I’m a little confused. I watch lots of cable news, I read a lot of mainstream media, and I even talk to a lot of elected officials — including sources that lean left (sometimes far left) of how I see the world. And I keep getting the impression that many folks in that universe live in a different Washington, D.C., than the one I know.
This has been especially true recently when it comes to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
For example, back in January, it was taken as gospel by many that McCarthy had zero chance of getting elected Speaker of the House. After a couple of failed votes, Politico declared that “Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker bid (was) starting to look pathetic.” Time Magazine gave voice to a GOP commentator who opined that McCarthy would “never be Speaker.” It was a popular parlor game inside the Beltway to guess who would be Speaker when the dust settled, as clearly it wouldn’t be McCarthy.
After McCarthy became Speaker, the narrative became instead that he would preside over such a divided House of Representatives that nothing of any significance, and certainly nothing bipartisan, could ever pass the body.
The new Speaker quietly responded by creating the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and China. Sixty-five Democrats voted against it, but 146 Democrats joined every Republican to approve the committee. (I say “quietly” mostly because many of the outlets that predicted McCarthy’s impotence seemed to have ignored the entire event.)
The same sources were quick to suggest that a committee drawing attention to competition with China wasn’t really that important. After all, it wasn’t even legislation. And they turned their attention to something everyone agreed was gravely critical: the debt ceiling.
The conventional wisdom in Washington was that McCarthy and House Republicans would be incapable of passing a bill — any bill — to raise the debt ceiling. The White House, in fact, was so sure of this that President Joe Biden took the unrealistic position of refusing to negotiate the matter.
Debt ceiling bills are always negotiated, as they require 60 votes in the Senate. This almost always means they have to be bipartisan, and thus they always require at least some negotiation. So Biden put himself way out on a limb.
After McCarthy and the House Republicans, with no Democratic help, did in fact pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling in late April, a stunned White House had little choice but to start the negotiations it had sworn would never happen.
Although that process resulted in a compromise bill, some leading Democrats were even then pessimistic about McCarthy being able to deliver his promised 150 GOP votes in the House on final passage.
This one the left got right, I suppose, as McCarthy was only able to deliver 149 Republican votes.
Buttressed by what might suffice for a stunning victory in the world of D.C. predictions, the left’s new favorite talking point is that McCarthy isn’t long for the Speaker’s chair. After all, he lost 71 Republican votes on the debt ceiling. Surely that must bespeak a tidal wave of discontent within the Republican ranks. (Of course, that leaves one to wonder whether the 46 Democratic votes against the bill signal President Biden’s or Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s lack of control over their own party.)
But if you didn’t notice, there doesn’t seem to be much clamoring for McCarthy’s head. Yes, more than a few of his colleagues have complained, at times bitterly, about the substance of the deal he cut — something probably to be expected on any bipartisan bill. Yet few seem to be whining about McCarthy’s process or demanding his resignation.
This is a marked departure from the last Speaker to lose his gavel. Indeed, when John Boehner was forced out the door in 2015, it was his style as much as anything that had worn out his welcome. Top-heavy, opaque, exclusionary and at times even condescending, Boehner’s style of running the House was as much a factor in his departure as the nature of the bills he brought to the floor.
This time around, however, members actually had time to read and discuss the debt ceiling deal before voting on it. The Republican conference also spent more than two hours reviewing the bill together before the vote. That level of transparency has little precedent in a chamber where rank-and-file members of both parties are painfully familiar with the concept of having to vote for a bill so you can find out what’s really in it.
Of course, the left could be correct. Maybe they were just premature in all of their predictions of McCarthy’s imminent demise. Maybe they will be proven right in the long run.
There is another possibility, however: McCarthy might just be pretty good at his job.
Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.