Donald Trump waffled for a bit in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s triple failure to win the House speakership on Tuesday, but he ultimately urged Republicans to support McCarthy’s bid. I don’t think it will be persuasive to enough holdouts to get the California glad-hander his dream job.
The question then becomes who is an alternative. You’ll see pundits on your teevee offer up some names, commonly Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, and even Elise Stefanik of New York, but none of those lawmakers are likely to become the Speaker. For Scalise, the problem is that he’s been part of McCarthy’s leadership team for several years and so he has made some of the same enemies. McHenry is much more interested in serving as the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, although he might be able to bridge the ideological gap within the caucus. Stefanik just doesn’t seem to have a broad base of support and trust.
One thing to keep in mind is that McCarthy has made some concessions that the moderate wing opposes and thinks are unwise. The moderates aren’t going to automatically stomach all these compromises in an alternative candidate not named McCarthy.
I’ve already seen moderates Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Don Bacon Jr. of Nebraska on television Wednesday morning saying flatly that a deal will have to made for a bipartisan caucus with the Democrats if the Republicans cannot agree soon on a Speaker. This is undoubtedly part of their pressure campaign on the 20 McCarthy holdouts, but if you listen to their reasoning it’s also quite clear that they’re serious.
Fitzpatrick sits on the Intelligence Committee, overseeing our sprawling intelligence community, and the committee cannot meet until a Speaker is in place. He doesn’t see that at a sustainable situation, and given what’s going on in Ukraine, Iran, Taiwan and North Korea, I think that’s a sane assessment.
The national security argument is very persuasive. This isn’t 1855 when it took months to select a Speaker. We live in a nuclear age.
As I’ve mentioned before, the next Speaker will have to raise the debt ceiling, make a deal with the Biden administration and Senate on a spending bill for the next fiscal year, and approve more support for Ukraine’s military. There are nowhere near enough votes to do any of those things will solely House Republican votes, and if the Speaker is subject to an easy motion to vacate the chair, they will need Democratic votes to hold their position.
What this means is that the functional majority in the House will be bipartisan. No Speaker can hope to stay in place as the leader of a solely Republican caucus. This is basically clear from the problems in getting the GOP to select a Speaker in the first place, but events will make it impossible moving forward, too.
For this reason, we will probably get to a bipartisan caucus eventually, and the real question is whether we’ll first have to see a Speaker crash and burn. I don’t think there is an actual Republican majority to default on our debts or cut off aid to Ukraine, but even if there is, there is certainly no majority in the whole of the House or among the American public.
The best solution now is to get ahead of these problems by starting out with a bipartisan caucus, but we might not be so lucky. There is still a very powerful resistance to the idea within the Republican caucus and certainly among their donors, base of supporters, and propaganda networks. These are very powerful forces that are clashing, but the most powerful is the need to have a creditworthy and functional government. It will win out in the end.
I’m told there are 18 House Republicans representing districts that voted for Biden in 2020. Is that where we should look for a critical mass of the (formal or informal) bipartisan governing majority?
After six failed Speaker votes in a row, there’s an old saying that is apt: “the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Something is definitely going to have to give (whether formally or informally) to cobble together a governing majority. McCarthy is highly unlikely to get the Speaker’s gavel after this series of embarrassments. Who would be viable – and sane – as a replacement remains to be seen. In the meantime, we are witnessing the consequences of embracing the most extreme elements of US politics since at least the beginnings of the Tea Party era. The GOP establishment of the time decided to f*** around. They are now in the “find out phase”. Some mild entertainment value aside, this does the country no good.
>>this does the country no good.
I would argue that having this go on does the country less “no good” than having a Republican leadership carrying out McCarthy’s agenda, which would be to annoy the Administration and showboat for the QAnon faction.
In the short term, I think we’re probably both in agreement. We’re a few months away from must-pass legislation necessary to keep the proverbial lights on. I also think we agree that whatever McCarthy has agreed to as an agenda is very toxic, and it’s a good thing McCarthy is probably toast at this point (I could be wrong). The GOP establishment created this mess a long time ago, and it’s up to the GOP caucus to continue its circular firing squad. There are some questions about how Congressional Districts handle the routine matters that their constituents take for granted. What Martin is suggesting seems to me to be the best of the bad options, by far. Ideally that happens sooner rather than later, and with anyone involved in a governing coalition saying, “Kevin McCarthy, who? Never heard of the guy.” In the meantime, we’re witnessing history. Maybe this is the moment the GOP began to implode. I have plenty of immediate and extended family who would love to see that (that includes me).
A bipartisan governing coalition in the House all but destroys the Republican Party outright. Those Republicans who join will never again side with those who don’t. They cannot and will not function as a unified party at a national convention in 2024. This crack, right here, splits them in two for a good long while.
It seems to me that the parties are returning to the 1896-1932 alignment, but with the parties having traded constituencies. Right wing populism will need to entertain more left wing ideas to complete the urban establishment vs. rural crusader dynamic of the first progressive era. If all those “moderate” country club Republicans start voting with the Democrats, then the Democrats are headed back to the right on economic policy, which will leave an opening for the populists to reorganize as anti-corporatists and anti-monopolists. I can see all this coming. I just don’t know if the Republican brand will survive the treachery they have committed against the country.