The Real Reason House Republicans Can't Elect a Speaker
The House speaker’s race has entered its Groundhog Day era. Every day, Republicans meet to try to elect a new speaker and every day they fail in new and more spectacular ways. It has now been more than two weeks since Kevin McCarthy was stripped of the gavel by a gang of disaffected right-wingers led by Matt Gaetz. Despite numerous potential successors appearing—the three plausible candidates include Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and the current speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry (who some members of the House want to make a kind of permanent temporary speaker)—none have enough support to ascend into the role. Not only that, all three have a small but stubborn opposition intent on blocking their path to the speakership. At this point, there’s no unifying figure on the horizon, so we’re caught in a loop: Republicans wake up, yell at each other, sometimes cast votes, and sometimes not—yadda yadda—we never get a speaker.
Some have described this dynamic as a “civil war,” a phrase that recalls the fissures between establishment figures and insurgents during Donald Trump’s emergence. Those fissures still exist: One major issue driving the conflict is that the House caucus has long been controlled by extremists but also features nearly two dozen Republicans representing districts that Joe Biden won in 2020 who favor a more moderate approach.
But there is another culprit as well. For all the talk about extremists and moderates, there are almost no concrete policy demands being discussed among Republicans. The party has a set of broad priorities, sure: Cut spending, investigate Joe Biden, and own the libs at every opportunity. But none of the factions vying for power want to actually do anything in particular. This has resulted in a conflict based almost entirely on personalities and vibes; it is no wonder that it’s become intractable and endless. But this is the natural end state of a party that has long since abandoned policymaking in favor of weaponizing the government to fight culture war battles.
The simplest way to tell this story goes something like this: To become speaker in January, Kevin McCarthy struck a deal with members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, essentially allowing them to call a vote to oust him whenever they felt like it. After McCarthy made the cardinal sin of negotiating with the Democrats to keep the government open, they did just that. Eight Republicans joined with the entire Democratic caucus to strip the gavel from McCarthy.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/real-reason-house-republicans-t-100000271.html
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