At his farewell press conference following his removal from the House speakership, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this of his leading GOP opponents, notably, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz:
They are not conservatives, and they do not have the right to have the title.
Begging the obvious, but it is McCarthy who is decidedly not a conservative. Why?
A word here about a decided conservative — the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To understand Gaetz’s complaint about McCarthy, here is Thatcher in her memoirs on her own Conservative Party, a description that certainly applies today to Kevin McCarthy. (READ MORE: The Matt Gaetz Eight)
Thatcher writes this of her party’s nominal position on issues:
At the level of principle, rhetorically and in Opposition, it opposed the (Labour Party) doctrines and preached the gospel of free enterprise with very little qualification. Almost every post-war Tory victory had been won on slogans such as ‘Britain Strong and Free’ or ‘Set the People Free’. But in the fine print of policy, and especially in government, the Tory Party merely pitched camp in the long march to the left. It never tried seriously to reverse it….
The result of this style of accommodationist politics … was that post-war politics became a ‘socialist ratchet’ — Labour moved Britain towards more statism; the Tories stood pat; and the next Labour Government moved the country a little further left. The Tories loosened the corset of socialism; they never removed it.
In essence, this was the complaint about Kevin McCarthy from Gaetz and company. Kevin McCarthy is a socialist-ratchet kind of guy.
And, indeed, the accuracy of the complaint was all too evident in McCarthy’s post–Speaker election press conference.
Time after time he spoke about how important it was for him to “govern.” And, in practice, “governing” in McCarthy’s terms meant governing by socialist ratchet. As my colleague Dan Flynn has noted:
Rather than reverse the multidecade trend that led to budgets exceeding $6 trillion, McCarthy twice partnered with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown and protect the other party’s spending priorities.
Last December, McCarthy passed the bloated $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill — a classic socialist ratchet. Why not stop passing “omnibus” spending bills? Because to do so would bring serious opposition from Democrats — and, worse, doubtless some Republicans. There could be — oh, the horror! — a government shutdown. So … a ratchet to the left to accommodate the Left in the name of “governing.”
I think the House of Representatives has been paralyzed for the last several decades as we’ve refused to pass a budget, as we’ve governed by continuing resolution and omnibus bill. So I think that this represents the ripping off of the Band-Aid, and that’s what we need to do to get back on track.
Bingo.
Another example of McCarthy at work with his socialist ratchet?
Per Wikipedia, the Jimmy Carter–created U.S. Department of Education has 4,400 employees and an annual budget of $68 billion. Ronald Reagan proposed eliminating the department outright, and doing just that was a plank in the 1980 GOP platform. Their efforts failed.
Where was McCarthy in today’s world passing legislation to abolish the department outright?
Answer: Nowhere.
To pass legislation that would defund the Department of Education and abolish it outright — thus getting the federal government out of the education system and leaving it to locals — was never once considered by the McCarthy-led House GOP conference.
Likewise was abolishing the Jimmy Carter–created Department of Energy never given a second’s thought. The acceptance by McCarthy and his socialist-ratchet Republicans is exactly the kind of thinking the “Matt Gaetz Eight” were trying to overturn, McCarthy’s departure being but a first step.
The McCarthy response to just those two ideas is exactly the socialist ratchet in action. “But they wouldn’t pass” — one can hear the eye-rolling response.
And so?
Climb in the time-travel machine and revisit one William Jennings Bryan. The Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900, and again 1908, Bryan built his reputation as a serious “progressive,” his three presidential runs going down to defeat.
Yet with the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and again in 1916, not to mention Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four sweeping presidential victories in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, plus the ensuing Truman victory in 1948, the essence of the Bryan agenda became the law of the land. The federal government was vastly expanded, exactly as Bryan had campaigned for repeatedly.
Democrat President Harry Truman would remark that Bryan:
was a great one — one of the greatest. If it wasn’t for old Bill Bryan, there wouldn’t be any liberalism at all in the country now. Bryan kept liberalism alive, he kept it going.
Indeed, FDR himself would say this in a speech honoring Bryan:
I think that we would choose the word “sincerity” as fitting him most of all…. It was that sincerity which made him a force for good in his own generation and has kept alive many of the ancient faiths on which we are building today.
We … can well agree that he fought a good fight; that he finished the course; and that he kept the faith.
All of which is to say that Bryan stood up for a progressive agenda that lost again and again — and, finally, in due time, won the day and became the mainstay of the federal government and its policies thanks to Democrat presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and beyond.
In more modern times, Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964 as a serious conservative. Writing in his bestseller of the day The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater made plain his opposition to any funding of a federal in education — and this was years before Carter created the federal Department of Education. When he ran for president, Goldwater was trounced. But many of his conservative ideas lived on and became reality when Reagan was elected years later.
In other words, it’s OK to lose a fight on issues — using the opportunity to spotlight and educate the public on the conservative approach to an issue.
This approach is obviously anathema to McCarthy. In his post-removal press conference, he kept stressing the need for “governing,” in essence rejecting the need to set out seriously conservative policies because they wouldn’t pass. Which results in turn in the politics of the socialist ratchet exactly.
This week the House GOP is booked to settle its Speaker issue.
But as it does, it should be hoped that the next Republican Speaker, no matter who it may be, will reject the McCarthy-style politics of the social ratchet.
And stand up for conservatism.