It’s deja vu all over again in the House Republican caucus, which tends to be a pretty ungoverrnable bunch. Remember back in 2015 when they forced John Boehner out of the speakership and had no plan for what happened next? Enough of them got together to twist Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s arm hard enough to force him to agree to do it. That lasted for a little over two years, until he decided he’d had enough of that and bowed his way out.
The ensuing four years of Democratic leadership in the House didn’t give Republicans the time they needed to figure their shit out. If anything, it made them even more ungovernable, particularly after the ranks of the truly noxious grew with the influx of QAnon-friendly newbies in 2018. So now here’s the hapless Kevin McCarthy, who has been labeled “a golden retriever of a man” somehow ending up on top of the GOP heap.
McCarthy has spent the last four years doing his best to be the MAGA acolyte he thinks the maniacs in the caucus want him to be, and it’s ... not entirely working. Sure, he made enough promises to Marjorie Taylor Greene to get her on his side, but that’s not enough. In the secret ballot leadership vote Republicans took a few weeks ago, McCarthy got a 188-31 tepid nod, far short of the 218 votes he will need to secure to win the thing. The only guy who has actually thrown his hat in the ring against McCarthy, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona says he’s counted 20 “pretty hard no” votes against McCarthy. “I was told by a number of people, who came after to me afterwards, who aren’t members of [the] Freedom Caucus, [that] ‘Hey, I voted for you’ or ‘I voted against Kevin,’” Biggs said on a Conservative Review podcast this week.
So what happens now? Who knows?! McCarthy says he’s not backing down. “Oh yeah, I’ll take the speaker’s fight to the floor,” he told reporters this week, even if he doesn’t have 218 votes in his pocket. He’ll stick with it for as many ballots as it takes, which is how it works. They just keep voting until someone reaches the magic number. (He technically needs the majority of those present and voting, as would any candidate.) With some help from the wayback machine and David Nir, let’s see what could be in store.
Hypothetically, there is room for a compromise candidate. Back when this was Boehner’s problem, Nir called that hypothetical person the Magical Elephant Unicorn. “This is where Republicans try to find someone else who can somehow obtain 218 GOP votes for speaker.” Nir rightly pegged that as “bloody well impossible” in 2015. It wasn’t entirely impossible, it turns out. They browbeat Ryan into doing it. There’s probably not a compromise candidate that the Freedom maniacs, numbering somewhere between three and four dozen, would accept this time around. And if the only guy they want is Biggs, can he get more than 40 or so votes? Not likely.
There’s the Kick the Tire-Fire Down the Road possibility—they find someone to fill in as an “interim” speaker until someone who can actually get elected emerges. But the actual implementation of that is no clearer now than it was back in 2015. There isn’t a process for it. Is the temporary person elected or appointed? If they can elected, then why don’t they just be regular speaker? If they’re appointed, who would do the appointing? Could they have some kind of rotation among senior Republicans to share the job? Could the majority of Republicans actually figure out the complex rules it would take to put that system into place. Not a chance!
The End of the World as We Knew It option is maybe the default. Nobody does it. The history books record that happening back in the 19th century, but that only happened when no party had the majority. There is a GOP majority now, an extremely puny one, but a majority nonetheless. So that’s probably not a viable option.
Okay, that leaves what Nir called the Walk of Doom. A handful of fed-up not maniacal Republicans decide to caucus with the Democrats to pick a speaker. As in 2015, Democrats are not going to be willing to bail Republicans out here, so they would effectively be selecting that candidate. The Democrats are even more disciplined now than they were in 2015—look at the nearly seamless transition to the new leadership team after Nancy Pelosi decided to step down. They’re not going to splinter and help the Republicans. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska floated that scenario a few weeks ago, that he would be willing to work with Democrats to appoint a Republican. Fat chance. As fat of a chance as Republicans agreeing to accept a moderate Democrat as speaker.
In the realm of hypotheticals again, there are as of now, 18 Republicans in crossover districts, where President Joe Biden won in 2020. In theory, there could be five of them who would vote with Democrats for an alternative candidate. In theory.
This sounds like a job for the Problem Solvers Caucus! That’s the bipartisan crew of moderates who do … something. Anyway, those who didn’t get primaried out of their jobs, lose their general election, or decide to retire. Given the success of, well, solving problems from that bunch so far, I wouldn’t advise anyone hold their breath waiting for that one.
The only thing we do know is that Biggs and his holdouts—it will only take a half dozen of them—are just as determined that McCarthy not become speaker as he is to win this votes. So barring a Christmas miracle ... chaos. Might as well get used to it. That’s all we’re getting out of the House for the next two years, whichever Republican grabs the gavel.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
