As this is written on Thursday, the disgraceful spectacle in Washington has no end in sight. Neither Kevin McCarthy, nor the Toxic Twenty who oppose him, appear to have any appreciation of the damage that they are doing to the record of the United States in competent self-governance. Not only are urgent needs, foreign and domestic, going unmet, but observers around the world might well be saying, “If that is democracy, there must be a better system.” The United Kingdom, with its recent record of transitory Prime Ministers, was bad enough, but we have done them one worse.
At this point, reasonable people may disagree as to Kevin McCarthy’s likelihood of being able to concede his way into the Speakership. My own inclination is to doubt it. Apart from the merits of any issues at stake, McCarthy has seemingly violated a fundamental precept of Negotiation 101 by offering concession after concession and getting nothing in return, “bidding against himself,” as the saying goes. Moreover, while some of the Toxic Twenty may be won over by this or that change of procedure, it seems clear that there is a hard core who, when they say “Never Kevin,” really mean it. The motivations of that hard core are not clear but probably involve a mix of ideology, ambition, ego and personal chemistry.
If McCarthy does manage to slither his way into the Speaker’s office, that position may be so weakened as to be hardly worth having. Moreover, even that modest outcome seems unlikely at the moment and McCarthy might better spare himself and the country further embarrassment by stepping aside. That said, it is not clear that even doing so would solve the problem of electing a Speaker. The right-wing Freedom Caucus clique would be emboldened and doubtless seek to work its will on whoever might follow in McCarthy’s footsteps.
Nevertheless, even if one disagrees with many of the policy positions of the Freedom Caucus—as I do—it does have valid and important points as to procedure. For example, the 1.7 trillion dollar spending bill approved by Congress at the last minute in December is a paradigm of how not to legislate: a mammoth top-down package designed and negotiated behind closed doors and presented with no time for adequate review by legislators, let alone the public. If the Freedom Caucus achieves a reform to prevent the enactment of such legislative monstrosities, it will have done the country a service.
It will be objected that procedural reforms may give the Freedom Caucus and its ilk too much ability to influence or control the content of legislation. But the answer to that is to offset the influence of the Freedom Caucus through cooperation with Democrats, both in selecting a Speaker and in crafting bipartisan legislation. John Kasich has suggested just such an approach:
A block of House Republicans should get together with Democrats to pick a speaker to run a coalition government which will moderate the House and marginalize the extremists.
Such a solution, it must be admitted, is probably a long shot—any Republicans who sought to cooperate with Democrats in that manner would probably be inviting challenges from the right in the next primary election. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, it is an approach worth considering.
The concluding recommendation that the Democrats should have thrown their support to a reasonable Republican member of the House–i.e., Don Bacon or Brian Fitzpatrick and elected a Speaker indebted to decency and not to Marjorie Taylor Greene. But several major Democratic players I beseeched to try such an approach all seemed to prefer letting the Republicans stew in their own juices. Mr. Parker correctly labeled the likelihood of such an approach as “a long shot.” But I believe the voters would, in the long run, seriously reward those who would have demonstrably placed Country over Party. But sadly my fellow Dems went for the sure short-run win from having a badly weakened McCarthy as Speaker, as unfolded late last night. They have missed the chance to prove to the American electorate that THEY are the ones who prefer to see the child live, as opposed to be cut in half!
Thank you, Doug. I agree wholeheartedly with John’s comments. The fact of the matter is, and has been for decades, that a growing group of R’s want to disable government. They want a dysfunctional gov’t. No nation can survive under such circumstances. Voters must punish R’s at the polls until until reason raises its head among enough R elected officials for democracy to function. But a large core of R voters punished the few R who called out Trump for what he was. There is a long way to go before R’s become a useful, rationale curve in our politics again.
What annoys me most is that the Toxic Twenty (thank you Doug!) are typically characterized as “ultra-conservatives.” Conservatives believe in institutions. The Toxic Twenty aren’t conservatives…they’re anarchists, and shd be labeled as such.
“Anarchists” or, as stated on PBS News Hour by David Brooks, “Nihilists”.
The only thing I’d say in response to one of the points you make about the ‘validity’ of some of the policy positions being put forward by the Freedom Caucus is that many procedures and processes that sound good in theory (and worked in a pre-digital age) won’t work any more. The reason Pelosi and team have to put forward “mammoth top down packages designed and negotiated behind closed doors” is because a more drawn out and ‘out in the open’ consultative process would result in bupkus ever getting done.
Once up on a time separate committees could discharge legislation for consideration on the floor (and amendments on individual bills could be introduced and debated), but in our modern (sigh) world, a world in which politics is performative and leadership has little by way of a ‘cudgel’ to keep recalcitrants in line, yesterday’s orderly structures and processes would only lead to even more inertia and feckless posturing by Boebert-esque clowns than we are currently witnessing.
Republicans don’t want to pass legislation, so for them processes and structures that make it impossible to get anything accomplished, but that have a surface ‘democratic’ appeal, might be fine. But for those of us who actually want an activist government capable of passing legislation in response to societal ills, omnibus bills are better than the alternative, which is . . . nothing ever getting passed.
That recent omnibus bill that everybody rails about: consider the alternative if it hadn’t been presented as an Omnibus Bill. I’d argue that none of what that bill contained would have made it to the floor in a timely enough fashion for a vote to have occurred before this new, radical Congress was seated . . . if it hadn’t been wrapped up in the Omnibus. And getting the Electoral Count Reform Act passed, as part of the Omnibus Bill, was CRITICAL to having confidence in our ability to conduct a Presidential election sans R. treachery.
Bring back daily newspapers, the Fairness Doctrine, decent public schools that teach kids to read and write. Eliminate the 24 hour news-cycle, and Twitter, and Instagram, and Facebook, and every other instantaneous communicative mechanism that rewards bleating instead of discussion. . . Cap spending on elections, or introduce public financing of elections. Get a feckless Supreme Court to recognize gerrymandering leads to absurdly partisan legislative bodies at all levels of govt., and thus creates and inflames imperatives to grandstand for the cameras as opposed to learning how to pass legislation.
Do that stuff . . . which ya can’t do . . . and THEN go back to the rules of yore. Otherwise, alas, I think we must work within ‘Pelosi rules’, designed to take the hard work of drafting legislation into the back rooms where the adults gather and away from the cameras where the children frolic, so as to get SOMETHING accomplished for the American public.
Dana Milbank in the Post wrote a great article today bemoaning the ransom McCarthy is paying, i.e, the new ‘rules’ package. Couldn’t agree with Dana more. The terrorists won, masquerading as ‘democrats’, and it’s another slug of Drano for all of us to swallow.
Right now, I can live with McCarthy. I just hope Trump is out for good.He is now clearly more of a liability than asset to the GOP, but if you take him and add into the mix this new contingent of vocal, ultra-right wingers, the Republicans may be hurting themselves more than the Democrats for the near future.
John,
I disagree with the notion that “Pelosi and team” had to design and pass legislation more or less in secret to give the masses what the Pelosi et al. believed is good for them. That strikes me as elitist and authoritarian and quite undemocratic. Sunlight is a great disinfectant. You note a number of flaws in our current version of democracy, and there is something to what you say, but I still find it preferable to the alternatives. And our democracy, for all its deficiencies, remains, as Churchill put it, the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.
The Bottom Line — the GOP is bupkus, bubkes, bubkis, or whatever……………..
I’m with John Kasich, and you, on the only possibly productive way forward.
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