wapo at it again
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/04/trump-mccarthy-speaker/
The House hard-liners blocking McCarthy aren’t listening to Trump
In another sign of the former president’s waning influence, his efforts to bolster McCarthy’s bid as House speaker have not persuaded 20 Republicans to drop their opposition
By Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey
January 4, 2023 at 7:06 p.m. EST
President Donald Trump speaks alongside Republican Kevin McCarthy, then the House minority leader, in the White House Rose Garden in 2019. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
For the first time in recent memory, former president Donald Trump found himself relegated this week to the outskirts of a humiliating Republican implosion.
Instead, at the center of the latest conflagration stood Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who on Tuesday sat through three devastating votes in which he failed to earn the House speaker’s gavel, only to return Wednesday for three more rounds of self-abasement. As of Wednesday evening, the House still had no speaker.
In the long run-up to the race for speaker, Trump was the leading character in a bevy of political parlor games — including breathless, overhyped scenarios in which the former president would offer himself up for the gavel and speculation about whether Trump would endorse McCarthy’s bid.
On Jan. 4, Republican Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) failed to garner the 218 votes needed to be elected House speaker. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
In the end, Trump supported McCarthy’s candidacy — and his party responded with a collective shrug. The former president and his endorsement, it seemed, were essentially irrelevant.
The 20 Republicans who voted against McCarthy were nearly all hardcore Trump loyalists; all but two were election deniers — echoing Trump’s false and baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — and 15 of the 20 had received Trump’s endorsement during the primaries.
Some, such as Matt Gaetz (Fla.), have made fealty to the former president almost their entire political brand. Yet Gaetz was one of the five original “Never Kevin” Republicans who made clear his chief mission was to deny McCarthy the gavel, regardless of the consequences for the party or the nation.
Even after Trump put out a statement Wednesday morning on his Truth Social platform reiterating his support for McCarthy, Gaetz remained unmoved: “Sad!” Gaetz told Fox News Digital in a statement. “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote.”
And none of the floor speeches Tuesday even invoked Trump or suggested that his support of McCarthy was in any way meaningful or persuasive.
Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said Trump’s opinion on this issue is inconsequential for most Republicans.
“I don’t think he factors into it,” Short said. “Do you see any evidence he’s swaying anybody?”
As a former president who has seen his potency wane in the wake of disappointing midterm results, Trump no longer instills fear throughout his party, Short said — especially not over an inside-the-Beltway Republican conference vote.
“What could the punishment be?” Short said. “What levers does he have over them at this point?”
Trump’s main relevance during the unfolding drama came only when he specifically injected himself into it, such as during a brief interview with NBC News on Tuesday night that suggested he might be waffling in his support for McCarthy.
But even those remarks felt more like a former president desperate for attention than an actual player in the ongoing House speaker battle.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said when asked directly if he was sticking with McCarthy, who by then had lost three rounds of voting.
cont