Get Ready for the House of Debacle

There is a way to avoid two years of dysfunction, but it almost certainly will not be pursued

As a former aide to Speakers Boehner and Ryan discusses in the New York Times today, if Republicans in the House fail to ban together to elect Kevin McCarthy tomorrow, it will signify an historic level of dysfunction within the majority party, with even worse results to come.

McCarthy was selected to be Speaker by a 188-31 vote by House Republican Conference, but 5 Republicans have indicated they will not vote for him under any circumstances and 9 others have expressed strong reservations. With 434 members set to be sworn in tomorrow, McCarthy will need 218 of the 222 newly elected Republican members to vote for him. After weeks of negotiations and many major concessions by McCarthy to holdouts, many of which will weaken his powers as Speaker, he still lacks the votes with less than 24 hours left before the new Congress convenes.

It is significant that this episode is not driven by ideology. McCarthy has no strong policy views and there is no issue on which he is unwilling to compromise. Rather, the McCarthy dissenters distinguish themselves by the amount of havoc and disruption they are willing to inflict on the country to achieve their ends. This clique wants maximum chaos. A government shut-down for months? Sure, who cares? Risk a global economic meltdown by failing to raise the debt limit? Sure, why not. Impeach the President, Vice-President and half the Cabinet – absolutely. 

On policy, the clique is deeply conservative, but again, they distinguish themselves from other conservatives in that their views are inspired more by negative partisanship – that it, opposing anything that Biden and the Democrats favor – than they are by substance. For example, they don’t look at the war in Ukraine as a crucial conflict between democracy and imperialist authoritarianism. Rather, they are reflexively opposing U.S. funding to support Ukraine because President Biden is receiving praise for his handling of the war and the issue unifies Democrats and establishment Republicans (who the clique despises as much or more than the Democrats).

For these reasons, I do not think that McCarthy is going to get elected Speaker, even if he caves to every demand. This dispute is not really about McCarthy at all, but rather the clique’s quest for power. A scalp on the wall is what the clique wants, not because they care about McCarthy, but because it would show they intend to assert power, no matter what level of destruction is caused. And once they demonstrate that they can assert this power by nixing their own party’s choice for Speaker, they will be able to continue to do so in a myriad of ways throughout this session of Congress. We will surely have a House of Debacle.

There is a way out of this mess, but the odds of it occurring are slim.

If the House majority cannot coalesce around a single candidate and elect a Speaker, a coalition of Republican moderates and conservative institutionalists in the House have options that the clique does not. After all, there is no way the clique can elect one of their own. But the coalition I describe could turn to House Democrats for aid in electing a Speaker.

Of course, this would not lead to the election of Hakeem Jeffries – the new Democratic leader. 

But I suggest that it would still be in Democrats’ interest to help elect a Republican Speaker that believes in at least a modicum of bipartisanship and is not beholden to the demands of the clique. The price for these Democratic votes, I believe, should be an agreement to bring any bill that passes the Senate with 60 votes to the House floor for a vote. Republican equities would be protected by the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, but Democrats would at least gain the ability to get bipartisan legislation passed, such as the annual spending bills and legislation to raise the debt limit. Remember, with a Speaker beholden to the clique, these bills will never make it to the floor of the House for a vote. Under my proposal, the bills do get to the floor and could be passed by Democrats and a handful of Republican moderates. This is about the best Democrats can hope to do in the next two years of the Biden Administration with divided control of the Congress.  Presiding over an economy rocked by government closures and a debt-limit showdown will also be a tough platform for Biden’s reelection bid.

(Democrats could demand other things, like a 3/5th threshold for the initiation of impeachment proceedings, but bringing bipartisan legislation to the House floor has to be the number one priority.)

I don’t know enough about House Republicans to figure out who would be a possible Speaker under this arrangement. But here are some thoughts:

The search for an institutionalist would have to begin with the 65 House Republicans that voted to certify the election of Joe Biden in January 2021. Eleven of them retired voluntarily or were defeated for reelection. Of the remaining 54, only two Republicans voted for the recent legislation that funded government agencies for the current fiscal year, Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa. 1st) and Steve Womack (Ark. 3rd). Fitzpatrick is too moderate for his caucus’ tastes with a 39% rating from the Heritage Foundation. Womack is pro-life and has an 85% Heritage rating. But he is a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, which is about the only part of Congress that still functions effectively in the era of hyper-partisanship. He strongly supports U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, and has served in the House leadership under Paul Ryan. It’s a bit disappointing that he didn’t vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but he seems willing to cross-party lines and appears to care about Congress as an institution. 

Rep. Womack, congrats, you are my candidate for Speaker of the House.