Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy at his weekly press conference, December 3, 2020
As I write, midday on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, Mexican President López Obrador, and even Mitch McConnell have each finally acknowledged that Joe Biden is America’s president-elect. As yet, though, we have heard nothing from Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, or, as Donald Trump calls him, “My Kevin.”
Last week, My Kevin clarified whatever ambiguity his title may have suggested by signing on to an amicus brief that 126 Republican House members submitted to the Supreme Court in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s suit to have the Court overturn the election. (Paxton claimed that the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were illegitimate because, among other things, the states had followed court orders in conducting their elections—a curious case, to put it mildly, to bring before the Supreme Court, not least because states that Donald Trump carried had also been subjected to such court orders. Paxton also claimed that the odds of the final count deviating from the first count of same-day voters were “quadrillion to one,” though the odds that a majority of the signatory Republican House members could tell you how many zeroes were in a quadrillion were themselves a quadrillion to one.)
Back to My Kevin’s decision to support Paxton’s challenge. What it meant was that being “My Kevin” precluded any other allegiances or identities that McCarthy may once have held. In signing on to the brief, McCarthy made clear that the “My” in his name signaled exclusivity, that he is wholly Trump’s to do with as he pleases, that faithfulness to the Constitution or, more generally, the rule of law or, still more generally, the basic ideas of democracy (majority rule, equality before the law—that sort of thing) were not secondary beliefs that McCarthy furtively holds but were actually antithetical to his one and only allegiance.
Does freeing McCarthy from this possession require an exorcism? Does the relationship between Trump and My Kevin violate the terms of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution (the one that abolished slavery)? That’s a case I’d like the Supreme Court to hear. I’d sign an amicus brief in an instant.
