GOP leaders long to DIE

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) drew some heat over the weekend after attacking his own party for being too white while speaking at the Oxford Union. McCarthy claimed the Democrats “actually look like America” while the Republicans “look like the most restrictive country club.” This, mind you, while he was standing in a tuxedo at the podium of an elite British institution.

It would seem that self-awareness is a liability when attempting to climb the political ladder.

Republicans often make superficial complaints about identity politics, but McCarthy’s remarks reveal that the leftist hierarchy of victimization has embedded itself deep in the minds of mainstream conservative politicians. Diversity, inclusion, and equity have become the ideological enforcement arm of the progressive cultural revolution, and that poisonous belief system has now worked its way into the political party that is supposed to oppose it.

McCarthy’s remarks at Oxford were not some embarrassing accident. At an event sponsored by the New York Times a few weeks earlier, the former speaker used the same line about country-club Republicans, but it got even worse.

McCarthy told the audience that he believed the demographic makeup of the GOP was a serious problem in which he needed to involve himself personally. The congressman from California explained that he wanted to see more women and minorities taking House seats but that Republican primary voters kept stubbornly selecting white males. McCarthy wanted to make it very clear to New York Times readers that he actively sought to influence GOP primaries with the explicit intention of selecting candidates due to their race or gender.

Stewards of the regime

Kevin McCarthy is not some weird outlier, nor is he a Republican in Name Only. McCarthy was the House minority leader from 2019 until his election as speaker earlier this year. He held the key leadership position in the party. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) attempted to remove McCarthy, he was opposed by “serious-minded people who wanted to get things done.” The effort to remove the speaker for failing to keep his political promises on issues like the budget was characterized as a childish personal vendetta by the unruly MAGA crowd.

Conservatives must demand a new kind of leadership willing to reject the poisonous racial and sexual grievance hierarchy of the left, or the right will most certainly DIE.

New Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has proven himself a disappointment in other ways, rushing to see how much American taxpayer money he can send to defend the borders of foreign nations, but that is the larger point. The Republican Party did not just have one bad leader with Kevin McCarthy. It is Kevin McCarthys all the way down.

It would be easy to write off the former speaker as some soft California imposter. In reality, he is the Republican Party. There are some good GOP members, but most of these politicians are simply stewards of the regime who found it easier to get elected in their districts if they put an “R” next to their names on the ballot. Most “conservative” politicians buy into the prestige hierarchy presented to them by the dominant power and cannot wait to swap you out for a voter base that the New York Times would approve of.

Nothing demonstrates the Republican embrace of the left’s DIE frame quite like the presidential campaign of Nikki Haley. Remember, Haley first rose to political prominence as part of the last populist revolt against establishment conservatism, the Tea Party. Now she’s become the model establishment presidential candidate.

It was embarrassing enough when Haley embraced Disney after the company’s dust-up with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the state’s anti-grooming bill or demanded that big tech end internet anonymity, but her adoption of leftist rhetoric on race and gender has been truly egregious. After former CNN host Don Lemon called Nikki Haley “past her prime,” Haley quickly responded by calling the commentator a sexist who was threatened by a minority woman. She wasted no time adding “past my prime” merchandise to her campaign website alongside shirts that read “Sometimes it takes a woman” and “She who dares wins.”

Coincidently, the former governor of South Carolina has shot to second place in some polls, overtaking DeSantis and quickly becoming every corporate donor’s favorite Republican.

A morally bankrupt party

The same strange inconsistency has arisen around calls to defund universities and abolish DIE-based curricula now that campus activists and faculty have been fomenting anti-Jewish sentiment on campus in the wake of the October 7attacks in Israel.

No group should have violent rhetoric or hatred directed toward them under the guise of pseudo-academic jargon like “decolonization,” but one has to wonder where these calls have been during the last decade when the same language was primarily directed at white, male, and Christian students. There were those who pushed back, to be sure, but the sudden support for substantive political action against universities that appeared after the anti-Semitic diatribes simply did not exist when the main targets looked more like the voter base of the Republican Party.

It speaks deeply to the cowardice of the GOP establishment that Republicans simply ignored the demonization of Christians, males, and whites until a group that it was politically acceptable to protect suddenly became the target of bigotry.

The Republican Party loves to gain points with its base by mouthing platitudes about the evils of identity politics but has clearly internalized the narrative and values of the left. Party leaders like McCarthy have fully embraced the idea that white middle and working-class voters are an embarrassment and should be left behind so the GOP can embrace a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable future. This approach is the behavior of a completely ideologically corrupt and morally bankrupt party with no future beyond licking the heels of the real political power in the United States.

Conservatives must demand a new kind of leadership willing to reject the poisonous racial and sexual grievance hierarchy of the left, or the right will most certainly DIE.