Thread: From Boehner to Worse (ALIPAC)

From Boehner to Worse

Likable moderate Kevin McCarthy, the frontrunner to be Speaker, presents a new peril for conservatives


by Brendan Kirby
lifezette.com

Speaker of the House John Boehner’s critics cheered his resignation Friday. Not so much the front-runner to succeed him, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy, a California Republican, had compiled a largely conservative voting record on most issues and won high scores earlier in his career from groups opposed to less stringent immigration policies. But since ascending to the leadership, a wishy-washy moderation has crept in.

Actually, he seems a lot like Boehner. And with his famed likability and networking abilities, he may be an even more dangerous force for conservatives to contend with.

The issue of who will be speaker is of huge importance to conservatives, and not just so they can send symbolic veto-bait to the Oval Office and face off with President Barack Obama in new government shutdown battles.

A Republican may well be president in the White House within 16 months. A conservative president will need a conservative ally leading the House, and a more moderate president will require pushback from Capitol Hill. McCarthy seems to fit neither role.

On key issues — particularly immigration and trade — McCarthy is unlikely to carry the conservative banner to the satisfaction of the right.

On key issues — particularly immigration and trade — McCarthy is unlikely to carry the conservative banner to the satisfaction of the right. McCarthy has taken up the leadership’s position on immigration and other issues since joining the team in 2011, when he became whip. And unlike former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, it may be hard for conservatives to primary him out of existence.

“McCarthy is just the next member of the Bush-Koch Brothers-Karl Rove . . . dynasty,” said William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration political action committee. “We really hope some of the 70 or so members who are against amnesty … organize into a stronger caucus.”

NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration, gives McCarthy a lifetime B rating. But his marks are dropping. His score from 2013 to 2015 is a D; for the current term, it is a D-minus.

Gheen said McCarthy has served as Boehner’s “top political henchman” and has used his leadership position to help protect Obama from any negative consequences for ramming through a sweeping edict to give legal residency to millions of people who entered the United States illegally.

McCarthy and most other Republicans opposed Obama’s go-it-alone action, but critics contend the congressman and other GOP leaders have been far too accommodating to the president. Obama’s executive actions are on hold, pending a court challenge. McCarthy’s failure to support efforts to withhold funding to allow the Department of Homeland Security to carry out Obama’s order landed the congressman on ALIPAC’s “GOP Traitor List.”

Last year, he was one of 56 co-sponsors — including 24 Republicans — of the ENLIST Act, which would have allowed some illegal immigrants to gain permanent residency by joining the armed forces.

McCarthy told KBFX Eyewitness News as far back as January 2004 that his “personal belief” was “legal status that will allow you to work and pay your taxes.”

ALIPAC has McCarthy on its “Cantor List,” named for his predecessor, the former representative from Virginia, who lost a humiliating primary race last year to an unknown challenger. The organization has targeted 100 Republicans it would like to see defeated in primaries.

Primary attacks from the right sometimes knock off incumbents — see Cantor — and can deter representatives from straying too far from the views of their constituencies, which are far more conservative than the public at large in most Republican districts.

McCarthy, though, is in a different position than Cantor or Boehner. His district in the Bakersfield, California, area has a population that is about 35 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. That, combined with the fact that the Golden State in 2010 adopted an unusual electoral system, could mean that McCarthy feels more pull from the left than the right on immigration.

Rather than Republicans and Democrats picking their nominees and then squaring off in the general election, as the process works in most of the rest of the country, every congressional candidate runs in a nonpartisan, free-for-all first round in California. The top two finishers, regardless of party, face off in November. That means that conservatives have less leverage to oust an incumbent.

“The one thing that could save McCarthy’s butt is the fact that he is in California, where the election process, itself, has been so corrupted,” Gheen said.

It is not just immigration that concerns conservatives. With a large agricultural industry in his district and a chummy relationship with the state’s high-tech industry, McCarthy has been a supporter of trade deals and guest worker visas.

McCarthy voted in 2007 in favor of a free trade agreement with Peru and against a bill to provide trade adjustment assistance to American workers adversely affected by trade. He also supported a bill this year to give Obama a free hand to negotiate a free trade pact with a bloc of Asian nations. Because of that vote, Congress must either accept or reject — and cannot amend — the deal when it comes back to lawmakers.

McCarthy has argued that trade with China is good for the American economy.

McCarthy has argued that trade with China is good for the American economy.

“China’s economy is growing at a robust pace, and this presents opportunities for Californians to export more products,” he said in a campaign statement in 2005 before he headed to that country for a six-day trade mission.

Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, is a longtime McCarthy friend. Veronica O’Connell, vice president of congressional affairs at the Consumer Electronics Association, told The Hill in 2014, that McCarthy is the “go-to person” on high-tech trade issues.

McCarthy previously backed the Patriot Act and voted in 2008 against an effort to require warrants. In 2011 he supported a measure to extend the government’s ability to conduct roving wiretaps. He also voted in favor of granting retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that cooperated with the government’s warrantless surveillance, a priority of the hi-tech lobby.

This year, McCarthy supported legislation to restrict the National Security Agency’s ability to collect Americans’s cellphone data.
Chillingly, though the outgoing speaker will not have a vote for his successor, he told reporters Friday, “I think that Kevin McCarthy would make an excellent speaker.” No doubt Boehner will do all he can to interfere before he leaves the end of next month.

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/s...-the-old-boss/

William, good to see you have the opportunity to update and inform the public how McCarthy would be similar to Boehner on immigration. He would support amnesty measures.

I hope republicans support a real change and pick a speaker who would represent the interests of the American people.