I always try to consider the fundamentals of the situation, but this bonkers speaker fight blows my paradigm out of the water.
Under McCarthy, the Freedom Caucus (TFC) dog wagged the Republican tail, while swing state Republicans took the heat. Because swing staters preen as moderate. But TFC’s demands grew increasingly deranged, up to the point where they basically insisted that McCarthy deliver votes that could never ever pass the Senate. McCarthy lost his procedural majority, partly due to lack of skill.
That’s ok. Because TFC isn’t about governance: it’s about keeping the small donations rolling in and TV appearances on Fox and fringier outlets. So how does the majority of the Republican Party maintain a caucus that is in perpetual public opposition to it, while still meeting the bare minimum job requirement of keeping the governmental doors open? Which most normal people want.
I thought they had worked out a plan yesterday. Give the temporary speaker rotating time-limited powers (15 days?) to get the must-done things done. Meanwhile, Jordan remains the Speaker designee, which allows him to call the shots from the rear. Josh Marshall:
Jordan didn’t come up with this idea. Others did and they’ve been begging them to take it for at least 48 hours. But it’s a very smart move for Jordan (which is itself pretty stunning and raises its own questions). It accomplishes several key things. 1) He gets to stop embarrassing himself by holding vote after vote and losing more votes each time. 2) He gets to say he never lost. It’s just a delay. 3) It blocks everyone else out. What wraps one, two and three together is 4) He remains Speaker designee. The GOP caucus voted for its choice for Speaker and that guy is Jim Jordan. There’s not going to be another caucus Speaker election, at least not until January and for Jordan hopefully never. In this alternative reality, Jordan was chosen to be Speaker. It’s done. They just haven’t had the election on the floor to finalize it. In a basic sense he already is Speaker. He’s been running the caucus since late last week. He’s choosing when there’s going to be a vote or not going to be a vote.
Internationally, it’s not unusual for parliamentary coalitions to fall apart. Nor are backroom deals unusual: this is part of the block and tackle of politics. Yesterday’s plan gave every part of the Jordan coalition and its intra-party opponents something: it gave all of them their big asks. It blew up within 90 minutes. Sure, there are reasons. But man, that really challenges my central model.
GOP House leaders aren’t especially talented are they?
The thing is, they could make a deal easy peasy lemon squeezy, except for one small thing: they refuse to include any Democrats in the deal. They’re making it stressed depressed lemon zest for themselves. If they decide at any point to make an across-the-aisle deal, whatever small group of Republicans who make that decision will be kingmakers and have a deal within the day.
This intransigence and refusal to consider bipartisanship is a ridiculous misunderstanding of how a republic works.
I’m delighted that Jordan is out. But aside from the potential salvation of democracy from extremist Republican nutjobs, I just want to note the historic fact that CNN is featuring a picture of Jim “The Shirt” Jordan actually wearing a suit jacket! This is unprecedented! I didn’t even think he owned such an item of apparel. He must be in mourning.
Not that I will shed a tear for him, but imagine what losing like this has to do a person’s ego. It’s one thing to lose an election. Sometimes people just like the other guy more. But to know that your own party prefers (no one) over you, must be a real blow. If he weren’t such a sack of shit, I might be tempted to feel sorry for him.
More precisely, a criminally unethical lying sack of shit who threatens legislators that don’t support him, and threatens – with baseless accusations and frivolously harassing demands for documents – prosecutors going after Trump in the hope of ingratiating himself with the Orange Shitstain. Honestly, “sack of shit” is too kind a term.
These guys must have House of Cards level of ambition. He wasn’t content to be a committee chair and have no real responsibilities? I guess everything is a step to the next move, and we should really be thankful that he went down in flames.
The deal I sketched didn’t require any Democratic input. It gave all parts of the GOP House their big asks. But it collapsed anyway. This is the sort of thing you work out before the big behind-doors GOP meeting.
I generally trust politicians to usually have a grasp of their district. Most voters like bipartisanship, but that won’t get you through the GOP primary. Even in swing districts. Instant runoff voting could partly address this problem by empowering moderates in the primary, but that’s a rarity in the US.
Or we could do away with the primary system, where a minority of voters get to pick who is on the ballot in the real election. That won’t happen.
A refusal to consider bipartisanship is a feature of most Parliamentary systems worldwide. The glue that holds the US system together is norms and the received preferences of the founding fathers, not constitutional features. Norms have been under GOP attack over the last 15-30 years. So here we are: they eat their own.
ETA: Agree with LoHD 2 posts down about the 100 Republican joint letter. No guarantees but I can imagine that working. When politics gets tough, blue ribbon commissions (or something like them) can smooth the way. It’s a big ask though.
I think his actions are based on something more fundamental than that: Has the statute of limitations run out for being charged as a co-conspirator in a superseding indictment for election interference in 2020? I believe Jordan was one who asked for a pardon.
Just idle speculation and I don’t wish to derail this thread with a discussion about it here. But it is a piece of the puzzle, IMHO.
If one or two engage in bipartisanship, the primary becomes a big threat. If twenty or thirty reach across the aisle, it starts to look like a non-treacherous thing to do. And if a hundred Republicans put out a joint statement saying that the country needs them to step up and govern for everyone? I think it might fundamentally change the political culture, in a way that could marginalize the crazies.
A cult has a much easier time focusing on individual apostates than on a mass exodus. I’m not convinced that a hundred representatives could be effectively primaried by the crazies.
Even if so, I think the consequences would be too great for them to actually vote for Jeffries. At a minimum, they’d certainly lose the next election. And there would be legitimate concern about angry constituents trying to cause harm to any Republican which voted for Jeffries.
I dunno for sure, but if a hundred Republicans jointly declared that the nation needed bipartisanship and made it a key feature of their reelection, it might upset the applecart.
I understand that it’s unprecedented that the minority party should hold the speakership. But it’s also unprecedented that the majority party is utterly incapable of electing one of their own.
We could get this truck rolling again, you know, for the good of the country and our allies if only the Republicans prioritized that.
