House conservatives open to Kevin McCarthy as new Speaker?

The Hill reports today that House conservatives who've had it with John Boehner's weakness as Speaker might be willing to get behind Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy as a replacement - provided more conservatives are added to the Speaker's leadership team, which under Boehner is pretty much a squish brigade that sees its job as defending Boehner's reluctance to fight Obama on just about anything difficult.

The prospect of McCarthy as Speaker is a curious one for several reasons. For one, he is at present part of Boehner's leadership team, and while he's broken from Boehner at least rhetorically on a few issues - like the Ex-Im Bank and the urgency of defunding Planned Parenthood - he's basically a trusted member of the team. Maybe the conservatives think he would set a different agenda if given a shot to run the show, but in his present role he's been a pretty loyal soldier. For another, McCarthy has shown no interest in the job. Now, maybe there's no way he can under the circumstances, but if he's out for Boehner's scalp, it doesn't seem to be worrying Boehner very much. House conservatives are hoping they can force a vote, possibly as early as this fall, to oust Boehner. It would take fewer than 30 Republicans withholding their support for Boehner to essentially force the GOP to get behind a new candidate. If that were to happen and Boehner were to accept his fate, then, maybe, McCarthy would consider stepping forward. The bigger question, though, is whether McCarthy would really get significantly different results than Boehner:

Some Republicans see the idea of a leadership coalition as pure fantasy. But the Freedom Caucus does have enormous leverage: Between 40 to 50 members strong, the conservative bloc of House members essentially could veto any nominee for Speaker simply by withholding all of their votes. That could force McCarthy and other establishment Republicans to the negotiating table.

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A number of Republicans cautioned that McCarthy, a former majority whip, certainly doesn’t have the Speaker’s race sewn up. In fact, one Boehner critic, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), said installing McCarthy in the top post amounted to “a swap with no benefits.” But McCarthy has been shoring up his right flank this past year ahead of any future run for Speaker. His regular outreach to rank-and-file members has included phone calls, text messages and dinner invitations to members of the Freedom Caucus — a group Boehner views as a nuisance. And McCarthy has appeared to break with Boehner on some policy issues. This spring, the No. 2 GOP leader said he wanted to outright kill the Export-Import Bank, while Boehner warned that such a move could cost thousands of U.S. jobs. And when undercover Planned Parenthood videos surfaced this summer, McCarthy called for an immediate “moratorium” on federal funding for the nonprofit group; meanwhile, Boehner said he wanted to see “facts first” from House investigations before pledging to defund the group. Other conservatives have been gaming out the possibilities in great detail. Another anonymous House lawmaker said one such coalition could look something like this: McCarthy as Speaker; Jordan as majority leader; National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) lands a committee gavel just like his predecessor, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas); and another conservative nabs the NRCC post.

Look, I'm all for trying someone different. It's clear that Boehner does not have the fight in him to go to the wall with Obama. But one crucial factor has to change if anyone else is going to get better results: The new Speaker has to get over the fear that any showdown with Obama will just result in a government shutdown for which Republicans get blamed. This is exactly what both Boehner and Mitch McConnell think, and it's why they never win a battle. Both have completely internalized the Beltway wisdom that Republicans trying to deny Obama anything he wants is tantamount to "shutting down the government" over whatever the issue is. In reality, the Legislative branch has just as much right as the Executive branch to have input into spending priorities, and when there is a disagreement, the two branches are supposed to work toward an agreement. What has happened in practice, however, is that Obama presumes his right to have whatever he wants, and whenever Republicans try to tell him no, he simply refuses to deal. This forces Republicans into a stance of either caving or standing firm, in which case everyone acts as though it was their intention to shut down the government, since they should have known Obama would not negotiate and therefore defying the king is understood to be a losing proposition. The defiers, knowing full well how the king operates but wantonly defying him anyway, obvious wanted a government shutdown. The fact that they may hand him a bill to fund the government - which he will not sign - means nothing. They, not he, are shutting down the government. A new Speaker needs to stop accepting this narrative and assert the House's right to an equal say in spending priorities. And when the media promotes the usual narrative as you know it will, a new Speaker needs to challenge them instead of being afraid of them. Boehner absolutely will not do that. McConnell is even worse, going on Sunday morning talk shows to assure the media he will never defy Obama because he learned a lesson from the kick of a mule or something. Has Kevin McCarthy also internalized this conventional wisdom? Or is he prepared to fight not only the Democrats but the media and the consultant class as well? Because no new Speaker will be any different than Boehner if he doesn't think differently on this one question.