GOP SPEAKER TURMOIL: A HIDDEN BLESSING
The chaotic Republican-led House of Representatives has a rather poor sense of timing. The United States is in the midst of two international emergencies and faces the threat of a government shutdown next month. President Biden’s prime-time speech on Thursday pressing for aid to Ukraine and Israel underscored the exorbitant costs of the GOP meltdown.
But the embarrassing exercise could prove to be a blessing because it’s exposing a crisis in our politics that must be confronted. The endless battle for the speakership is already encouraging new thinking and might yet lead to institutional arrangements to allow bipartisan majorities to work their will.
The House impasse was precipitated by both radicalization and division within the Republican Party. Narrow majorities in the House have enabled right-wing radicals to disable the governing system. Normal progressives and normal conservatives, in alliance with politicians closer to the center, are discovering a shared interest in keeping the nihilist right far from the levers of power.
The current crisis, after all, was initiated by a small far-right contingent, empowered by the broad popularity of Donald Trump in the party. They brought down now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy despite his willingness to make one concession after another to the crazies, the impeachers and the Trumpists.
Republicans have yet to learn the lesson of Kevin McCarthy’s fall: Because of the GOP’s splits, only an agreement with Democrats can create a majority in the House capable of governing. On the compromise measure to avert a debt ceiling crisis, House Republicans divided 149-71. On the bill to avoid a shutdown, the vote was even closer, 126-90. In their divided party, Republicans who want to avoid defaults or shutdowns or selling out Ukraine cannot do so on their own. They should formally recognize this.
Democrats are going out of their way to say they are ready to deal. “We are willing to find a bipartisan path forward so we can reopen the House,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, said at a news conference on Friday, after Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, went down in his third and decisive defeat in the speakership vote. Republicans, Jeffries said, had a choice: to “embrace bipartisanship and abandon extremism.”
Democrats have reacted with understandable horror at the willingness of 200 Republicans to make the electiondenying, insurrection-sympathizing, Trump-backed Jordan second in the line of succession for the presidency. But it’s important to recognize an additional blessing: For some two dozen Republicans — whose ranks grew through the three ballots — a Jordan speakership was too much to accept.
The iron rule of Republican politics has been that the right wing of the party plays hardball and more moderate Republicans inevitably fold. Not this time. Because of the brave souls who went public, the party caucus voted 112-86 by secret ballot on Friday afternoon to force Jordan to step aside. All friends of democratic rule should be grateful. Now a regiment of nine lesser-known Republicans are pondering the wide-open speaker’s race.
One more lesson emerged from scare tactics and threats to anti-Jordan Republicans. They matched those “unleashed against anybody who stands in the way of Donald Trump,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, D-Maryland, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, adding: “If you fail to renounce and denounce political violence in very clear and specific terms, it’s going to come back to haunt you.”
Bipartisanship is no magic elixir, but bipartisanship in pursuit of majority rule is a worthy cause. Pushing Republicans to confront extremism in their ranks is both good politics and essential for governing. The Democrats’ offer to help Republicans through their intraparty struggle will either hasten the day of reckoning or expose the GOP’s refusal to stand up to its nihilists.