Deposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will go down in history for the wrong reasons | Opinion

On a warm but stormy summer Paris day in 1794, Maximilien Robespierre, a leader of the French Revolution, was taken to the Plaza de la Revolución and summarily executed by guillotine before a cheering crowd. Just ten months earlier, Robespierre, a rising star in his political party, had cobbled together the support of the various rabid factions of the revolution (in part by reneging on previous promises and principled stands that had defined his early career) and was installed as the leader of the National Convention. The unruly mob, animated more by rumor, conspiracy theory and personal politics than an underlying philosophy of government, ultimately determined the leader they had just chosen couldn’t be trusted and led him to his early and violent death.

The inglorious demise of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, while not a literal execution, was a historic removal of a House leader led by members of his own party. Such a proceeding - called a motion to vacate - had only happened once before in our history in 1910 and that coup attempt failed. McCarthy stands alone in our history for being deposed by the most extreme members of his own party. In fact, save for the blood and the guillotine, the parallels between Robespierre and McCarthy are striking in that McCarthy also tried to make deals with his own unruly mob, known as the House Republican caucus. He also reneged on previous promises that resulted in Democrats refusing to save him as his fellow Republicans pilloried McCarthy on the House floor and in the court of public opinion.

Being politically deposed in real-time and on live television should also serve as a reminder to politicians that those who place power over principle usually end up with neither. In many ways, the surrender of McCarthy’s governing philosophy of conservatism to the chaotic whims of Donald Trump mirrors today’s Republican Party. Perhaps no figure in recent American politics embodies that weakness than the gentleman from Bakersfield.

Having worked for three decades in politics, I have never met a politician who had a keener, more finely attuned sense of the Republican base voter than McCarthy. That great instinctual gift allowed for his meteoric rise through the ranks of the GOP as an activist, staffer, California state Assemblyman and ultimately the most powerful member of Congress.

But it was in the country’s moments of greatest need that McCarthy failed his oath to defend the Constitution, his country, and his countrymen. While many Americans have grown numb watching in horror and disgrace as Republican politicians take their place in line to genuflect before a leader they know to be unfit, no one more than McCarthy clearly recognized the danger Trump presented, shared those concerns in private and hypocritically stated the opposite in public.

McCarthy, more than any other member of Congress, spoke out privately about his awareness that Trump was a threat to the country.

Just days after the January 6th insurrection, when a violent mob directed by the President sought to overthrow the United States government, McCarthy said what every Republican officeholder, elected official, should have known to be: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.”

But just two weeks later, desperately needing Trump’s support for his goal of becoming Speaker of the House, McCarthy flew to make amends with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and never publicly spoke of Trump’s involvement with the insurrection again. As Robespierre did centuries before him, McCarthy made an unseemly deal that sealed his fate.

McCarthy’s downfall was a function of his desperate desire to reach the pinnacle of political power and his willingness to compromise himself to get there. American history will remember Kevin McCarthy as the weakest and most inconsequential Speaker in history. His only saving grace is there are likely to be worse arising from this Republican Congress in short order.

When historians look back at this era of American internal discord, it will be replete with examples of Republican leaders who weren’t bad so much as they were weak. In his final press conference as Speaker, McCarthy blamed Democrats for not putting up the votes to save his job, refusing until the bitter end to look the extremists in his own party straight in the eye. At least Robespierre faced the guillotine with his eyes wide open.

It is likely, however, that this is not McCarthy’s final act. He is still relatively young, he’s talented and ambitious. Some are even suggesting he could resurrect himself as Speaker. His party and his country can only hope that he returns to principled conservatism over the pursuit of power.

Mike Madrid is a former political director of the California Republican Party and a co-founder of Grassroots Lab, a Sacramento-based public relations firm.