McCarthy keeps making compromises that could weaken his speakership before he’s even won it

Political leaders are generally at their strongest the moment they take office.

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is far from assured of winning sufficient support in his party to become House speaker next month. But even before the vote, his authority is already weakening by the day – in a way that could make him a speaker who is in office but not in power.

The tiny GOP House majority that takes over in January, after a disappointing midterm performance, would mean a fragile governing mandate for any party at any point in American history. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.

But the compromises that McCarthy is facing in his increasingly bitter campaign for the speakership threaten to leave him as a tool of the most radical members of his conference and could diminish his capacity to hold the job in the long term.