The removal of Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House of Representatives has evoked contrasts with Nancy Pelosi and her parliamentary mastermind among the pundits who spent two decades drooling over Pelosi. Pelosi had her hardliners too, the argument goes, that unlike McCarthy, she was successful in keeping them in check, which proves her genius compared to McCarthy’s poor skills. With a closer look, however, the comparison collapses.
First, let’s use their own arguments against them. For years, we have heard from these progressive pundits that, yes, AOC and the rest of the Squad are far left on policy, but they aren’t crazy like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In other words, these pundits have themselves argued that McCarthy has a much tougher hand.
Second, in 2019, when Pelosi became speaker, Democrats had gained a 36-seat majority, meaning it would take 19 Democrats to vote against Pelosi to deny her the speakership. Compare that to McCarthy who could spare only 4 Republican votes. So unlike Pelosi, he had to make much greater concessions to the far-right of his conference than Pelosi did to the far-left of her caucus.
Third, in 2019, Donald Trump was president, and Democrats had no legislative agenda or policy interest but defeating Trump in the next year. Thus, the policy stakes were not high. For Republicans, including the Freedom Caucus, there are serious policy interests to fight over. Everyone can debate whether these policy and procedural demands are realistic, wise, and even sincere, but they are legitimate. From debt to a return to the regular order of appropriations, Republicans are arguing over legitimate concerns, and the speaker dispute is a part of that concern corresponding to their constituents’ desires. Democrats, on the other hand, only cared about defeating Trump when they voted for Pelosi, so the stakes of who the speaker should be were much lower for them.
Fourth, both McCarthy and Pelosi made concessions to their extreme flanks. While the broader Democratic Party had little interest in legislation during the Trump administration, the Squad’s demands were more spending, which the rest of the caucus hardly minds—they even passed AOC’s $100 trillion Green New Deal bill in the House, which never passed the Senate—and not to make it easier to unseat Pelosi. The nature of the demands McCarthy’s opponents in the GOP made were much different. So, while both Pelosi and McCarthy made concessions, it was McCarthy’s bad luck that those were about unseating McCarthy. In fact, when Pelosi became speaker, she changed the rule for filing motions to oust her, and her far-left didn’t object. The requirement went up from a single member to a majority of Republicans or Democrats, a nearly impossible bar to clear. When Republicans got back the House, they demanded that McCarthy restore it to a single member.
Fifth, Pelosi benefited from mainstream media’s adoration of her. She has been a political celebrity and journalists have created an icon out of her. Therefore, for the far left, they had to climb an uphill battle to go after Pelosi. The same media hates McCarthy, and conservative media are at best divided, so he doesn’t have many defenders. Attacking him won’t make you unpopular within the Republican base or the electorate writ-large like attacking Pelosi would jeopardize a Democrat’s standing within the party. Even if journalists hate Gaetz more, they don’t feel compelled to say anything nice about McCarthy.
It is easy to attack McCarthy as weak and praise Pelosi as brilliant, because it is easy to withhold details and nuances. The truth is that McCarthy is playing a difficult hand Pelosi never had to. And he has managed to prevent a government shutdowns, which would have severely harmed the party, something nobody thought he’d be able to, even though, by Democratic pundits’ own admission, his GOP opponents are much more unreasonable than Pelosi’s Democratic opponents were.