Opinion: McCarthy’s downfall offers a clear lesson for Republicans

Editor’s Note: Geoff Duncan, a CNN contributor, served as Georgia’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023. He is a former professional baseball player, and the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.” The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author. View more opinion at CNN.

As the dust settles on the tenure of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, there are lessons the Republican Party should learn. While the headlines have focused on the eight GOP members who sealed McCarthy’s fate, the die was cast long before the recent actions of House rabble-rousers.

In fact, this outcome was ordained by former President Donald Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party, and he is set to continue to play his spoiler role in the unfolding drama. In a late-night missive on Truth Social Friday, Trump offered his “complete & total endorsement” of Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has put himself forward as McCarthy’s replacement.

As the Republican caucus considers its next steps, they must choose a leader whose stewardship signals a clear break from the past. Our party will not be able to compete among swing and suburban voters with a Speaker of the House known for nothing more than fealty to Trump. With another potential shutdown looming, the next speaker should commit to working across the aisle with Democrats, even if it means losing support from the hard-right Republicans. If we continue failing at even the basics of governing, our party will continue losing elections at all levels, and Democrats will remain in charge. That’s not the outcome anyone who believes in conservative governing principles should seek.

Here are the ways that Trump triggered the events that fueled McCarthy’s downfall.

First, when McCarthy had the chance to stick a knife in the political career of Trump and the MAGA extremists riding his coattails (such as Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida), he helped him get off the mat. In the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021, McCarthy declared, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” Three weeks later, McCarthy was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the disgraced former president, heralding Trump’s commitment “to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022.”

Voters had a different idea, which brings us to the second point. Instead of a red wave with a potential 60-seat pick-up (as McCarthy suggested in November 2021), the GOP eked out a House majority, picking up a net gain of only 10 seats. Republicans lost ground in the Senate, despite a sitting Democratic president with lackluster approval ratings. The reasons are multi-faceted, but at the core, it came down to a batch of candidates more interested in re-litigating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election than offering a compelling vision for 2022.

Take my home state of Georgia and its front row seat in the debacle. Losses by Trump-backed Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the January 2021 special election handed control of the Senate to the Democrats. In 2022, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, a former football star whose controversial candidacy was fueled by his connection to the former president, met the same fate. All three doomed candidates stuck with Trump. It was a similar situation in Arizona, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania  all potentially winnable seats for Republicans. Only one — J.D. Vance of Ohio — sits in the Senate today, and he needed more than $30 million of outside support to carry a state that Trump won handily.

In the House, the razor thin majority forced McCarthy to cut deals with gadflies like Gaetz and agree to lower the threshold to force a vote on the motion to vacate to just one representative. Nine months later, Gaetz forced the motion to vacate and McCarthy was ousted, despite having the support of 95% of his caucus.

Which leads us to the final point. When McCarthy was languishing through 15 rounds of voting to obtain the speaker’s gavel in January, Trump bailed him out. Who can forget Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appearing to whip votes on behalf of McCarthy by passing around her phone with the former president ostensibly on the line?

Fast forward less than a year and Trump was nowhere to be found when McCarthy’s fate as speaker hung in the balance.

To be sure, McCarthy’s speakership was not without accomplishments. He found compromises to avoid a shutdown and financial default. He passed a series of bills, including on crime in Washington, DC and on declassifying documents on the origins of Covid-19, which President Joe Biden signed into law.

But he exits with both his party and the country lagging.

The hard-earned Republican majority in the House is in utter disarray. Meanwhile, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination faces a total of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases (Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case), multiple civil lawsuits and a record of losing elections. Despite this, he still commands a massive lead over the other GOP candidates.

In a press conference following his ouster, McCarthy stated, “Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is necessary.” And yet, he failed to follow his own advice when he had a chance to do the right thing and help the party move past Trump. He wasn’t the only one who failed to make the right choice about Trump, but he was the biggest political casualty.

Any future would-be speaker should learn from McCarthy’s example. It’s a mistake to lean on Trump for short-term power. To change direction, the next speaker must prioritize finding common ground with the other side to fulfill the basic obligations of governing. That means leaving Trump in the rear-view mirror.

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