In politics, there is always a certain level of transaction that has to happen. Members within the same party, or even members of different parties, often have to barter and trade to make sure their interests are represented in any piece of policy that goes before our government. The transactional nature of politics, however, is usually in the interest of one's ideology. Or, at least, it has been until now.

The Democratic Party is a party that largely puts ideology over all else. Consider how they circle the wagons around an ally when they have to protect their numbers and how they toss another member under the bus when they are comfortable in their numbers. 

Case in point: Bob Menendez. A Democratic governor will pick a Democratic replacement if Menendez has to step down (or gets removed). There is no risk to their majority. If there, was, they would circle the wagons. They always have.

Republicans will do the same, to be sure, but there is a more transactional approach to it. It isn't about ideology for a growing number of them so much as it's a desire to keep their own support alive. "I'll support this guy if you keep voting for me" or "I'll support you and you owe me a favor."

Kevin McCarthy was the ultimate transactionalist, and he paid the price for it.

McCarthy, as I mentioned Wednesday, spent his political career building alliances, cutting deal after deal, and working his way up the career ladder. But each deal ultimately put him in a weaker position. More and more people recognized his ambition meant he would sell whatever he could for the next rung of the ladder. The problem for McCarthy is that the price got higher with each step. 

The ultimate price for Speaker? Making it easy to be stripped of the power he sought. The moment he made that deal with Matt Gaetz was the moment he doomed himself. It was all but assured that Gaetz would be the one to take him down. It wasn't a matter of if but when.

Gaetz, too, has shown himself to be transactional in ways that are detrimental to the party. He assailed McCarthy for getting Democratic support for the clean CR, while the whole time he was seeking support from Democrats to get rid of McCarthy. It wasn't about the purity of the fight. It was about accomplishing his goal.

Conservatives like Mark Levin tore into Gaetz for the shady way he went about it all.

The transactional nature of these men is based entirely on the idea there is no "team" in "I." It's about personal ambition and one's own goals rather than advancing the agenda. The people who are trying to advance the agenda in the Republican Party are being constantly undermined by the selfish.

Donald Trump is in an extremely similar situation. He is currently vowing to do whatever he needs to in order to help elect the next Speaker. The problem is that Trump endorsed Kevin McCarthy. He endorsed Paul Ryan before him. When it became clear that those men were on the way out, he abandoned them. The same is true of most of his former administration, and people whom he previously supported. He calls it a lack of loyalty on their part. He insults them, mocks them, and ignores the fact that he praised them when he hired them.

When confronted with this, his reaction is clear: It was a transaction. Choose people the Establishment wanted to be in his administration, and there would be peace between him and the Establishment that really didn't want him around. That isn't standing on principle. That's a transaction that keeps the status quo.

He also had arguably the most pro-life administration in American history, and yet he attacks the modern pro-life movement as too extreme and losing elections. When they started losing, he attacked fetal heartbeat bills and more -- because they no longer had value to him.

Being transactional should move the ideological ball down the field. Trump was able to do that in some ways, but not in several of the ways he promised to. But it's Republicans overall who have underperformed in the last three election cycles as the more selfish transactionalism has taken deeper root in the party. As a country, we can't move forward until conservative ideas take precedence over selfish ambition.