Kevin McCarthy’s long career has been about calculating the odds and working in the backroom, but those qualities, which barely won him the House Speaker earlier this year, weren’t enough to stop several far-right Republicans from removing him to push him out of the job he longed for. since he was a young California delegate from Bakersfield.

Tuesday’s vote to impeach McCarthy was a humiliating and historic defeat that exposed the limits of his formidable powers of persuasion while further exposing an increasingly divided and vindictive Republican Party whose extremists have overstepped convention bounds for a radical agenda against President Biden that does not take advantage of what they describe as McCarthy’s conciliatory and weak nature.

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McCarthy is a politician with affinity and a master of fundraising. He is also a man of pliable principles and a tactician who can stake out the percentages and voting patterns of the most obscure legislative districts. He was never concerned with visions or grand ambitions to reform America’s cultural and political order. That failure, at least in the eyes of those who led the rebellion against him, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), is too damaging. in an era when politics is less about compromise than about intransigence and blood sport.

McCarthy’s downfall unfolded as a crowd poured into the visitors’ gallery and the floor of the house filled with rushing, whispering and chaos. It was another national drama, a breathtaking moment of upheaval that defined our troubled times and left McCarthy, dressed in a dark suit, his graying hair bristling at the sides, the fallen leader of a party for which he traveled countless miles helping raising hundreds of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates across the country.

He put himself in a very precarious position, said Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant who has known McCarthy for years. The congressman, he said, had long relied on his skills in working with factions and calming the parties’ radical flank. That was always his strength. That’s why it’s a Greek tragedy. His strengths ultimately undid him. If you fly too close to the sun, your wings will melt. He is not an empathetic figure. He saw this coming.

The congressman is damaged, but he can remain a force in a House in disarray as the presidential election looms a year away. Republicans are in the majority today because Kevin McCarthy raised a historic amount of money to get them there, said Jim Brulte, a former senator and former chairman of the Republican Party of California. No one knows what awaits us in the coming days, but Kevin is still the north star that most Republicans in the House of Representatives look to.

The venom against McCarthy from eight Republicans was stinging. Gaetz faulted him for not demanding deeper cuts from the Biden administration and for making multiple contradictory promises in a theater of failure that did little to derail Democrats’ plans. Others, including Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), speaking for the party’s majority, credited McCarthy and warned the rebels that their action was selfish, bad for conservative politics and bad for America.

Ambition keeps him loyal to Donald Trump. But what does Kevin McCarthy stand for?

McCarthy did not stand up to defend himself. He became the first speaker in history to be overthrown by a parliamentary vote.

What now? shouted a member from the floor of the house.

The plot to overthrow him was hardly a surprise; it was like a train wreck that has been building closer since January, when he caved to far-right demands, including making it easier to challenge his leadership to win his post after 15 controversial rounds of voting. That gamble hung over his speakership and diminished his chances of survival, especially after last week’s House vote.

backed by Democrats, to pass a funding bill to prevent a government shutdown. The compromise won over McCarthy

statesmanlike

praise in some quarters

as statesmanlike

but it enraged the rebels of his party.

Kevin McCarthy is a perfect example of what happens when you choose power over principle. Ultimately, you end up with neither, read a post on X, formerly Twitter, from the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump, pro-democracy organization.

McCarthy’s fate is a story full of irony and a lesson in how the country’s increasing polarization has increased pressure on conventional politicians. Shortly after McCarthy was elected to Congress in 2006, he marked himself for ascendancy, becoming one of the GOP’s “Young Guns” along with then-Representatives. Eric Cantor of Virginia and Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. They were going to break convention and revive the Republican Party to counter Barack Obama’s presidency. Their agenda now seems tame when weighed against what many call reckless ambitions of Gaetz and other hardliners to put the government on everything from budgets to immigration to investigating the Biden family.

The congressman from Bakersfield, a mediocre football player who married his high school sweetheart, moved closer to the currents that would undo him when he initially denounced Donald Trump but then supported the former president in the weeks after the Jan. 6 riot 2021. at the US Capitol. It was an act of political opportunism, but it angered Democrats and moderate Republicans, who saw it as an opportunity to shame the former president and keep him out of politics. McCarthy was criticized for being duplicitous and selfish, but he believed he needed the loyalty of Trump and his followers to put him in the speaker’s chair.

He discovered how precarious that was

shortly after Republicans passed the majority in January.

McCarthy had the support of the vast majority of the population

being the Republican p

artistic, but the far-right members, including Gaetz, who became McCarthy’s most powerful nemesis, viewed him more as a shape-shifter than as a man of conviction who would push forward a radical agenda. They halted McCarthy’s rise to speakership by more than a dozen votes. McCarthy and Gaetz had tense moments on the House floor until Gaetz relented.

My question in all of this is: ‘Where was Trump today?'” Madrid

asked.

Kevin knelt at his altar in 2021, but the former president didn’t try to save McCarthy.

McCarthy’s strength throughout his career was bringing together his party’s disparate factions. He sought out potential Republican candidates and collected votes and money from farmers, tech impresarios and billionaires. He spent his early time in Congress sleeping on the couch in his office and listening to the concerns of new members. In an interview last year, when McCarthy was seeking reelection, Jack Pandol Jr., a Republican strategist, said the congressman was a cross between General Patton and the Energizer Bunny. He can crack the whip. He is a survivor. His enemies have shot at him more than once and he still stands.

McCarthy, the son of a firefighter and grandson of a rancher who grew up in the harsh seasons of the San Joaquin Valley, found the power he was given as speaker difficult to handle. He was pressured by the hard right to cut government spending, open an impeachment inquiry against Biden, purge the Justice Department, push for charges against the president’s son Hunter Biden, and cut funding for Ukraine before the war against Russia. Keeping the radical faction in line became an embarrassing exercise that daily tested his chameleon-like gifts and brought him into a bitter battle with Gaetz.

It was very real, even though it read like a script from the Netflix series House of Cards. McCarthy had allowed Kevin Spacey to follow him years ago as the actor prepared for his role as Congressman Francis Underwood. But like Underwood, McCarthy has found it difficult to appease the radicals in recent months; his conciliatory powers were failing him, and it became increasingly clear that he could not give all parties what they wanted.

That dilemma played a role in the broader acrimony that has gripped the country’s culture and politics in recent years. Many Americans have lost faith in institutions as politics has become more of an angry performative art than a consensus between parties.

We are now using dismissal as a political weapon, Brulte said. Starting with Clinton, over the past five presidents we have had three impeachments and three trials in the Senate. I think that’s what happened today when McCarthy was voted out.

Our institutions are changing, Madrid said. We no longer govern by norms or rules when a mob is bent on destroying them. It’s a battle of personalities. McCarthy may be the establishment’s last Republican.

Shortly after the vote to overthrow him, McCarthy told his party he would not seek re-election as chairman.

I don’t regret standing up for choosing governance over complaints, he told reporters. It’s my responsibility. Its my job. I don’t regret negotiating. Our government is designed for compromise.