The historic humiliation of Rep. Kevin McCarthy could not have happened to a more deserving man.

However, I will refrain from focusing solely on the Bakersfield Republican who now, involuntarily,

former

speaker of the House of Representatives, the first in American history to be voted out of office. Any pile-up of this mess would have to happen across the Republican Party.

McCarthy’s removal from office by the House of Representatives on Tuesday after just nine months, instigated by a mutiny within his Republican majority, is not just the story of one man’s political downfall. And his senseless defenestration, which has plunged Congress into chaos and embarrassed a nation that has long prided itself as a model of global governance, is not just the work of the eight mutineers led by the insufferably self-promoting Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida .

Instead, McCarthy’s fall is a karmic consequence of him and other Republican leaders presiding over years of radicalization of their once-proud small-government party, turning it into a divided anti-government party.

The increasingly right-wing evolution of Republicans, from Newt Gingrich’s revolution in the 1990s, through the tea party movement of the late aughts, to the Trump takeover, has now led to nothing short of nihilism.

What difference does it make to many Republicans that the House of Representatives cannot function without a speaker? They no longer believe in government and democracy.

Years of extremist, anti-Washington, Democrat-demonizing rhetoric from Republicans has produced a Frankenstein monster whose parties have militantly uncompromising voters who send conspirators and flamethrowers to Congress. Those hardline voters are the power and money behind people like Gaetz and his far-right group.

And don’t be fooled by Republicans who, since McCarthy’s ouster, have suggested that the extremists in the House of Representatives are limited to the eight who voted (along with Democrats) to impeach him. Among those who supported McCarthy were seditious representatives. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and (very reluctantly) Lauren Boebert of Colorado, along with others who spend most of their days trying to bring down the hated government.

Also remember: Back on January 6, 2021,

anus

Insurrectionists had ransacked the Capitol, as many as two-thirds of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted not to certify Joe Biden’s victory, just as the rioters wanted. That is the ultimate anti-government act: trying to overturn the election results.

It was this tendency that brought the new Republican majority to power in the House of Representatives in January. Yet McCarthy further strengthened the nihilists, and weakened himself, through concessions he made during the fifteen rounds of voting necessary to win the election as chairman. One was a new House rule, virtually aimed at attention-seeker Gaetz, that allowed a single member of the House of Representatives to call for a vote, sidelining the speaker.

It was only a matter of time.

Add to that Republicans’ undiminished zeal for Donald Trump and antipathy for Biden, and it was as predictable as the former president’s choice of a red tie that these politicians would bring the country to the brink of collapse by resisting against an essential increase in the number of governments. debt limit, and then within hours of a federal shutdown by opposing a government funding bill.

To do otherwise would be tantamount to good governance, and they couldn’t have that.

In both of these self-inflicted crises, McCarthy ultimately did the right thing. He compromised with the Democrats. He realized, what the idiots in his party apparently did not, that Republicans would pay a high political price for the damage that would be done by a bankruptcy or a shutdown.

How crazy is it that Gaetz and Co. Fire McCarthy now because they relied on Democrats to pass legislation? Here’s the crazy thing: they couldn’t have pulled off their coup without the votes of the Democrats.

Here’s another irony: Even as Republicans waged war among themselves and disrupted government, McCarthy’s supporters hoped that Democrats, given their parties’ penchant for making government work, would bail him out. They prayed that enough Democrats would be present or even vote in favor of the speaker to offset the anti-McCarthy votes.

Yet the Democrats’ pro-government bias has its limits. And McCarthy, by giving in to the MAGA extremists, including renouncing his own debt limit deal with Biden and greenlighting a baseless impeachment inquiry against the president, had definitively crossed that line.

Before long, Democrats were raising money for the Republican display of government incompetence. A text message to small donors asked for $5 for the House Democrats’ campaign committee to help the party regain a majority in the 2024 elections. We MUST restore order in the House, it said.

Let’s hope we get some orders well before then. But the Republicans remain in charge, even if McCarthy is not. Bet on it: order is not likely.

@jakiekcalmes