(See this comment below for local perspective: www.dailykos.com/...)
At first blush, you might think of Congressman & House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as your standard-issue gee-golly aloof/clueless interchangeable Republican Congressman. He’s not some cartoonishly terrible person in real life like many politicians, but it’s long past due to send this one out to pasture to hang out with Darrell Issa and friends.
What follows is (1) a sourced cheat-sheet of some of McCarthy’s greatest hits in his home state of California — the case against him — and (2) three proposals of how to push him on on his heels & go on the offensive.
But first in recent news… you should be aware that McCarthy is a true Profile in Courage and wants you to know that regarding the abortion legislation from our confusing friends in Alabama that…
“It goes further than I believe, yes,”
While not the strongest position, it’s a good a start as far as 2019 goes, but with a tepid response to Alabama’s test law against Roe vs Wade, as usual the little Bakersfield worm goes on to play it both ways and attempt to make everyone happy…
“I defend my pro-life position for my whole political career,” he said. “But in my whole political career, I also believed in rape, incest or life of the mother. There was exceptions.”
He’s clearly a bum/bullshitter, but in an otherwise devastating night for the CA GOP Congressional Delegation, McCarthy coasted to re-election in 2018. Have you ever heard of “Tatiana Matta”? Nobody else did either and McCarthy accordingly achieved a 63.7% vs 36.3% victory in a night when the winds were very much not at his party’s sails. Somehow this guy keeps sticking around but continues to cause damage to California and the good people of the CA-23.
McCarthy’s CA Highlight Reel
1) As a “Majority Leader” and “Minority Leader” McCarthy never protects his state
McCarthy regularly lets others shit on his own state and get away with it.
This is might one the most important politics-related reasons why McCarthy needs to go. There’s been a number of punitive policies and statements from the current Administration specifically targeting California and McCarthy never does much about it. For example, after a terrible series of wildfires, President Trump got on the horn and declared:
“I do not support withholding money for people that have had fires and damage,” he said. “California is getting the money.”
Again not the strongest position in support of his state after a ridiculous statement, but evidently the President forgot about everything and Federal $$$ kept flowing — McCarthy also wormed out as usual and resumed groveling:
The President’s message shows clear frustration about an important issue that has not been resolved — how we deal with addressing wildfires in California going forward so that more lives aren’t at risk. We are all frustrated with the lack of proper forest management that could mitigate the damage our communities [blah blah blah]
During the negotiations for that godawful, secretive, and corrupt-as-hell GOP tax bill McCarthy got rolled and let his state get hit with needlessly punitive reduced State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions. In an interview, McCarthy explained how this was about making the tax code more “fair” to other states:
Probably everyone and their grandma makes this argument, but it’s worth making explicitly here: CALIFORNIA PAYS MORE INTO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THAN IT RECEIVES.
Don’t ever forget this about California:
- California ranks 42nd among the fifty states and the District of Columbia for the amount of federal per capita expenditure
- California receives $0.99 in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes paid, which is below the national average return for states of $1.22 per dollar
- California’s economy is just behind Germany, Japan, and China (US is no 1) in terms of output/size
- California is home to world-class (public) medical research universities, aerospace, high technology, and the farmlands of the Central Valley feed a good chunk of the country, not to mention the rest of the planet
California has to deal with far more people and larger problems than most other states and it is becoming prohibitively expensive yet still outperforms other states with “lower” state taxes and who receive more Federal services and money. With the money California does receive, it evidently does a pretty decent job of putting it to work.
2) He’s an across-the-board bullshitter
Even McCarthy’s origin story has a little bit of fuzz on it.
This isn’t particularly important on its own, but it is instructive. As a young man McCarthy was hard-up for cash (his family were working-class Democrats and his father was a firefighter who moved furniture on his days off) and McCarthy learned how to “flip” cars. The story (the details depend on the audience) goes one that night McCarthy bought a state lottery and won $5000 and took those winnings and invested in some stock (a discount fur company) and with the proceeds opened his very own deli at age 19:
“I opened my own deli, it was like Subway before Subway, even built the counter in my dad’s garage. And I did it for two years and I was pretty successful. I now had enough money that I could pay my whole way through college. … So I sold my business.”
Some dumb fibs about “Kevin O’s Delicatessen”:
- Subway absolutely existed in Bakersfield at the time
- The CA lottery didn’t start selling tickets until McCarthy was about 21
- His Aunt/Uncle owned a yogurt shop and a food reviewer at the time wrote that Kevin O’s “is located in a corner of McCarthy’s Yogurt. … The full official name is Kevin O’s Delicatessen but that’s an exaggeration. The deli is only a counter and refrigerator in McCarthy’s dining room”
Seems to like to tell the story to make a point:
“I tell the story so people realize I don’t give up on things. I tell the story so they realize I am willing to take a risk. So they will look at you, not just, ‘Oh, you are a member of Congress.’ ”
McCarthy’s habit of little harmless fibs adds up over time and has become a bit of a habit for him. For instance, there was a very bizarre incident from June 2016 involving an eccentric Congressman named Dana Rohrbacher. (Rohrbacher in the 80s joined up with mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan’s and shot at Soviet Union military units occupying the country before entering Congress representing Orange County after the Reagan Revolution. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Rohrbacher became rather close to various Russian circles for a member of Congress overseeing Russia policy. He was even allegedly warned by the FBI and members of the then-functioning House Intelligence Committee that Russian security services viewed him as a propaganda/intelligence source and had even designated a special codename for him. Rohrbacher was removed from his position by colleagues and to this day maintains for instance that the Russian GRU team did not hack the DNC. He’s a crank who was soundly defeated in 2018 and then hightailed it to Maine. Rohrbacher is reportedly considering opening a consulting with his former aide and lobbyist Paul Behrends.)
McCarthy and several GOP Congresspeople were having a closed-doors chat and McCarthy made an interesting comment about Rohrbacher being “paid” by Putin:
McCarthy: The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp research that they had on Trump.
McCarthy: laughs
Ryan: The Russian’s hacked the DNC…
McHenry: …to get oppo…
Ryan: …on Trump and like delivered it to…to who?
[Unintelligible]
McCarthy: There’s…there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump…[laughter]…swear to God.
Ryan: This is an off the record…[laughter]…NO LEAKS…[laughter]…alright?!
Ryan: This is how we know we’re a real family here.
Scalise: That’s how you know that we’re tight.
Ryan: What’s said in the family stays in the family.
Stage I: Blanket denials
Asked for comment, both men denied it ever happened:
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,
Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”
Stage II: Attack the transcript
After the transcript was produced, Ryan and McCarthy maintained the transcript was fake or inauthentic.
Stage III: Laugh it off
After the reporters revealed they had heard an audio recording, McCarthy’s team then went with:
“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.
(McCarthy naturally later wormed out and apologized to Rohrbacher.)
Bottom line: This bullshitter needs to go and it would be an excellent humiliation to the GOP Leadership on the level of David Brat beating Eric Cantor.
What follows are three tracks that can finally take down McCarthy.
Three Proposals
- Let’s start a war between Liz Cheney & McCarthy
2) Actually make Bakersfield better
While keeping McCarthy distracted and worried about being knifed by Liz Cheney, there must also be a concerted effort to do actually something truly useful and important: identify how to powerfully address the profound problems in Bakersfield. Bakersfield is McCarthy’s hometown and has had one of the largest increases in concentrated poverty since 2010. The percentage of the Bakersfield metro area’s poor population living in high poverty neighbors jumped from about 16% to 32%. Many people are poor and many people are hurting in Bakersfield these days — the currently booming stock-market does not mean anything to them. With poverty comes typical attendant issues like crime, unemployment, desolate communities, low education attainment. Engaging people where they are on those issues could serve as a mechanism for fruitful (and practical) political organizing. The agony in Bakersfield and towns like it across California is of course not McCarthy’s fault but he has not delivered for his constituents and his party’s shitty policies and their bad ideas can really hurt those people. If their needs can be addressed and they’re able to vote they represent the fastest path forward.
3) Play Dirty
This is the perhaps least productive and empowering option, but in a low-attention span media ecosystem it could prove decisive in combination with other strategies. One of the reasons McCarthy became Majority Leader and not Speaker was because of a woman named Renee Ellmers:
With all the voter distrust of Washington felt around the country, I am asking that any candidate for Speaker of the House, majority leader, and majority whip withdraw himself from the leadership election if there are any misdeeds he has committed since joining Congress that will embarrass himself, the Republican Conference and the House of Representatives if they become public
Naturally this sort of scandalous stuff is indeed a sanctimonious/bad-faith line of attack, but that kind of political behavior is really all we see from the other team these days, anyway. McCarthy is a bullshitter and can in theory direct a ton of money in support of a campaign — this incident is a very touchy subject for McCarthy and his allies and could possibly be of use to throw them off their game when the time comes.
Ellmers, who no longer is in Congress it should be noted, had to deal with a lunatic challenger named Kay Daly who had a pretty devastating but effective line of attack:
I’m not running against Renee because she’s been unfaithful to her husband; I’m running against Renee because she’s been unfaithful to her constituents and to the Republican Party platform,
This was also Ms. Daly’s ad against “RHINO” Ellmers:
As a “Majority Leader” and “Minority Leader” McCarthy never protects his state
He’s an across-the-board bullshitter
Three Proposals