McCarthy's disgraceful exit should also shame House progressives

The first removal of a Speaker of the House in 100 years demonstrates how even a small minority of policymakers can force changes in leadership. Why have only Republicans learned that lesson?

The removal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the office of Speaker of the House would be laughable were it not so painfully predictable.

McCarthy came to be Speaker by dancing on the head of a hyperpartisan pin. It was inevitable that he would, eventually, fall off. Still, the theater of the process proved poignant.

Gaetz hopes to follow the footsteps of Gringrich

The impetuous—and unapologetically ambitious—Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had already openly politically threatened McCarthy well before he chose to constructively work with Democrats to craft a last minute compromise to avert a government shutdown. Gaetz then made good on his promise, as half a dozen other hard-right Republicans joined Democrats in voting to vacate McCarthy as Speaker.

Republicans are more or less replaying their experience from the 1990s, when young firebrands (then Newt Gingrich from Georgia, now Matt Gaetz from neighboring Florida) came to Congress and pushed out a generation of older leaders who they saw as insufficiently committed to their principles and too willing to compromise with Democrats in the name of a moderate consensus.

The rise and fall of Newt Gingrich is a case study in ambition and hubris. He is widely remembered for escalating the degree of partisan rancor pervading American politics, which has continued to only grow since his time wielding the Speaker’s gavel in the 90s.

Gaetz appears to be following a similar playbook. With his colleagues discussing removing him from the Grand Old Party, however, his arc may very well take its own trajectory.

Among the most fascinating revelations in this unfolding saga has been the roles played by Democrats. Despite wielding only minority power in the House, several of them have played roles worth observing.

Progressives may wonder: what might we have done?

Progressive voices in Congress should feel some shame and embarrassment in the face of McCarthy’s removal.

On the one hand, it has thrown the House into some disarray and the ultimate outcome remains unclear. But, if nothing else, Gaetz and his colleagues have demonstrated influence, removed a key antagonist from a critical leadership position, and shifted the public debate to center around their political demands and legislative vision.

There is no reason that progressives could not have pursued a similar strategy when Democrats held the majority. In fact, a great many voices across the country implored them to be more assertive, and withhold votes from Pelosi when she needed their support in order to be re-elected as Speaker in 2021. At the very least, the reasoning went, progressives could have bargained to offer their support in exchange for Pelosi’s promise for hearings and a vote on a proposed universal healthcare program.

Instead they backed her with no conditions. She became the Speaker, and continued to ignore their policy goals while offering photo opportunities, instead.

Their failure to press the Democratic leadership was certainly convenient, and arguably constructive. But allowing the gears of business as usual in Washington to grind on unimpeded also proved politically destructive to their own movement, as their prevarication suggested to many supporters that their convictions were unreliable.

But beyond the controversy surrounding the proposal to force a vote over universal healthcare in Congress, how many other issues could progressives have influenced had they been as willing to press Pelosi, as Gaetz and other Republicans have proven willing to press—and ultimately remove—McCarthy?

Migrant children detained at the border while fleeing human rights abuses (often tracing their roots to CIA and Pentagon crimes) will never know. Neither will kids denied medical procedures because they can’t pay for them, or grandparents forced into homelessness by medical debt, or the healthcare workers who went on strike today across the country.

Decisions by progressives to defer to the supposedly “moderate” (and in fact quite conservative) positions of their party leaders have had catastrophic consequences for those victims of federal policy, as well as their own political bases of support.

And they can’t say they weren’t warned.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic Letter from a Birmingham Jail is crucially instructive on this very point. Taking the path of least resistance to accommodate moderate compromise is often a step on the moral road to hell.

Rather than stand between the disadvantaged and the privileged, the figure described as “the white moderate” stands on top of the disadvantaged and plays a crucial role enabling and legitimizing economic violence punching down that has, as a result, grown pervasive, routine, and ubiquitous. Progressives in Congress might want to finally learn a few things from Dr. King’s lessons, rather than watch right wing fanatics like Gaetz eat their lunch.

Beyond failing to demonstrate the political influence of voices marginalized within the Democratic Party, this week’s events should especially shame Democrats for so thoroughly abandoning the antiwar voice that carried Obama to the White House in 2008. Somehow, it is Republicans opposing yet another $25 billion for weapons to send to Ukraine, while Democrats are dutifully stumping for whatever the national security industrial Wall Street complex wants.

This week’s events also exposed another role behind the scenes played by a powerful Democrat: Nancy Pelosi.