Republicans In Disarray
by Kathy Goodman
Admittedly many of us, like our chosen representatives in the House, watched last week’s dysfunctional Speaker election with our bags of popcorn close at hand. Democrats have spent much of our political lives bemoaning in-fighting in our own party, and there was some pleasure in seeing that play out across the aisle. And it is not often that one gets to see the consequences of insurrectionist ideology turned so neatly on those who condoned the insurrectionists, as the Coup Caucus, led by Scott Perry and Matt Gaetz, worked to bring the proceedings in the House to a halt. There was the spectacle of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” making clear to their Republican colleagues that having a good hit on Fox News or OAN was much more important to them than actually governing.
But the chaos of last week is also a harbinger of the disarray we can expect for the next two years. It is not just the rules changes that Kevin McCarthy agreed to which will cause continuing problems. The narrow win by the Republicans, coupled with their continued unwillingness to openly reject the Big Lie and the anti-democratic principles of their MAGA wing, means that the party will always be held hostage by its own right flank. A lot of attention has been paid to the rule change that allows any one member of the House to bring a “motion to vacate the chair” (effectively setting up a brand new election for Speaker), but in reality, the six hold-outs in McCarthy’s election as Speaker would be enough to interfere with any action the GOP wants to take in the House. For Democrats, that would normally be comforting, since it all but ensures that none of the GOP’s more extreme measures will ever be acted on. But the intransigence of the MAGA House members will likely also mean that popular proposals (e.g., relieving student debt, dealing with a broken immigration system, etc.) will not be passed through bipartisan compromise.
Further there is good reason to worry that other things that are important to the country as a whole – funding the government, lifting the debt ceiling (the failure of which would imperil economic markets throughout the world), dealing with some yet-unknown crisis – will become substantially more difficult, since a significant faction of the Republican party has made clear that they are perfectly happy to force the Congress to grind to a halt and then jump on conservative talk shows to complain about the ineffectiveness of government.
In short, it will be a bumpy ride for the next two years and, to paraphrase House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, it will be just as important for Democrats in the House “to try to find common ground wherever and whenever possible…but to never compromise our principles.”
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