McCarthy’s CPAC panel summarizes how the GOP turned into a Trump cult

If you watched the House Minority panel discussion, Kevin McCarthy, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday after spending four months in a coma, you would not only think that there was no uprising on January 6 to to overthrow former President Donald Trump’s election loss. , but that Trump actually won a second term.

McCarthy’s remarks in particular – and CPAC 2021 in general – illustrate how the second thoughts the Republican institution had about Trump after the uprising fell by the wayside. And it was a reminder that although Trump lost re-election, he still remains a popular and therefore powerful figure in the Republican Party.

McCarthy did not make the former president the focus of his remarks, but quickly praised Trump during his event and attributed the former president to the fact that Republicans took seats in the House of Representatives after the November election last year.

“President Trump has worked on all these races,” McCarthy said, adding later, “Even when President Trump was sick with Covid … he would do these meetings by phone for each district, and he would have the candidate on and then he would speak, and he would cast the votes. ”

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

The rest of CPAC was similar. In fact, despite President Joe Biden’s decisive popular vote and the Electoral College over Trump – and Trump’s scandalous attempts to overthrow the election to a new government during the transition period – CPAC 2021 served as a cult celebration of the former president . None of the few remaining prominent anti-Trump Republicans were invited to speak, and no criticism of the former president was voiced.

In this line, perhaps the most revealing remark during McCarthy’s panel discussion comes from Representative Jim Banks (R-IN), who, like many of his Republican colleagues, skipped vote on Covid-19 bill so that he could appear at CPAC.

“The most popular Republican figure in Congress is Kevin McCarthy,” Banks said. “Let me tell you who the Republicans in the party are the least popular with today – these are the few Republicans who want to remove supporters of Donald Trump and Donald Trump from our party.”

Banks’ observations about anti-Trump Republicans may be technically true, but what he did not mention is that Trump has dropped the popularity of all GOP officials. A recent Forbes piece by Andrew Solender explains:

Republicans have the lowest rating [of national politicians], with House House minority leader Kevin McCarthy 20 points lower, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) 30 points lower and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell having a staggering 44 points deficit, with just 17% favoritism and 61% unfavorability.

Nevertheless, there is a political calculation in McCarthy’s decision to stand behind Trump, even after criticizing him in the days following the uprising.

Trump may not be popular in general, but he remains overwhelmingly popular at the GOP base – a recent poll by Politico / Morning Consult found that 79 percent of Republicans favor Trump, while McCarthy supports only 34 percent among the Republicans got. And a recent study by USA Today / Suffolk University found that 46 percent of Republicans said they would leave the GOP if Trump started his own political party.

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

Trump apparently thinks of exposing McCarthy on Sunday during his CPAC speech

McCarthy initially had doubts about Trump.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, he was picked up and said he believed Trump was literally standing on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. But during Trump’s presidency, McCarthy – who served as House Majority Leader until Republicans lost the majority in the 2018 interim – then became House Minority Leader – as one of Trump’s strongest congressional defenders.

McCarthy came up with far-fetched arguments to defend Trump during his first indictment, including that there was a precedent against the accusation of presidents in their first term, and went so far as to enchant and promote Trump’s private business. He likened Trump’s lies about the FBI investigation into his relationship with Russia to a ‘contemporary coup’, and while he was next to Donald Trump jr. At CPAC last year, Wikipedia cites editorial evidence that large technology companies are biased. against Republicans.

Even after Trump lost the election last November, McCarthy went on Fox News, citing his disastrous coronavirus response as an example of ‘remarkable“Management. He defended a recorded call from Trump to try to bully the Secretary of State of Georgia to throw his loss there as proof that he ‘has always been concerned about the integrity of the election’.

For a brief moment after the deadly uprising on Jan. 6, Trump encouraged, but McCarthy’s tune changed a bit. While McCarthy joined 146 other Republicans to overturn the election results, he delivered a speech on the House floor on January 13th. say Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress.”

But when it became clear that the Republican base was sticking with Trump, McCarthy quickly fell back into line. Only eight days after he said Trump bears responsibility for the uprising, McCarthy basically said the exact opposite during a news conference.

“I do not believe he provoked it,” McCarthy said, referring to the January 6 uprising.

But that remarkable flip-flop was apparently not enough to keep McCarthy in Trump’s good grace. Trump has reportedly been steaming that McCarthy stood by Republican Conference President Liz Cheney (R-WY) even after Cheney voted for Trump’s second indictment.

The GOP split between the large MAGA faction representing McCarthy and the much smaller anti-Trump faction led by Cheney was illustrated in a scene on Wednesday when McCarthy told a reporter at a news conference that he thought Trump must speak to CPAC. He was immediately contradicted by Cheney, who stood behind him and said, ‘I do not believe [Trump] should play a role in the future of the party. ”

“On this high note, thank you very much to everyone,” McCarthy said, before walking away from reporters.

Trump was reportedly bothered that instead of purging Cheney from the party, McCarthy supported her to retain her leadership position in the House Republican caucus – leading to awkward scenes like those of Wednesday. Tara Palmeri provided the full context in the Saturday episode of Politico Playbook:

Three people near Trump tell me he’s new over KEVIN MCCARTHY. It has become so frequent that his advisers believe that the minority leader of the House may have a public reprimand. It is even after the showdown in Mar-a-Lago where McCarthy tried to upload things after exposing Trump on January 6 for the violence.

The reason for Trump’s displeasure: a brave Cheney.

Cheney repeatedly criticizes Trump from her leadership position as Republican no. 3, he reminds him that it was McCarthy who pleaded at his conference to keep her as president – despite her voice accusing Trump. The latest trigger came on Wednesday when Cheney told a news conference that Trump should not lead the party forward while McCarthy was uncomfortable with it.

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 yelled at if she showed up at CPAC, and he was not wrong. But the fact that Trump is even considering punishing McCarthy in public, simply because he will not work to purge the handful of House Republicans who voted for Trump’s accusation, reflects the extent to which the party has turned into a personality cult – one which is endured even after the leader was defeated.

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