The Republican House of Representatives
Unless you are a Congressional scholar, it’s nearly impossible to follow all the twists and turns of the U.S. House Republican Speaker fracas. What we do know is that, at this time of dangerous crises around the world, the United States does not have a Speaker to run the Republican-majority U.S. House of Representatives. Beyond the resulting inability of the House to perform crucial functions (such as voting on important legislation), the Speaker of the House is second in the line of succession, after only the Vice President, to become President if the president cannot carry out his or her duties. Suffice it to say that it’s a catastrophe not to have a House Speaker.
You may recall that this whole mess started in early January when Republicans, after winning a very narrow House majority in last November’s elections, could not agree among themselves on electing a new Speaker, which is the majority’s responsibility. It took an unprecedented 15 rounds of voting before the Republicans finally elected Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. However, to win over his extreme MAGA colleagues, McCarthy had to agree to a number of concessions, including the ability of any one Representative, at any time, to call for a “Motion to Vacate” the Speaker’s position, which is essentially a vote of “no confidence” to remove the Speaker. Suffice it to say that “Squeaker” McCarthy was extremely weak, and probably doomed, from the start, as those MAGAs could call for such a vote anytime McCarthy did not kowtow to them.
Sure enough, that’s exactly what took place. Early this month, on the pretext that McCarthy committed the sin of working with President Joe Biden and House Democrats to keep the federal government open instead of letting MAGAs shut it down, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz filed a Motion to Vacate. The vote was taken, McCarthy lost, and he was booted from his Speaker position, the first time in U.S. history that this has happened.
Since then, other Republican Representatives have put themselves forward for Speaker, but have failed to gain the simple House majority vote (currently 217 out of 433 members, which includes two vacancies) to win. First, Rep. Steve Scalise tried and failed to win, and most recently, the scandal-ridden Rep. Jim Jordan has achieved the same result.
Along the way, Republicans have fought each other tooth and nail, including sending death threats, over the Speaker contest. For now, there is still no Speaker, with Rep. Patrick McHenry serving as temporary Acting Speaker, his main function being the ability to call a new vote for Speaker when a new (or previous) candidate steps forward to run.
This fiasco has led to several proposals, including giving McHenry more power for a limited time, with Democrats demanding constraints on McHenry’s power (such as limiting his rule to 15-day increments) in return for their approval. Meanwhile, the person who consistently has received the most votes during each Speaker election is Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. That’s because the Democrats, united in sharp contrast to the Republicans, keep voting for him (it is customary for the minority party to vote for their own candidate for Speaker).
For Democrats, going into an election year, what’s important in all this mess is to characterize the Republicans accurately and colorfully. This includes the ideas that:
–Republicans are completely incompetent, and can’t even fulfill the basic task of choosing a Speaker or running the government. They would rather just shut it all down.
–Republicans are in chaos, fighting among themselves.
–In contrast, Democrats are unified, and have given Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the most votes of any candidate every time the Speaker vote is taken. Jeffries should be the Speaker.
–Republicans, like a drunk bar patron, should have the keys to our government taken away from them. That means voting them out of the House majority in the 2024 elections.
Photo by Bill Bradford, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/bRFwSC
