The version of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday was not exactly the same as the version of McCarthy we saw last year. The trouble is, the latest iteration is much worse.
A week after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, for example, the California Republican appeared on the House floor and declared that Donald Trump “bears responsibility“ for the insurrectionist violence. Yesterday, a reporter asked McCarthy if he still agrees with his own statement. He responded:
“Look, I’ve answered that many times. I thought everybody in the country beared [sic] some responsibility, based upon what has been going on. The riots on the streets, the others.”
As a factual matter, this didn’t make any sense. A group of pro-Trump radicals attacked our democracy and our seat of government, and the idea that “everybody” in the United States is partly to blame for the violence is both ridiculous and at odds with traditional conservative values regarding personal responsibility.
But just as important is the fact that McCarthy used to know better. We know this for sure because he got this right last year, both publicly and privately.
In other words, the House GOP leader, confronted with overwhelming evidence, is actually regressing. A Washington Post report highlighted a related example:
In the space of 60 seconds, McCarthy was asked five times whether President Biden’s win in the 2020 election was legitimate. Each time, he declined to answer — saying merely that Biden is the president, while not addressing the “legitimate” part — and claiming he had answered the question.
It was a frustrating display. When a reporter ultimately explained that it’s a “very simple question” — either he believes in the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency or he doesn’t — McCarthy said, “We’ll move on now.”
But as exasperating as this back-and-forth exchange was, it was also at odds with the Republican leader’s positions from last year. In May 2021, McCarthy told reporters, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.”
During a brief Q&A in front of the White House, the House minority leader added, “I think that is all over with.”
It was a little odd at the time — a certain former president was still eagerly “questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election” — but it was at least somewhat reassuring that McCarthy wasn’t contributing to the Big Lie. But 13 months later, the GOP leader won’t echo his own rhetoric. On the contrary, at yesterday’s press conference, McCarthy would only say that Biden “is” the president — deliberately sidestepping the point of the question — before adding that he believes “there’s a lot of problems still within the election process.” What the public saw was a politician who was right a year ago, but who’s moving further away from his own positions. There’s plenty of room for speculation about why, exactly, McCarthy refused to echo his 2021 rhetoric, but I don’t think there’s any great mystery here: House Republicans appear likely to do very well in the upcoming midterms, and for the minority leader, the Speaker’s gavel is almost within reach. To tell the truth about the 2020 election is to risk Trump’s wrath, and it’s a risk McCarthy appears too afraid to take.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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