A Path Forward?

by John Lawrence

When celebrating a victory during his career as a wrestling coach, a vocation he shared with former disgraced speaker Dennis Hastert, Rep. Jim Jordan was said to break into “an odd victory strut, marching in a Zombielike circle, straight-legged, arms aloft.” That is doubtless how he envisioned the members of the Republican conference marching him up to the top of the House of Representatives dais to present him with the speaker’s gavel. 

This time, however, there was no strutting as Jordan was thrice rejected by his faction-ridden colleagues. “I’m concerned about where we go from here,” said deposed speaker Kevin McCarthy, who demonstrated yet again his mediocre political skills by backing the volatile Jordan. “It’s astonishing to me.”

Neither McCarthy nor anyone else should be “astonished” by the Republicans’ capacity for undercutting their own leadership. Conservative Republican speakers since Newt Gingrich have been confronted by a growing cohort of obdurate, extremist colleagues who disdain the very institution in which they serve and who have no particular interest in performing even the most basic tasks of serving in the majority, including the timely selection of a speaker. 

For the better part of a decade, the Republican extremists steadily expanded their influence in the conference, helping the GOP win the House majority in 1994 for the first time since 1952. A decade and a half later, the emerging Tea Party yielded enough victories to oust the Democratic majority with an anti-establishment message that targeted the Republican leadership, too. As the Tea Party evolved into the Freedom Caucus, the radical tilt accelerated, receiving an enormous influx of energy (and legitimization) from the Trump victory of 2016. 

This sizable group has been more interested in obeisance to anti-government dogma than in actually governing. For years, its leaders were content to fulminate against liberal Democratic leaders like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi than formulate their own legislative agenda. In 2020, the party didn’t even bother to fashion a national platform, a first in modern history. With the departure of their favorite targets from Democratic leadership roles, the MAGA Republicans have been exposed as the disorganized nihilists they are. Moreover, many of their favorite legislative targets have become too popular to attack – when was the last concerted effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act —  leaving them to create issue out of whole cloth: Democrats favor “open borders” or Joe Biden takes money from China. 

Their lone achievement in the majority, other than swelling the deficit by $2 trillion, has been to accomplish what the January 6th insurrectionists failed to do: a prolonged shutdown of the operations of the Congress at the exact moment when American leadership is desperately needed internationally. All that is missing is the Viking helmet.

The novice legislators now announcing their candidacies for speaker would have generated guffaws a couple of weeks ago for suggesting they should be entrusted with leading The Peoples’ House. Even if one can, briefly, win the support of 217 of their colleagues to be elected speaker, none has the experience to unify what has become a woefully fractured conference let alone successfully represent the House’s position in negotiations with the Senate and White House. That failure diminishes not only the hapless Republicans but the House as an institution as well.

If the Republicans hit the stone wall yet again this week, an effort might be made to entice a few Democrats to support a supposed “moderate” or “institutional” candidate on a temporary or  permanent basis. Democrats should be very cautious about being lured into that unholy alliance. Right now, Republicans own responsibility for every failure of Congress to act. Should Democrats provide the crucial votes to elect a Republican speaker, they will share that responsibility for every decision the GOP majority makes for the next 14 months, and you can bet very few of those decisions will involve good-faith concessions to the Democratic majority. 

If Democrats want to extend a helping hand to their bumbling GOP brethren, they might consider insisting on concessions to ensure their assistance in ending the speaker nightmare is not rewarded with a hyperpartisan Republican agenda including: (1) any spending cuts beyond those already enacted must be limited to individual appropriations bills, not forced in partisan Continuing Resolutions that risk government shutdowns; (2) a guarantee that amendments chosen by Democrats will be made in order on all floor legislation; (3) a suspension of Jim Jordan’s impeachment charade until the whole House votes to initiate such an investigation (as McCarthy had promised); (4) additional seats on House committees to reflect the actual ratio of the parties in the full House.

This package of concessions to Democrats may represent a Godfather-like offer Republicans can’t accept.  Agreeing would almost certainly generate a MAGA primary challenge. Yet offering such a solution would position Democrats as being the reasonable party to the 67% of Americans who want a speaker elected quickly and demonstrate a willingness to work on a bipartisan basis if Republicans would only agree to manage the House in a fair and balanced manner. If Republicans can’t get their act together quickly and the paralysis continues, it might be an offer worth extending.