The funny thing about Kevin McCarthy’s recent defenestration—and yes, it was a little bit funny—is that despite their neverending frustration with him, I rarely got the sense that the MAGA lawmaker constituency actually wanted him gone. Sure, he would sometimes do things that pissed them off, like cutting the occasional deal with Democrats, or sacrificing MAGA priorities such as defunding the Ukraine war to the higher calling of a functional government.
And sure, he was a recognizable Washingtonian archetype—a career political climber who’d shimmied his way up the greasy pole by saying and doing whatever he needed on a day-to-day basis to get ahead. McCarthy was infamous, as speaker, for his lack of long term strategic thinking. But the hardline wing could at least count on him to be transactional—a quality that made him more receptive to MAGA pressure campaigns than his predecessors, who tried their best to ignore them.
