Matt Latimer is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is currently a co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, and contributing editor at Politico Magazine.

For the GOP establishment, it was all going to work so perfectly this year: The historic Republican majority, led by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, would put Capitol Hill to work and roll back the President’s agenda. In the presidential race, the party would select a dull, but competent candidate—Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, or Scott Walker—to take out Hillary Clinton.

As the capital enters Columbus Day weekend, all of those hopes are in ruin. And it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.


Indeed, a sad reality is settling into Washington these days: the propensity of the Republican establishment, when given a chance, to make the worst possible decisions. What other explanation is there for their current travails in the selection of a Speaker of the House? Or their bewilderment over the same?

Fairly or not, their outgoing leader had won the enmity of nearly every Republican not on K Street. Speaker Boehner, often underrated by conservatives, wisely recognized this, saw a revolt coming, decided he had better things to do with his life, and stepped aside.

So what did a majority of Congress plan to do in response? Settle immediately on a successor who was just like him. Except more gaffe-prone and politically clueless.

After their consensus choice for speaker handed Hillary Clinton the priceless gift of seeming to confirm that the Benghazi investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt against her—PR damage that will never be repaired—a vast majority of the conference still insisted that this was the guy they needed on television during a critical election season. For no apparent reason other than he simply was next in line for the job. To a party demanding revolutionary change, they offered essentially “more of the same,” except a little bit worse. Not exactly a rallying cry.

How naïve can any group of people be? Is Congress populated by Matt Damon’s PR team? Are they moonlighting as Justin Bieber’s chaperones? Did they all serve on the OJ Simpson jury?

In a twisted way, House Majority Leader (for now) Kevin McCarthy should be a joyful man today. He’s not going to have to play the part of Dan Quayle for the next two years in Washington, D.C. Nor is he going to have to take on the thankless task of being called a phony, liar, and sellout by his colleagues, the D.C. punditry and a fed-up grassroots.

The Republican majority in the House should be gleeful by the latest turn of the events as well. But of course, they aren’t. Like kids who finally figured out their parents are getting a divorce, they are bewildered, confused and apparently prone to crying fits when things don’t go their way.

Let me repeat that: Grown men and women who are representing this nation in a time of terrorism and very real economic anxiety actually wept because Kevin McCarthy won’t lead them into another round of voter discontent, hatred and recrimination.

When our members of Congress rise up from their fainting couches, it might finally dawn on them that what’s going on now isn’t really about John Boehner or Kevin McCarthy. It’s about a much bigger problem inside the GOP—one that’s been obvious to every single person in the world, but them.

For months on end the GOP establishment has continued to ignore all the signs of its impending doom. It’s been living in a delusion—thinking that they were in charge even as all the evidence made clear that their grasp of reality was not much better than Randy Quaid’s. Sure, their supporters are mad at them. But they’ve been mad before, like when they bailed out Wall Street in 2008, while the rest of the economy tanked. It will all blow over.

But it won’t. And largely this is a problem of the establishment’s own making. Time and again, the GOP and its consultant class has overpromised to win votes and then underperformed once the votes were won. In 2014, every elected official running on the GOP ticket vowed to do all in their power to repeal Obamacare—and yet Obamacare seems here to stay. They vowed to fight a raise of the debt ceiling without spending reforms—and the debt ceiling was raised anyway. They railed against gay marriage, an issue about which they secretly care little, even when they knew the Supreme Court would rule against them—making them look bigoted, hypocritical and ineffective to boot. Leaders savaged President Obama for an Iran deal that they’ve told voters will lead to World War III—and yet brushed aside real efforts to challenge the administration on it. The Republican majority has decried Planned Parenthood, and yet rejected efforts to block federal funding for the organization. On key occasions, the Republican leadership in the House has forged majorities with Democrats against the wishes of their own conference.

Now, the blowback against Kevin McCarthy might finally—finally—wake them up to the fact there’s a tsunami forming out there in Flyover America—and it most assuredly isn’t named Jeb, no matter how many exclamation points they paste to his name.

In truth, it didn’t take M. Night Shyamalan to alert them to the signs. It’s a problem that shouldn’t even have surprised McCarthy—his fellow “Young Gun,” Rep. Eric Cantor, another rising establishment star, was tossed aside by the restless party faithful in a primary election barely a year ago.

The signs of revolt have been growing all year.

Despite the best hopes of the New York Times and pundits all over town, Donald Trump, the polar opposite of nearly anyone’s idea of a Washington politician, has been leading the GOP field for months. His Twitter feed alone, packed with hilariously wicked broadsides, has shown more energy and verve than every elected Republican in America put together. In the last 48 hours, he smacked around Glenn Beck, Marco Rubio, Kevin McCarthy, all candidates who are not him, Stuart Stevens, the media, pollsters and—ahem—this very august publication itself.

He’s gotten millions in free publicity since he announced his campaign, and now he’s apparently going to open up his sizable wallet to hammer the “zeros” and “losers” of the GOP on the airwaves. Trump has shown the confidence, imagination and creativity that Republicans, to the great dismay of the people who elected them, not only lack, but actively avoid.

And he’s not the establishment’s only problem.

Nipping at Trump’s heels is a nice enough fellow, a doctor by training, who apparently is excellent at giving heart-warming and inspiring speeches but who has never held political office, does not know what the debt limit is and has genially offended gays, Muslims and shooting victims—sometimes on the same day.

Just behind those two formidable frontrunners—yes, the FRONTRUNNERS for the Republican nomination for President of the United States—is a woman who is one hell of a debater but whose sole credential for being president so far is that she was fired from a mediocre computer company.

Together, the Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina triumvirate garners as much as 50 to 60 percent of the entire GOP primary vote. In other words, people with zero experience in governing of any kind are the preference of more than half of the people who identify as Republicans in this country.

Tossed aside by the voters almost immediately have been two successful large-state governors—Rick Perry and Scott Walker—who the smart money in Washington (if that isn’t an oxymoron by now) thought would be among the last candidates standing. And to paraphrase David Frum, Washington’s dream candidate, the aforementioned Jeb!, is in some polls barely registering at a percentage higher than low-fat milk. He’s fighting for the opinion poll scraps with John Kasich—the popular governor of a swing state— a former governor of Arkansas, and the sitting governor of New Jersey. All of them together, though, barely garner a third of the GOP polls.

Combine the presidential race with the activity on Capitol Hill and it’s clear that in the space of just a few months, the Republican Party has rejected the establishment from top to bottom.

The Republican leadership needs a total rethink, a massive shakeup. It will only unite behind a fresh face who isn’t tainted by a role in the existing leadership nor comes across as if conservatives are a nuisance to manage, rather than essential to their party’s base. And it needs leaders willing to stand up to the Democrats as much as they seem willing to stand up to their own supporters. But since that won’t possibly happen, the voters look likely to do it for them at ballot boxes in the months ahead. And it can’t happen a moment too soon.

In general election matchups, Republican candidates of all stripes are struggling to defeat Hillary Clinton. That’s particularly shocking, because right up until Kevin McCarthy let her off the ropes last week, it’d be hard to imagine Clinton having a worse year as a candidate—with Benghazi, email servers, and Clinton Foundation sketchiness swirling all year long.

In fact, it sometimes seems like the only way Hillary Clinton could sink further in the public esteem is if she became the Republican Speaker of the House. Which considering the alternatives might be the smartest move the GOP could make.