Can Patrick McHenry steer the GOP from going off a MAGA cliff? | Opinion

Rep. Patrick McHenry’s name echoes that of Patrick Henry, a leader of the American Revolution who famously declared: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

McHenry, the North Carolina Republican serving as the temporary speaker of a U.S. House in disarray, isn’t a fiery orator, but he could offer his fellow Republicans a Patrick Henry-style call: “Give us sanity, or give us defeat.”

McHenry, 47, and now in his 10th term, is being called upon to restore order after a rogue group of eight Republicans unseated Speaker Kevin McCarthy only nine months into his tenure. McHenry was first on the former speaker’s secret list of who should preside in the event that he was unable to.

Though he is not seeking the job permanently, McHenry will oversee the delicate and potentially combustible process of electing McCarthy’s successor.

McHenry represents a choice about where House Republicans can go. The congressman from the 10th District, which covers all or part of nine counties north and west of Charlotte, is a former conservative insurgent turned team player. He is willing to compromise for incremental gains.

“A position is not important in and of itself,” McHenry said in a 2014 interview with McClatchy news. “It’s the opportunity to shape outcomes that is meaningful. And even more meaningful is the outcome. I’m very mindful of that.”

Now the question is whether the Republicans in Congress can adopt a similar view. Can they use their narrow majority to move beyond MAGA-driven symbolic bills to passage of legislation that has a real chance of becoming law? If not, they may well lose their majority in next year’s election.

Notably, McHenry showed what a more tactical and restrained GOP would look like after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. He was the lone Republican among the eight in North Carolina’s delegation to vote to certify all results of the 2020 presidential election.

He said at the time: “Beyond the fact that voting against certification of legally submitted electors would violate the oath I took to our Constitution; I also have serious concerns about the precedent these actions could set were they to succeed.”

The GOP ‘s other potential path is to follow Republican extremists who would rather follow former President Donald Trump’s burn-it-down approach to politics.

Many Republicans angered by McCarthy’s removal, the first such ouster in U.S. history, would like the Republican House conference to become more like McHenry. The extremists, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, want to purge the McHenrys, the McCarthys and all those whom they consider members of a “uni-party” in which Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable.

Asher Hildebrand, an associate professor at Duke University and former aide to longtime Rep. David Price, D-NC, said of McHenry, “This is someone who was a Bush-era Republican who now finds himself in the Donald Trump party and having to navigate those cross currents.” He added that McHenry “is really liked by members and is seen as someone who knows how to play the inside game in shrewd and effective ways.”

The problem for McHenry and more moderate GOP members is that the inside game is being eclipsed by outside theatrics. Even freshman members can become prominent by provoking outrage through social media and raising huge sums in small donations.

It’s a measure of how much the Republican Party has changed that McHenry is considered a moderate. He has an 89 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, though he’s fallen from 100 percent in 2005 to 71 percent in 2022.

The ouster of McCarthy was the end of a speakership but the beginning of a wider battle over where the Republican Party is headed. In the breach, for now, stands McHenry. How well he handles this transition could determine whether the narrow House majority survives the forces pulling it apart.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com