CNN
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Kevin McCarthy’s big mistake was trying to govern.
The now ex-speaker’s historic ouster came only three days after he was forced to use Democratic votes to head off a damaging government shutdown that his own party’s absolutism was about to trigger. This compounded his original sin, earlier this year, of blinking when House GOP hardliners threatened to cause a disastrous default on America’s debts that could have thrown the economy into chaos and caused global panic.
McCarthy’s short speakership underscored how the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump has turned into one of the great forces of instability in American life, and potentially the world, with the ex-president dominating the 2024 GOP primary as he takes aim at a wrecking ball second term. A party that once defined conservatism as preserving a traditional sense of steadiness and strength has evolved over the last three decades into a haven for chaos agents, stunt politics and a perpetual ideological revolution that keeps driving it to new extremes. The party’s willingness to accept the outrageous was also on display Tuesday in New York, where Trump ranted in a corridor outside a courtroom hearing his fraud trial and was slapped with a gag order for attacking a judge’s clerk on social…
