Who needs the circus when there are House Republicans?
For the second time this year, Republicans will choose a House speaker. Their best hope is to complete the voting process in less time than the four-day, 15round clown show that ended only after Representative Kevin McCarthy of California handed matches to his party’s arsonists in exchange for their votes. Nine months later, he watched his political dreams go up in smoke.
More than a week after McCarthy’s historic ouster — and a House paralyzed by the absence of a speaker amid internecine GOP feuds — electing his replacement was shaping up to be an unwanted sequel to January’s circus. Republicans voted Wednesday for Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana as their nominee over Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who leads the judiciary committee. But Scalise, the House majority leader, struggled to get enough votes to seal the deal because if there’s one thing at which these House Republicans excel, it’s complete chaos.
Still backing Jordan, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she wouldn’t vote for Scalise because he’s undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma. “I like him so much that I want to see him defeat cancer more than sacrifice his health in the most difficult position in Congress,” she posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Before anyone starts praising Greene’s uncharacteristic show of compassion, she also wants a speaker who will cut off all aid for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war, allocate “no money to COVID anything,” and deprive trans kids of gender-affirming care.
Republican Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina is also siding with Jordan. She told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she won’t back Scalise because “I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” a former KKK grand wizard. In 2002, Scalise went to a Duke-organized white supremacist event and referred to himself as Duke “without the baggage.”
Of course, that didn’t stop Mace from touting Scalise’s endorsement when she first ran for Congress in 2020. Then again, this is a woman well versed in the peculiar art of the self-own. Claiming she felt “demonized” by her colleagues after voting to kick McCarthy to the curb, Mace recently wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with a big red “A” on Capitol Hill.
But in one of the most Republican things ever, if Mace had actually read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic “The Scarlet Letter,” instead of appropriating it for political purposes, she’d have know that the “A” stands for “adultery.” That’s probably not the message Mace was trying to convey.
Meanwhile, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, and the rest of the House Democrats are doing exactly what they should be doing — sitting back and letting their GOP counterparts tear themselves apart.
But don’t think Democrats — or anyone else — should be reveling in the mess that Republicans alone have created. Their inability or, for some of the more recalcitrant members, unwillingness to get their House in order could not come at a more consequential moment. A temporary funding bill that delayed a government shutdown in September (and ultimately cost McCarthy his job) will expire on Nov. 17. There are pressing decisions on military aid for Israel’s war in Gaza against
Hamas, not to mention addressing an ugly Republican push to defund this nation’s support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Oh, and a group of House Republicans want to expel mendacious Representative George Santos of New York. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors named Santos in a 23-count superseding indictment on charges ranging from identity theft to fraud. In May, Santos was charged on multiple counts including wire fraud and money laundering. He continues to profess his innocence.
But all legislation remains in limbo until Republicans can sort themselves out long enough to elect a new speaker. And that will end only this current morass. The party’s chaos corner may demand the same concessions that made McCarthy a speaker without a voice and doomed him to an abbreviated tenure. That means even if some clandestine deal finally hands the gavel to Scalise — or, whoever can ultimately get enough votes — the nation could again soon find itself in this same absurd place with a House governing party that can’t even govern itself.