After the Hazing of Kevin McCarthy

The ordeal of Kevin McCarthy in becoming Speaker of the House provided more drama and entertainment value than is generally found on Friday night television. Although the proceeding involved a highly important matter, there were times when it was difficult to take it too seriously. Ultimately, I was reminded a bit of the mock trials my college fraternity subjected pledges to some seven decades ago during their initiations. (Unlike accounts of fraternity initiations I have read in recent years, the initiation did not involve the consumption of alcohol, or anything dangerous, but it could be, and was intended to be, somewhat stressful.)

The hazing of Kevin McCarthy finally came to an end only after a seemingly endless stream of concessions to those in the Nihilist Faction of House Republicans (NFers). Because of those concessions, McCarthy was installed as Speaker, in a posture of extraordinary and unprecedented weakness. Indeed, he might fairly be described as a SINO, Speaker In Name Only. With one major exception, it may not much matter: even if McCarthy had been elected with acclaim on the first ballot, it is unlikely that this House would have produced significant legislation that could have passed the Senate and been signed into law by President Biden. The major exception that does matter, of course, involves spending and, most crucially, the increase of the debt ceiling.

As explained in the New York Times:

Economists, Wall Street analysts and political observers are warning that the concessions he made to fiscal conservatives could make it very difficult for Mr. McCarthy to muster the votes to raise the debt limit — or even put such a measure to a vote. That could prevent Congress from doing the basic tasks of keeping the government open, paying the country’s bills and avoiding default on America’s trillions of dollars in debt.

To use a term currently in vogue, the “weaponizing” of the debt ceiling to force spending and programmatic concessions is reckless and utterly irresponsible. A default on America’s debt, or even a serious threat of such a default, would have grave consequences not only for our economy, but for the global economy. It is precisely the drastic nature of those consequences that makes the threat so attractive to the NFers.

Deplorable as the threat of the NFers is, it was entirely predictable and, indeed, such a threat might have emerged even without McCarthy’s emasculation. Back in November, in “The Midterms and Beyond,” I wrote:

[O]ne of the Republicans’ most dangerous threats is to weaponize the need for a debt ceiling increase in order to extract radical concessions from the administration and Congressional Democrats. Professor Michael Dorf has pointed out that there is a way of preventing such reckless extortion. Specifically, Dorf suggests that Democrats take preventive action during the lame duck session of Congress between now and the end of the year.

Why Democrats did not take the action suggested by Dorf is a mystery. Indeed, it is also a mystery why no one seems to be asking that question, let alone suggesting an answer. To me it appears to have been political malpractice of the highest order. It is further evidence that, as previously observed here, Republicans are scurrilous and Democrats are inept. It is not a happy note on which to begin the New Year.