McCarthy Coup d’Etat Is Real. Mystery Speaker To Be Proposed On 2nd Ballot

We may be looking at the end days of Kevin McCarthy, while he’s looking to his ascension to power. This picture is a trifle out of focus, don’t you agree? McCarthy has made a lot of enemies. That’s normal in politics. What isn’t normal is that he hasn’t made the strong friends and alliances that keep other politicians’ careers together. And that makes sense. McCarthy isn’t in this for any ideological reasons. He craves power, solely, and so he has played the game in order to gain power.

That doesn’t work, as McCarthy is very likely to find out on January 3.

Mitch McConnell is somebody who also understands how the power game is played, but he is grounded solidly enough in the ideology of the Republican party to where he doesn’t waver beyond certain limits. Not so with McCarthy. He is clueless about where the lines are drawn.

Those are some pretty strong words and Good is not the only person to feel that way. McCarthy is skating on thinner ice than he may know. Politico Playbook is reporting that Bob Good and Kevin McCarthy sat down to clear the air on Thursday, but it doesn’t seem that much was accomplished.

We sat down with Good for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast this week to try to understand the rebellion brewing against McCarthy. We not only came away convinced that Good is probably never going to back the California Republican for speaker but gained a glimpse at how the opposition has been driven by strategic, ideological and, at times, personal reasons.

Had Republicans flipped the House by a broader margin, as they were expected to, Good would likely be dismissed by his colleagues as a gadfly. But given the unexpectedly slim margin, Good and a handful of like-minded conservatives hold McCarthy’s fate in their hands — and stand ready to wield considerable power next year, no matter who ends up as speaker.

We also learned that Good & Co. are formulating a plan for the Jan. 3 speaker vote. Anti-McCarthy members are currently plotting to back Rep. ANDY BIGGS (R-Ariz.) on the first ballot, he said, to prove McCarthy can’t get the gavel. But once the second ballot is called, they’ll begin coalescing around another, unnamed candidate — a GOP lawmaker most have already agreed upon, Good said, but will not name for fear of hurting this person’s candidacy.

More reasons Good said he opposes McCarthy:

— IDEOLOGY: “Kevin McCarthy is not a conservative; he doesn’t have an ideological core,” Good told us, echoing a criticism that’s been made many times over. “He kind of just floats with whatever’s politically expedient.” Worse, he said, is that “even those who are supporting him will privately tell you they know he’s untrustworthy,” Good said, citing conversations with colleagues who include a committee ranking member. He posited that McCarthy delayed key organizing decisions until after the Jan. 3 vote because “I suspect he’s promised … multiple people the same thing.”

— STRATEGY: Good recalled hearing McCarthy tell his freshman class that “we’re going to run the floor; we’re going to stop the Pelosi agenda.” But Good contends that McCarthy didn’t do nearly everything in his power to fight Democrats. As Democrats warred with each other over their domestic agenda, Good said he and his comrades pleaded with McCarthy to call a vote on removing Pelosi as speaker. McCarthy refused, possibly because he was thinking about Democrats trying to pull the same stunt on him someday.

— HIS CONSTITUENCY: Good told us that since he started campaigning for the House, he’s had “hundreds” of voters urge him to oppose McCarthy as leader. During a recent GOP conference meeting, he recalled, a pro-McCarthy lawmaker stood to blast the “Never Kevin” cadre, complaining that “y’all are making it hard on us back home — we’re hearing from all kinds of folks telling us not to vote for McCarthy for speaker.” Said Good: “You ought to listen to your constituents.”

Good has plenty of other grievances: He’s angry that McCarthy initially defended Cheney after she voted to impeach Trump; that McCarthy allowed about a dozen House Republicans to back last year’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill without consequence; and that McCarthy chided members like him who have demanded recorded votes on noncontroversial bills Democrats have brought to the floor — to name a few.

So who else could do the job?

While Good said there are “a number of credible individuals” who could muster enough Republican votes, he insisted “there is large support for one individual in particular … a conservative who can get to 218 and would do an effective job.” While Playbook reported extensively this week on the quiet effort to prepare No. 2 leader STEVE SCALISE as an alternative, Good stayed mum, explaining that this person “cannot be part of, and they are not part of, the effort to block McCarthy.”

Good predicted McCarthy would give in to the rule-change demands a larger group of House conservatives are demanding. But he said 10 to 20 Republicans would still vote against McCarthy on Jan. 3. “He’s not going to be speaker,” Good said, insisting he certainly won’t get Good’s own vote: “He doesn’t have anything that I want.”

I have said this before and will say it again: I think Fred Upton will be the mystery candidate. Upton is a respected conservative. He fits the mold of a Republican leader. He’s on his way out of Congress, where he has served since 1987, but the Speaker doesn’t need to be a sitting congressmember to be elected House Speaker.

I could be wrong, but if it’s truly a mystery person, who has not been involved in these machinations so far, as Steve Scalise has, then Upton is the only logical candidate that I can think about. He’s been called a “centrist stalwart.” He may be somebody that the far-right fringe could live with and whom the rest of the Republican caucus would actually rally behind.

Or, something totally nuts could happen. That would not be unusual in the least, considering the era of politics we’re in. But until I get wind of something else going on, I think Upton might be it. That’s my two cents.