McCarthy’s CPAC panel summarizes how the GOP became a cult of Trump

If you watched the panel discussion by the minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), after spending four months in a coma, you would not only think that there was no January 6 uprising aimed at to overthrow the electoral defeat of former President Donald Trump, but that Trump really won a second term.

McCarthy’s remarks in particular – and CPAC 2021 in general – illustrate how any doubts the Republican establishment had about Trump after the insurrection were cast aside. And they were a reminder that, although Trump lost his re-election, he remains a popular and therefore powerful figure in the Republican Party.

McCarthy did not make the former president the focus of his comments, but was quick to praise Trump at the start of his event, crediting the former president with Republicans who won seats in the House of Representatives after last November’s election.

“President Trump worked on all these disputes,” said McCarthy, adding later: “Even when President Trump was sick with Covid … he would make these demonstrations over the phone to each district and put the candidate and then he would speak and he would distribute the votes. “

“Listen – we will continue to do exactly what we did in the last election,” said McCarthy at another time.

The rest of the CPAC has a similar tone. In fact, despite President Joe Biden’s decisive popular vote and the Electoral College’s victory over Trump – and Trump’s shameful efforts to overturn the election during the transition period to a new administration – CPAC 2021 served as a cult celebration of ex-president. None of the few remaining prominent anti-Trump Republicans were invited to speak, and no criticism of the former president was tolerated.

In that sense, perhaps the most revealing comment during McCarthy’s panel discussion came from Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who, like many of his Republican colleagues, skipped the vote on the Covid-19 relief bill so that he could appear at CPAC.

“The most popular Republican figure in Congress today is Kevin McCarthy,” said Banks. “Let me tell you who the least popular Republicans in the party are today – they are the few Republicans who want to erase Donald Trump and Donald Trump supporters from our party.”

Banks’ remarks about anti-Trump Republicans may be technically true, but what he didn’t mention is that Trump has pulled down the popularity of all Republican Party officials. A recent Forbes article by Andrew Solender explains:

Republicans have the lowest rankings [of national politicians], with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy down 20 points, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) down 30 points and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell suffering an impressive 44 point deficit, with only 17% favorable and 61% unfavorable.

However, there is a political calculation in McCarthy’s decision to support Trump, even after he criticized him in the days following the insurrection.

Trump may not be popular at all, but he remains overwhelmingly popular with the Republican Party base – a recent Politico / Morning Consult poll revealed that 79% of Republicans viewed Trump favorably, while McCarthy received only 34% support among Republicans. And a recent USA Today / Suffolk University study found that 46% of Republicans said they would leave the Republican Party if Trump started his own political party.

It is Trump who can decide the fate of the Republican Party and individual lawmakers, and he has made it clear in the past that he values ​​lawmakers who are loyal to him. But there are also indications that the level of loyalty that McCarthy has shown so far, however flattering he may be, may not be enough for Trump.

Trump is reportedly considering denouncing McCarthy during his CPAC speech on Sunday

McCarthy initially had some doubts about Trump.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, he was registered saying he believed Trump was literally on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. But during Trump’s term as president, McCarthy – who served as the majority leader in the House until Republicans lost the majority in the 2018 exams and then became the minority leader in the House – emerged as one of the most staunch supporters of the Congress of Trump.

McCarthy invented elaborate arguments to defend Trump during his first impeachment, including that there is a precedent against the impeachment of presidents in his first term, and even sponsored and promoted Trump’s private business. He repeated Trump’s lies about the FBI’s investigation into his relationship with Russia as being equivalent to “a modern coup” and, while sitting next to Donald Trump Jr. at last year’s CPAC, he ridiculously cited Wikipedia editions as evidence that big tech companies are biased against Republicans.

Even after Trump lost the election last November, McCarthy went to Fox News and displayed his disastrous response to the coronavirus as an example of “remarkable“governance. He defended a taped call from Trump trying to intimidate the Georgia secretary of state into throwing out his defeat as proof that he” has always been concerned with the integrity of the election. “

For a brief moment after the deadly January 6 uprising that Trump encouraged, however, McCarthy’s tone changed slightly. While McCarthy joined 146 other Republicans in the vote to overturn the election results, on January 13 he delivered a speech to the House floor saying Trump “is responsible for Wednesday’s attack on Congress.”

But when it became clear that the Republican base was adhering to Trump, McCarthy quickly returned to the line. Just eight days after saying that Trump “has the responsibility” for the insurrection, McCarthy basically said the opposite during a news conference.

“I don’t believe he caused that,” said McCarthy, referring to the January 6 uprising.

But that remarkable turnaround was apparently not enough to keep McCarthy in Trump’s good graces. Trump is now reportedly angry that McCarthy supported Republican House Speaker Liz Cheney (R-WY), even after Cheney voted for Trump’s second impeachment.

The Republican Party split between the big MAGA faction that McCarthy represents and the much smaller anti-Trump faction led by Cheney was illustrated in a scene on Wednesday when, during a news conference, McCarthy told a reporter that he thinks Trump should speak at CPAC. He was immediately contradicted by Cheney, who was behind him and said, “I don’t believe [Trump] it must be playing a role in the future of the party. “

“By the way, thank you very much,” McCarthy joked, before walking away from reporters.

Trump is reportedly bothered by the fact that, instead of expelling Cheney from the party, McCarthy supported her in maintaining her leadership position in the Republican caucus in the House – leading to strange scenes like Wednesday’s. Tara Palmeri provided the full context in the Saturday edition of the Politico Playbook:

Three people close to Trump tell me he’s brooding again KEVIN MCCARTHY. It has become so frequent that its advisers think that the minority leader in the Chamber may receive a public reprimand. That’s right after the powwow in Mar-a-Lago, where McCarthy tried to fix things after denouncing Trump for the violence on January 6.

The reason for Trump’s displeasure: a encouraged Cheney.

Each time Cheney criticizes Trump for his leadership role as the Republican No. 3 in the House, he recalled that it was McCarthy who begged his conference to keep her as president – despite his vote for Trump’s impeachment. The last trigger came on Wednesday, when Cheney told a news conference that Trump should not lead the party while McCarthy awkwardly waited.

McCarthy in particular, and CPAC speakers in general, took a stand against Cheney in this dispute. On Friday, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said during his speech that Cheney would be booed if she showed up at CPAC, and he is not wrong. But that Trump is even considering publicly punishing McCarthy just because he won’t work to purge the handful of Republicans in the House who voted for Trump’s impeachment to reflect the extent to which the party has turned into a cult of personality – which lasted even after the leader has been defeated.

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