McCarthy’s CPAC Panel Summarizes How GOP Became a Trump Cult

If you watched Minority Parliamentary Leader Kevin McCarthy’s panel discussion on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after spending four months in a coma, you wouldn’t just think there isn’t had a January 6 insurgency aimed at reversing the electoral defeat of former President Donald Trump. , but that Trump actually won a second term.

McCarthy’s remarks in particular – and CPAC 2021 in general – illustrate how the Republican establishment’s doubts about Trump in the aftermath of the insurgency have been dropped. And they recalled that although Trump lost his re-election, he remains a popular, and therefore powerful, figure of the Republican Party.

McCarthy didn’t put the former president at the center of his remarks, but was quick to praise Trump early in his event, crediting the former president for Republicans winning House seats. representatives after the elections last November.

“President Trump worked on all of these races,” McCarthy said, later adding, “even when President Trump was sick with Covid … he was doing these rallies by phone for every district, and he would turn on the candidate, then he would speak, and he would distribute the votes.

“Listen – we’re going to continue to do exactly what we did in the last election,” McCarthy said at another point.

The rest of CPAC has been similar. In fact, despite President Joe Biden’s decisive popular vote and the Electoral College’s victory over Trump – and Trump’s shameful efforts to overturn the election during the period of transition to a new administration – CPAC 2021 served as a cult celebration for the former president. None of the few remaining prominent anti-Trump Republicans were invited to speak, and no criticism of the former president was broken.

In this sense, perhaps the most revealing remark at McCarthy’s roundtable came from Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who, like many of his fellow Republicans, skipped the vote on the Covid-19 relief bill so that he can appear at CPAC.

“The most popular Republican figure in Congress today is Kevin McCarthy,” Banks said. “Let me tell you who are the least popular Republicans in the party today – it’s those very few Republicans who want to wipe Donald Trump and Donald Trump supporters out of our party.”

The banks’ observations of anti-Trump Republicans may be technically true, but what he didn’t mention is that Trump has reduced the popularity of all GOP officials. A recent Forbes article by Andrew Solender explains:

Republicans have the lowest ratings [of national politicians], with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy down 20 points, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) down 30 points and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suffering from a huge deficit 44 points, with only 17% favorability and 61% unfavorability.

Nonetheless, there is a political calculation in McCarthy’s decision to back Trump, even after criticizing him in the days following the insurgency.

Trump may not be popular in general, but he remains extremely popular with the GOP base – a recent Politico / Morning Consult poll found 79% of Republicans viewed Trump favorably, while McCarthy only received 34% support among Republicans. And a recent USA Today / Suffolk University study found that 46% of Republicans said they would quit the GOP if Trump created his own political party.

It is Trump who can decide the fate of the GOP and individual lawmakers, and he has made it clear in the past that he values ​​lawmakers who are loyal to him. But there are also indications that the level of loyalty McCarthy has shown so far, flattering as it is, may not be enough for Trump.

Trump reportedly considers denouncing McCarthy during his speech at CPAC on Sunday

McCarthy initially had doubts about Trump.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, he was recorded saying that he believed Trump was literally on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. But during Trump’s tenure as President, McCarthy – who served as House Majority Leader until Republicans lost a majority in mid-term in 2018, then became House Minority Leader – has become one of Trump’s staunchest supporters of Congress.

McCarthy concocted some wacky arguments to defend Trump on his first arraignment, including that there is a precedent against the removal of presidents during their first term, and went so far as to patronize and promote Trump’s private business. He echoed Trump’s lies about the FBI’s investigation into his relationship with Russia amounting to “a modern coup” and, as he sat next to Donald Trump Jr. at the CPAC’s last year, fiercely cited Wikipedia’s edits as evidence that big tech companies are biased. against the Republicans.

Even after Trump lost the election last November, McCarthy took to Fox News and presented his disastrous response to the coronavirus as an example of “remarkable“Governance. He defended a taped phone call from Trump trying to intimidate the Georgian secretary of state into throwing his loss there as proof that he “has always been concerned about the integrity of the elections.”

For a brief moment after the murderous January 6 insurgency Trump encouraged, McCarthy’s melody changed a bit. As McCarthy joined 146 other Republicans in voting to overturn the election results, on January 13 he delivered a speech in the House. saying Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress.”

But as it became clear that the Republican base remained loyal to Trump, McCarthy quickly fell back into line. Just eight days after declaring that Trump “bears responsibility” for the insurgency, McCarthy said basically the exact opposite at a press conference.

“I don’t think he provoked it,” McCarthy said, referring to the Jan.6 uprising.

But this remarkable about-face was apparently not enough to keep McCarthy in Trump’s favor. Trump is now supposed to say that McCarthy stood alongside Republican House Conference Speaker Liz Cheney (R-WY), even after Cheney voted for Trump’s second impeachment.

The GOP split between the large MAGA faction that McCarthy represents and the much smaller anti-Trump faction led by Cheney was illustrated in a scene on Wednesday, when, at a press conference, McCarthy told a reporter that he thought Trump should speak to CPAC. He was immediately contradicted by Cheney, who stood behind him and said, “I don’t think so. [Trump] should play a role in the future of the party. “

“On that positive note, thank you very much,” McCarthy joked, before walking away from reporters.

Trump would be bothered if instead of purging Cheney from the party, McCarthy backed her to retain her leadership position in the Republican House caucus, which led to awkward scenes like Wednesday’s. Tara Palmeri provided the full background in Saturday’s installment of Politico Playbook:

Three people close to Trump tell me he’s simmering again KEVIN MCCARTHY. It has become so common that his advisers think the House minority leader could be publicly reprimanded. This is even after the powwow in Mar-a-Lago where McCarthy tried to patch things up after denouncing Trump for violence on Jan.6.

The reason for Trump’s dissatisfaction: an emboldened Cheney.

Whenever Cheney criticizes Trump for his leadership role as House Republican No.3, he recalled that it was McCarthy who pleaded with her conference to keep her as president – despite her vote to impeach Trump. The last trigger came on Wednesday, when Cheney told a press conference that Trump shouldn’t be leading the party while McCarthy awkwardly stood ready.

McCarthy in particular, and CPAC speakers in general, sided with Cheney in this dispute. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) claimed during his speech on Friday that Cheney would be booed if she showed up at CPAC, and he’s not wrong. But that Trump even plans to publicly castigate McCarthy simply because he won’t work to purge the handful of House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment reflects the extent to which the party has become a cult of personality – a cult that lasted even after the leader was defeated.

Subscribe to The Weeds newsletter. Every Friday, you’ll get an explanation of a great political history from the week, an overview of important recently published research, and answers to readers’ questions – to guide you through the first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration. .