Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.
Indeed, from the conversations I’ve had with allies of the 19 initial “no” votes, their opposition to McCarthy is more than just wrangling concessions. Rather, their outrage stems from what they consider to be McCarthy’s original sin: disloyalty and nihilism in pursuit of his ambition to wield the gavel. Recent news articles suggesting how much McCarthy donated to the campaigns of his antagonistes miss the point. That was all ex post facto wet-kissing. They have not forgotten, after all, that he worked to undermine them and their MAGA allies in the midterm primaries, spending millions against their campaigns and boosting more moderate challengers. Nor do they trust that a former Majority Whip who had privately tried to get Donald Trump to resign after January 6th would ever have their backs against the Washington machine. For many of them, the opposition is personal. And when they say that they would prefer anyone who is not McCarthy, they truly mean it.
“Every time Kevin sends his people out to go talk to the dissenters, whenever our side says Look, we want a leader with substance and a leader who believes in it, they all immediately know exactly the criticism that we’re talking about,” the source with knowledge of their negotiations told me. “People don’t trust McCarthy. They don’t think he’s proven himself to be trustworthy. And they think that he cares more about becoming speaker than he does about actually changing things and working to fix the institution
