Poor Rep. Kevin McCarthy — ‘my Kevin,’ Trump calls him — is about to achieve his goal

The lesson of the legend of Faust, if you recall, is that his deal with the devil brought him power and parlor tricks but not happiness, or even contentment. (We coulda told him, right?) Like GOP California congressman Kevin McCarthy, he sold his soul to a con artist and got only some hard lessons in return.

For years, McCarthy has pursued the House speaker’s gavel with the single-mindedness of Romeo standing under that balcony in Capulet’s orchard, or of the title character of the Bette Davis classic movie “All About Eve,” scheming to sneak out the stage door with everything in her mentor Margo Channing’s life.

But having long since traded his soul to Donald Trump, whose preferred candidates once again underperformed in Tuesday’s midterm election, McCarthy’s reward will be to have to bow to the dubious cast of congressional characters whose morally reduced circumstances made independent voters favor Democrats.

The son of a firefighter, 57-year-old McCarthy has worked in politics since college. Even after the insurrection put his life in danger on Jan. 6 of last year, the Bakersfield lawmaker who promises to “have the courage to lead with the wisdom to listen” went from correctly blaming Trump for inciting that treasonous riot to deciding that his ambitions depended on pretending otherwise.

“I’ve had it with this guy,” McCarthy told a group of Republican leaders right after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to an audio recording The New York Times wrote about.

On a phone call with other top House Republicans on Jan. 8, McCarthy said Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” He saw the then-president as “inciting people” and called Trump’s pre-coup rally remarks “not right by any shape or any form.”

The president would either have to resign or be impeached, McCarthy told fellow Republicans on Jan. 10, in remarks that were also recorded. “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.”

Or wait, should they? By the end of that same month, McCarthy was back at Mar-a-Lago with the man who had dubbed him “my Kevin,” posing for pictures and kissing Trump’s ring and whatever else.

The speakership has slipped away from McCarthy in the past: In 2015, he came close but then blew it by blurting out the truth, bragging during an interview with Fox News that yeah, the GOP investigation into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, had been politically motivated.

Now though, at last, the speaker’s gavel, that small wooden symbol of congressional power, will likely soon be his.

Hopefully, he will even be able to exceed his own modest expectations about what he will do with it. Because suggestions of violence are always fun, and threats against women doubly so, he recently said that if current Speaker Nancy Pelosi ever does hand the mallet over, “it will be hard not to hit her with it.” Even after her husband really was attacked with a hammer, some Republicans kept right on laughing.

But what will McCarthy really do, if that gavel does become his to hold? Nothing of substance, even if he wants to.

Because even if he does prevail, it will be with such a small minority that conspiracy theorist and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has tweeted that “Joe Biden is Hitler,” and that mass shootings were fake, can tell him what to have for breakfast.

Republican donors have said they’re done with Trump, and voters, too, seem to want to move on from the 24/7 circus. Yet in the House, the whole pro-Trump Freedom Caucus may soon be in charge. If so, they’ll be the Republican parallel to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin times 10, able to hold McCarthy hostage on matters large and small.

Already, caucus members have signaled that they expect more power over committee assignments and the ability to make it easier to remove and replace a House speaker. They also want assurances that Biden and others will be impeached — they’ll figure out why later — and at some point maybe even investigated.

McCarthy spoke to Biden on the phone on Wednesday night. But will he be able to work with the president? If his party takes the House, as expected, his caucus will expect him to focus on content-free messaging bills and just-for-fun probes into non-problems such as the president’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop.

With Trump blaming even his wife Melania for his candidates’ losses on Tuesday — hey, why’d she make him support that loser Dr. Oz, anyway? — I almost feel sorry for McCarthy.

And definitely wonder whether Pelosi, if her husband’s health allows it, isn’t tempted to stick around and show him how a minority party can exert power not only to block action, but to force it.

“I don’t understand why this is just a foregone conclusion,” Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, said of a McCarthy speakership. “I would say maybe not so fast. Maybe we should have a good discussion within the confines of our internal body.”

On a far-right show called “The Absolute Truth With Emerald Robinson,” Biggs complained, “We were told we were going to have an incredible, incredible wave.” They were told that by McCarthy, whose incredible, incredible willingness to say whatever he needs to say is about to make his own life miserable.

This story was originally published November 10, 2022 at 5:30 AM.