Marjorie Taylor Greene proves why Hastert Rule is a relic
The only acceptable speaker of the House for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Republican Kamikaze Caucus is one who limits floor activity to their preferred bills.
It’s the perverted progression of an informal practice which effectively gives governing power to a minority in the House of Representatives.
The Hastert rule is American political cynicism at its worst, and it’s an increasing problem in our narrowly divided nation.
According to the rules in the House of Representatives, the speaker, along with the House Committee on Rules, schedules floor votes and manages proceedings.
Typically, the Rules Committee is stacked in such a way that a speaker’s preferences are generally supported.
Under the Hastert rule, a speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill which does not have majority support from the majority party.
In other words, all legislation requires a majority of the majority to be considered. While the rule is named after former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, it dates to his GOP predecessor Speaker Newt Gingrich and beyond.
According to Gingrich, he first heard of the informal rule from Democratic Speaker Tom Foley. “[Foley] did say he would be defeated by his caucus if he abandoned them to side with Republicans,” Gingrich wrote in 2015.
Greene’s hyper-partisan ploy reeks of hypocrisy
There’s a certain degree of rationality to the Hastert rule. Partisans understandably want a majority of their party onboard with a given piece of legislation. Any speaker who routinely ignores the will of his own party in favor of working with the opposing party will not be speaker for long.
But what happens when the split in the majority is more than just a few defections?
The House Republican Conference can do its best to whip a vote, but it is and will always be an informal measure. On some votes, majority sentiment is truly divided. The recent vote to send military aid to Ukraine split the GOP. 112 Republicans voted against the measure and 101 supported it. Ultimately the measure passed the House with 311 votes.
Imagine a vote to require age verification for pornography. Let’s say 101 conservative Republicans support it, and 112 don’t. What if the issue is constructing a physical border wall? How about a federal tax cut? Would conservative Republicans be fine scuttling their priorities because 10 or 11 GOP RINOS (Republicans in Name Only) wouldn’t support them?
America’s interests are not served by preventing votes backed by an overwhelming representative majority.
Greene and her fellow kamikazes seem to believe that the speaker shouldn’t bring up any legislation that can’t be passed by Republicans alone – unless it’s a vote to remove the speaker. It’s a double shot of the Hastert rule with a chaser of hypocrisy.
Do Republicans want to write the Democrats’ ads for them?
The Hastert rule also imposes a potentially significant political cost on the majority party. From time to time, it’s good to give Republicans in competitive elections an opportunity to break with the party.
The Ukraine vote is a perfect example. Certain immigration reforms are as well. Is it better for Republicans to work with 20 Democrats to advance popular legislation or let 20 Republicans paralyze the whole GOP majority?
If Greene pushes a privileged motion to remove Speaker Mike Johnson, Democrats presently claim they’re willing to defeat her effort. While I’d love to believe in their magnanimous nature, I suspect Democrats will use the failed motion as evidence they’re having to protect Republicans from their own chaotic fringe.
The Democratic ads write themselves. “Republicans refuse to govern, but Democrats are the adults in the room.”
We should vote more in Washington, D.C., not less. Voting is literally the job. Does that mean that every minority priority should be considered on the House or Senate floor? No, but voting on legislation with threefourths of the House behind it is hardly an American betrayal.
Stop the loudest voices from ruining good bipartisan policy ideas
Democrats must leave the hyper partisan wasteland as well. I don’t expect them to give the House Freedom Caucus their preferred votes the next time Democrats are in the majority, but that three-quarters threshold is reasonable for occasionally taking up bipartisan legislation that might split the Democrats.
Trying to govern an entire nation with the preferences of half the country is foolish. Doing it at the behest of a fourth of it or less runs contrary to American representative democracy itself.
Too many of us have allowed ourselves to believe that the other party and the Americans it represents are our enemy.
We act as if the least amount of cooperation renders our representatives as traitors. We wouldn’t tolerate this kind of behavior in our children, yet many of us mistakenly expect it as
the standard for political leadership. This must end if we’re going to lead our nation well.
We must stop the loud weirdos in our respective parties from salting the fertile soil where reasonable Americans agree. Common ground exists on immigration reform. I know we’re not all fiscally insane, so there’s room for compromise on budget control. Imagine we worked together on trade policy that kept our alliances strong around the globe to protect us at home. If a member of Congress agrees with another member of Congress on any issue, partisan affiliation shouldn’t matter.
The goal of politics isn’t talking points for cable news, it’s sound governing. Our representative votes in Congress ought to reflect the preferences of a national majority instead of a vocal partisan minority. In a divided nation, the Hastert rule can’t and shouldn’t override common sense.
USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney who worked for conservative Republicans. He and his wife Justine are raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @Dcameronsmith on X, formerly known as Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com.