Days Without a Speaker: 20
There comes a point when repeated jokes cease to be funny and just become pathetic. We are at that point with the vacant speakership in the House. At first, it was funny. Now, I just shake my head. I’d like to feel sorry for the Republicans, but the mess is one of their own making. I and many others warned them about the direction of the party for years, and we were mocked and scorned for our trouble.
The latest news as of this writing is that Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican and the House’s majority whip, is the frontrunner for the position. CNN reports that Emmer won the nomination over the objections of 26 Republican congressmen, but the Trump team is whipping up opposition to Emmer. By the time you read this, Emmer’s candidacy may have gone down in flames.
What is Emmer’s big sin? The word on the hill is that at least 10 Republicans opposed Emmer because he voted to certify the 2020 election and supports aid to Ukraine. Apparently, election integrity and aiding allies who are fighting off Russian aggression make him a moderate in the New GOP.
The far right isn’t the only faction attacking Emmer. From the other end of the spectrum, opponents are citing Emmer’s support for the Texas lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results and a host of policy positions, including opposing a cancer treatment bill 12 years ago as a lobbyist.
A “‘moderate’ Republican he is not,” one opponent wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding “Those don’t exist anymore.”
Maybe not, but Emmer’s opponents to the center and left should consider that, of the seven Republicans currently vying for the Speaker job, only two voted to certify the election. One is Emmer and the other is Georgia Republican Austin Scott. Moderates are where you find them and if Emmer gets shot down, the odds are good that whoever eventually gets the job will be worse.
I’m sure it’s tempting for Democrats to just sit back, munch popcorn, and enjoy the show as the GOP melts down, but at this point, it’s in their interest to play the kingmaker and help the least-worst Republican candidate crawl across the finish line. I think some Democrats would be willing to meet in the middle; the question is whether any Republicans are interested in their help. After Matt Gaetz’s kamikaze caucus killed Kevin McCarthy’s speakership over using Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown, there hasn’t seemed to be much of an appetite for bipartisanship from the GOP.
Lack of bipartisanship is a big part of the Speaker crisis, but so is Republican division. It’s really the combination of the two that has paralyzed Congress.
The situation reminds me of Rhett Butler’s criticism of Ashley Wilkes in “Gone With the Wind,” as a man “who can’t be mentally faithful to his wife and won’t be unfaithful to her technically.”
The Republican Party as an organization can’t bring itself to fully commit itself to Trump and MAGA, but it also can’t bring itself to walk out of the marriage. The result is a rocky, dysfunctional relationship in which the party collectively stalks off and slams the door and then returns to fling itself at its once and future standard bearer.
If we break it down even further, we see that there are about 10 to 20 Republicans at each end of the spectrum. One wing wants a moderate and the other wants a bomb thrower. The vast majority of Republicans in the middle of the caucus are happy to bend with the wind in either direction and plaintively channel Rodney King’s “Can’t we all just get along?” plea.
The problem here is that one side doesn’t want to get along. One side wants to hold its breath until it gets its way or it will take its ball and go home.
For the kamikaze caucus, there is no incentive to make a deal. They want chaos. If they get their choice of speaker, they’ll likely push for a hardline on the next shutdown talks because they think that a shutdown fight will energize their base and help them in next year’s elections.
The situation plays right into their hands because, with no Speaker, there can be no deal to avert the shutdown. For them, not having a Speaker is almost as good as having their own choice of Speaker.
In my years as a Republican, I encountered lots of people for whom a government shutdown was a feature not a bug of the fiscal battles. If you go into Republican social media circles, you’ll see the refrain “SHUT IT DOWN” repeated quite a lot. A lot of these people don’t want a partial temporary government shutdown, they want a permanent shutdown of every part of government they oppose The parts that they would have stay open are a short list that does not extend much beyond the military, Customs and Border Protection, and Social Security.
A prominent example these days is disgraced “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, who posted a series of thoughts on the platform formerly known as Twitter questioning whether not having a Speaker was actually a bad thing.
For example, on October 23, Adams posted, “Since removing the Speaker, Congress has not given away any of my money to people I don’t want to have it. It’s progress. Let’s keep it going.”
I cite this because it’s representative of the wingnut thinking that is ruling a large part of the GOP. They prefer a government that can’t do anything to one that will do anything they oppose.
This faction would call the Reagans “RINOs” today, but they have embraced former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug mantra of “Just Say No.” In fact, Republicans seem to have lost the ability to say “yes” to anything.
The Republican Party became the “party of no” during the Obama Administration for its default position of opposing pretty much anything Obama proposed. More than a few Republicans relished this image and embraced it.
Sometimes saying “no” is appropriate and good, but government can’t work if the answer is always “no.” Republicans have known this all along and for more than a few, like Scott Adams, this is a goal in and of itself.
But now Republicans have lost even the ability to say “yes” to themselves. The party is a caricature in which the members can’t even agree to take the lead.
For Republicans, there is now an existential question: “Why do we deserve to be the majority party if we are unable to conduct even the simplest business of government when we are in charge?”
Some, like Scott Adams, will be happy with the gridlock. Those few, those happy few are already Republicans, however. But they aren’t even a majority of Republicans.
Incompetence at governing is a bug not a feature for the vast majority of voters, even those who consider themselves Republicans. Not being able to accomplish anything other than saying “no” might keep the Republican base in line but it’s hardly likely to win over the swing voters that Republicans will need in 2024.
And Scott Adams might have been right two weeks ago when he alleged that it was hard to provide an example of how not having a Speaker affected anything, but it keeps getting harder to make that argument with another government shutdown looming, while Ukrainians die as Congress dithers, and as the crisis in the Middle East grows. The Republican fringe might be happy with the situation but two-thirds of the country, including 57 percent of Republicans, believe that Congress needs to act quickly and get its shit together do its job.
The one bright side is that when this is all over, the Republican fringe may find that it has overplayed its hand. Most voters don’t like the hyper-partisanship and if Gaetz & Co. dig in their heels for too long, they may find that their ability to veto the majority of the House disappears as a more moderate, bipartisan coalition emerges.
Democrats are in record as willing to work with moderate republicans and have even put forward terms in several media outlets. Republicans will not accept the olive branch. Thus Demi rats can’t save republicans from themselves.
And the Burn It All Down caucus is getting exactly what it wants.Report
See? It’s a good play!!! Offer to help! EZ Terms! We’re not even asking for that much!!!Report
The latest majority party nominee for Speaker is the embodiment of the current iteration of the Republican party.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1717013355775545630?s=20Report
Election denialism in a slicker not Jim Jordan package. I’m hopeful the moderates that sank Jordan will sink this guy too.Report
Yep, sounds right. 95% want to get back to business as usual. 5% are screaming that “business as usual” was toxic and bad and not why we were elected.Report
I don’t want to defend Adams in general, and I likely don’t agree with him on the particulars of aid to Ukraine and Israel, but I find his statement here defensible. A basic conservative principle is “first do no harm”. I want a government that does what it should and doesn’t do what it shouldn’t. The past few weeks have been that. I’m not saying I trust the GOP to pull it together, but there really isn’t anything that they’ve failed to do except for the things they never do.Report
BY failing to have leadership, they have failed in their Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 responsibilities to appropriate funds so the Executive Branch can fulfill its Article 2 Section 3 responsibilities to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress and signed by prior Administrations. That they routinely fail to do this by their own self-imposed fiscal year deadline doesn’t relieve them of the obligation.Report
Thank you for agreeing with me.Report
At this point it is clear that the House GOP won’t put someone forward unless they are fanatically right-wing and also an election denier. Emmer is very conservative but he voted for the Respect for Marriage Act and to certify the 2020 election. This made him a pariah. He also had a tweet or two sympathetic to George Floyd.
Johnson is a right-wing lawyer who denies the 2020 election, worked for “alliance defending freedom”, and is Putin’s pet on the Ukraine. He is however less openly antagonistic than Gaetz or Jordon. I don’t know if it is enough to save him but it is sort of what the House GOP speaker needs to be.
I don’t think there is anything that Jeffries can offer to Republicans in Biden districts to bring them over to his side. They are mainly concerned about being primaried from the right and figure in 2024, they can be mealy mouthed enough about abortion but loud enough about “crime” to win a general. He can’t state Democrats won’t run against them in a general in 2024.
I think the idea of corporatish 1990s style “moderates” that keep quiet on social issues saving the day is deader than a doornail. It would have happened already and the most moderate Republicans are still far to the right of the most conservative Democrats in the House.Report
What’s left of the moderates is the faction that keeps sinking the far right nominees in floor votes. But I generally agree, they will not ross the aisle no matter what is offered to them.Report
Crossing the aisle means crossing Fox News and the rest of the psychotic conservative media establishment. The GOP is a brand not a political party.Report
Especially after what Ross did to RachelReport
“At this point it is clear that the House GOP won’t put someone forward unless they are fanatically right-wing and also an election denier.”
There are too few data points to assert this. You can’t treat Emmer-to-Johnson as a trend line.Report
We have 4 data points. Actually 5 if you count McCarthy.Report
Three if you count people the House actually voted on.Report
Well thanks to the Burn it All Down Caucus we didn’t get to see public votes on the others. Point being we have a trend.Report
There have been three. The first and third got shot down by the Gaetz faction, the middle one was supported by them. That’s not enough for Saul to make his diagnosis.Report
Looks like Mike Johnson of Louisiana has won the election, as the Burn It All Down Caucus actually voted for him.
Now we will see what price he paid for the “honor.”Report
I just hope that he’s more preferable than anybody else who has run in the last month.
Back to business as usual!Report
He’s clearly more preferable to the GOPReport
True enough. I’m hoping that he’s the best that the Democrats could have asked for, given the other 20 people who ran for the job.Report
The Democrats left money on the table, so whatever else it’s not an optimal win for them.Report
Curious? Could you expand on that? You surely can’t mean they missed out by not bailing out McCarthy do you? So what did they leave on the table?Report
I’m not clear what was on offer from the Republicans in exchange for support. Price shouldn’t have been exorbitant but there are no freebies in politics.Report
Pinky’s MO is that Democrats should shut up and do as told.Report
They were never told to do anything except vote for Jeffries – the GOP if it told them anything told them to keep out.Report
I’ve made several comments on this over the past weeks about how a bargain could have been made. In fact, you agreed with my last comment on this subject, on the “So, Now What House GOP?” sidebar. Instead, though, the Democrats in the House shut up and did as told, so to speak.Report
There was no offer of a bargain by the GOP and every suggestion by Democrats was rebuffed by the GOP. Whom do you think the Democrats would have bargained with?Report
Murc’s law is a well-known rule: only Democrats have agency.Report
My read is they were reaching out and trying to cut a deal of some sort- then, abruptly, something aligned within the GOP and Mike Johnson was very abruptly voted in. I wouldn’t describe that so much as leaving money on the table as much as simply getting blind sided. Extracting some kind of concession for support was always going to be a dicey play, looks like the clock very suddenly ran out.
I’m uncertain whether Johnson is better than his predecessor, a known backstabbing and deal breaking McCarthy, or if he’s worse. Probably negotiations on the budget will tell us more.Report
Johnson got the votes for the following reasons:
1. The murder of Emmer by TFG made it clear that no one who voted to certify the election would survive;
2. Johnson is just as far to the right as the FreeDumb Caucus but he is not openly antagonistic to his own side like Jordan and Gaetz;
3. There aren’t any real moderates left in the GOP and they all knew that any deal with Democrats meant a primary from the right and they don’t really want to work with Democrats anyway. Bacon is at least somewhat aware that Democrats actually control the Senate and WH and compromise is necessary to get anything doneReport
I believe this may have been the key to his election. In his acceptance speech he mentioned Israel several times but Ukraine not once. He threw the usual border hand grenades, and he said we had to get spending under control. He’s Trump’s guy but without LOOKING like Trump’s guy.Report
He is an election denier. He is clearly Trump’s guyReport
So, Saul, is your read then that Dems would have been better served had they abstained enough to preserve McCarthy’s speakership?
I’m on the fence myself. Johnson ain’t pretty but it remains to be seen how he does business as Speaker.Report
I don’t know if anyone can do business as Speaker, at least until January 2025.Report
Yeah we’ll soon see. Does a new Speaker mean a new set of rules or will the GOP still have that idiotic “one vote to vacate” rule?Report
My position is that Democrats are not under any responsibility to take it on the chin and save Republicans.Report
It’s like the Gaetz faction got together and said “How can we prove Chip was right to say ‘There is no such thing as a moderate Republican’ and hand the Biden camp an ammo dump of oppo research?”
Election denier? Check
Putin stooge? Check
Hates queer people? Check
Long history of Handmaids Tale quotes? Check
Creepy covenant marriage? CheckReport
You and I both agree about that Saul; we’re both liberals. McCarthy richly DESERVED to be bounced. I am speaking strictly on a strategic/tactical sense.
McCarthy was treacherous and two faced. He might have felt some gratitude or felt pulled to the center more by being bailed out by the Dems, or maybe he’d have doubled down on the treachery and McCarthyisms to compensate.
But now we have Johnson. Is that replacement better/worse? I honestly don’t know.Report
From a policy perspective it’s a wash. McCarthy would not oppose any of Johnson’s stated priorities.Report
Yes that could be, in which case the mud on the GOP’s faces and punishing McCarthy makes it worth it.
We’ll have to see if Johnson actually will bring things to votes.Report
Democrats are being accused by the media already of putting party above country because Murc’s Law is a hell of a drug. If they caved and voted for Emmer or kept McCarthy, it would have been “typical spineless Democrats.”Report
I didn’t ask you, Saul, what our BSDI media would say. I wanted your personal strategeric opinion.Report
I think voting to boot McCarthy was probably the correct thing to do from a norms and tactical decision. The Democrats are the opposition party in the House. They are not the save Republicans from their own issues party. If this were a Parliamentary system, no one would bat an eye if all the Democrats voted no on a vote of confidence.
From a tactical prospective, I think the public needs to learn how extreme and dysfunctional the GOP is.Report
Thank you, I don’t disagree. Time will tell.Report
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8713640dad824186d2cd15394cce204a3bd0355266510e1dc1e8bb27a89efd8.png
The Republican Party and its supporters on how to win friends and influence people. Note that the description of Harris is not safe for work.Report
Disgusting description of Kamala Harris. She did, however, date a man 30 years her senior who appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Medial Assistance Commission. So, less debasing terms for prostitution are likely appropriate.Report
Yeah I encourage Republicans to run with this.Report
Stay classy, Pinky.Report