placed himself in.

Which means that even if McCarthy survives this latest threat to his speakership, there will be another one after that. And another one. And, well, you get the idea.

In short: We might not know the exact “when” of the end of the McCarthy speakership, but we sure as hell know the “how” and the “why.”