In service of reason

Warning: This commentary comes from one who has come to abhor the two major American political parties— the Republicans more, of course, but the Democrats aplenty. He believes these parties are counterproductive to the national interest as now constituted and performing.

It turns out there were extended discussions between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats before Kevin McCarthy got booted as speaker of the House.

The Washington Post has described what happened. The account provides a classic example of the often-insurmountable institutional obstacles to agreement even among those personally so-inclined.

The challenges of bipartisan compromise are made clear in the account. They are resentment of the tactics of the other party and fear of repercussion within one’s own party.

These discussions took place in the well-intended House Problem Solvers Caucus, currently a group of 64 members evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats.

The group, in existence since 2017, is an outgrowth of the No Labels movement that seeks practical solutions that can break through partisan polarization. The point is to forge reasonable policies that meet the desires of a great swath of American voters, and in turn exert leverage over the left and right.

As reported by The Post, Republicans in the group wanted the Democrats to join them in heading off the dysfunction about to occur with McCarthy ousted without any promise of a sane or functioning solution after that.

What the Republicans wanted the Democrats to do was vote with them to keep McCarthy because he was in trouble for doing the right thing—the very thing Problem Solvers stands for. He had defied kook-right elements of the GOP House caucus and proposed a reasonable stopgap measure to keep government open that Democrats could, and did, support.

The Democrats, even these devoted to bipartisanship pragmatism and to competent functioning, said they simply could not do it.

They asked: Had their Republican friends not seen McCarthy the day before on “Face the Nation?” He had said the problem that tied his hands was that Democrats would otherwise have shut the government down.

It was such nonsense it made the “Face the Nation” host laugh.

The fault was entirely within McCarthy’s caucus. A half-dozen flame-throwers on the kook-right could not be reasoned with. Their objectives are attention and disruption.

The Republicans in the Problem Solvers group replied that surely the Democrats understood the hollow partisan rhetoric in which all politicians sometimes engage. One must feed the partisan base.

They pointed out that centrist Democrats were perfectly positioned to put their votes where their mouths had been, saving a functioning House and nullifying the kooks on the right.

But the participating Democrats had also been in their own caucus earlier and voted with everyone else not to save McCarthy. Hollow partisan rhetoric was one thing. A career grounded like McCarthy’s in breathtaking shamelessness was another.

These centrist Democrats believed like the liberals that McCarthy was unforgivably two-faced—or threefaced or four-faced—and not worthy of their trust. They said they could not rely on anything he might agree to in negotiations.

The centrist Republicans said it was no time to act based on hurt feelings. They said the issue was the dangerously uncharted landscape to be left after McCarthy’s departure. Did the Democrats want wild man Jim Jordan as speaker?

The Democrats replied that Jim Jordan could not get the votes if all Democrats voted against him, as they would, and all 32 House members of the Problem Solvers did as well. And that’s true math.

So, the Problem Solvers failed. When you get down to it, it was because of those usual toxins—resentment of the other and fear of one’s own.

It remains possible mathematically and logically—if not politically—for the Republicans in the Problem Solvers to select one of their more esteemed moderates and run him for speaker and for Democrats to support that nominee.

They would do so on the basis that such a solution would neuter the extreme right and assure responsible leadership that would avoid debilitative folderol on keeping the government open and leading the enlightened world in vital aid to Ukraine.

We could not get any right-wing or left-wing policies done. Thank goodness. All those do is rile us.

What I like about that solution is that it would put the center in charge.

Ideally, there would be enough centrist Republicans voting with Democrats to elect the moderate Republican speaker without votes from some on the Democratic left. That way, the new speaker would not have to seek GOP renomination back home amid taunts that he is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s personal speaker.

A new ruling majority of all Democrats and the most center-leaning Republicans could repeal the inane rule allowing one person to call for vacating the speakership.

That is the very point—to empower reason in Congress in service to the reason still to be found in several of the people.