House GOP mess is bad for America

A week ago the House of Representatives booted a Speaker for the first time in history when a handful of malcontent Republicans sided with Democrats to depose Bakersfield Republican Kevin McCarthy.

Proving they learned no lesson from the Obamacare repeal debacle, where Republicans campaigned for years to scrap the law if given the chance only to blow it in the end by failing to come up with an alternative, this band of misfits had no plan to govern beyond the removal.

And that's unfortunate because the House can't conduct any real business until a new Speaker is selected, and at the time of this writing no candidate is near a majority.

It's not as if there's a massive geopolitical crisis at the moment in the Middle East that might require Congress's attention. Oh wait, there is. The irony here is that of the House, Senate and President, only the House is run by Republicans. So by getting rid of the Speaker, a few bad apples have stripped House Republicans of their voice on anything.

And that was one of the best things about McCarthy: He could actually cobble together enough votes to become Speaker.

McCarthy's support was never totally solid, what with the marathon election to get the Speaker's gavel in the first place. He governed with the challenge of appeasing a few holdouts led by Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, who is apparently brimming with confidence now that the feds decided they won't prosecute him for sex trafficking, and ultimately it was McCarthy's undoing.

For Gaetz, getting rid of McCarthy is a win. He gets to fundraise on creating chaos.

Gaetz justified his mutiny by saying he was in Congress to “fight” for his constituents and to “ensure that America is not on a path to financial ruin.” Of course, when Congress was running up a huge tab with COVID spending, Gaetz's concern for the country's finances was much harder to find.

Gaetz apparently didn't like that McCarthy had worked with Democratic President Joe Biden on a short-term plan to keep the government open, preferring a more open process. But judging by the Speaker election, it's hard to see how Gaetz would be constructive in a more open process.

Lawmakers like Gaetz see working with members of the other party as some kind of betrayal, but Biden and the Democratic-run Senate need to approve before anything can become law, so working with Democrats is unavoidable. It's what the Constitution requires.

But I'm giving Gaetz too much credit. His opposition is purely performative.

McCarthy brought some of this on himself. To become Speaker he struck a deal with the malcontents who would ultimately betray him, giving them tremendous power and concessions in the process, and governed in a manner that consistently alienated moderates on the left.

Would any Democrats have voted for McCarthy for Speaker? Probably not. But some might have helped him in a procedural motion that would have saved him.

But all that's old news. As of this writing, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise earned the backing of most of his GOP colleagues, but decided not to pursue the speakership.

The job sounds awful: Attacked for working with Democrats, who occupy half the building, appeasing a band of malcontents whose sole purpose is to hear their own voices on Fox News and governing in an environment where fealty to the Constitution is seen as weakness.

I don't know who the next Speaker will be, but he or she will certainly have a difficult time keeping the malcontents happy.