GOP leaders long to DIE
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) drew some heat over the weekend after attacking his own party for being too white while speaking at the Oxford Union. McCarthy claimed the Democrats “actually look like America” while the Republicans “look like the most restrictive country club.” This, mind you, while he was standing in a tuxedo at the podium of an elite British institution.
It would seem that self-awareness is a liability when attempting to climb the political ladder.
Republicans often make superficial complaints about identity politics, but McCarthy’s remarks reveal that the leftist hierarchy of victimization has embedded itself deep in the minds of mainstream conservative politicians. Diversity, inclusion, and equity have become the ideological enforcement arm of the progressive cultural revolution, and that poisonous belief system has now worked its way into the political party that is supposed to oppose it.
McCarthy’s remarks at Oxford were not some embarrassing accident. At an event sponsored by the New York Times a few weeks earlier, the former speaker used the same line about country-club Republicans, but it got even worse.
McCarthy told the audience that he believed the demographic makeup of the GOP was a serious problem in which he needed to involve himself personally. The congressman from California explained that he wanted to see more women and minorities taking House seats but that Republican primary voters kept stubbornly selecting white males. McCarthy wanted to make it very clear to New York Times readers that he actively sought to influence GOP primaries with the explicit intention of selecting candidates due to their race or gender.
Stewards of the regime
Kevin McCarthy is not some weird outlier, nor is he a Republican in Name Only. McCarthy was the House minority leader from 2019 until his election as speaker earlier this year. He held the key leadership position in the party. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) attempted to remove McCarthy, he was opposed by “serious-minded people who wanted to get things done.” The effort to remove the speaker for failing to keep his political promises on issues like the budget was characterized as a childish personal vendetta by the unruly MAGA crowd.
New Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has proven himself a disappointment in other ways, rushing to see how much American taxpayer money he can send to defend the borders of foreign nations, but that is the larger point. The Republican Party did not just have one bad leader with Kevin McCarthy. It is Kevin McCarthys all the way down.
It would be easy to write off the former speaker as some soft California imposter. In reality, he is the Republican Party. There are some good GOP members, but most of these politicians are simply stewards of the regime who found it easier to get elected in their districts if they put an “R” next to their names on the ballot. Most “conservative” politicians buy into the prestige hierarchy presented to them by the dominant power and cannot wait to swap you out for a voter base that the New York Times would approve of.