Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein, in a column disguised as a NYT news report (“‘Nobody Is in Charge’: A Ragged G.O.P. Stumbles Through the Wilderness“) get it right:
After two days of chaos and confusion on the House floor, Republicans have made it abundantly clear who is leading their party: absolutely no one.
From the halls of Congress to the Ohio Statehouse to the back-room dealings of the Republican National Committee, the party is confronting an identity crisis unseen in decades. With no unified legislative agenda, clear leadership or shared vision for the country, Republicans find themselves mired in intraparty warfare, defined by a fringe element that seems more eager to tear down the House than to rebuild the foundation of a political party that has faced disappointment in the past three national elections.
Even as Donald J. Trump rarely leaves his Florida home in what so far appears to be little more than a Potemkin presidential campaign, Republicans have failed to quell the anti-establishment fervor that accompanied his rise to power. Instead, those tumultuous political forces now threaten to devour the entire party.
Nowhere was that on more vivid display than the House floor, where 20 Republicans on Wednesday stymied their party from taking control for a second day by refusing to support Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker.
The uncertainty continued into the evening on Wednesday. After Mr. McCarthy failed on his sixth attempt to win the leadership position, the House — by a two-vote margin — agreed to adjourn until noon Thursday, a result greeted by hoots and hollers by Democrats hoping to extend his misery late into the night.
“Nobody is in charge,” John Fredericks, a syndicated right-wing radio host and former chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia, said in an interview. “Embrace the chaos. Our movement is embracing the chaos.”
That ideology of destruction defies characterization by traditional political labels like moderate or conservative. Instead, the party has created its own complicated taxonomy of America First, MAGA and anti-Trump — descriptions that are more about political style and personal vendettas than policy disagreements.
This iteration of the Grand Old Party, with its narrow majority in the House empowering conservative dissidents, represents a striking reversal of the classic political maxim that Democrats need to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.
“The members who began this have little interest in legislating, but are most interested in burning down the existing Republican leadership structure,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who embodies the party’s pre-Trump era. “Their behavior shows the absence of power corrupts just as absolutely as power does.”
Mr. Fredericks, who is typically one of the most aggressive pro-Trump voices in the conservative news media, said that even the former president’s renewed endorsement of Mr. McCarthy on Wednesday would do little to shore up the would-be speaker’s support.
WaPo’s Dan Balz weighs in with “House Republicans’ dysfunction points to more chaos ahead.”
The roots run deep that brought House Republicans to this week’s demonstration of chaos and dysfunction. The problems have been building for years. Now they have been exposed for all to see — to see just how broken the GOP has become. The opening two days of the 118th Congress foreshadow turmoil, frustration and a potential breakdown in governing in the coming two years.
What has been on display is a perfect storm of misjudgment and anti-institutionalism. The failure of House Republicans to properly assess the political climate (and their own vulnerabilities) in the 2022 midterm elections left them with a narrow majority rather than the “red wave” margin they expected. That empowered the band of rebels, whose sole objective, at least for a handful, appears simply to be to blow up both the party and Congress for their own gain.
House Republicans so far are incapable of organizing themselves, as the multiple ballots for a new speaker have revealed. Six times over two days the House voted, and six times Kevin McCarthy, the man who has bent himself in every possible direction to win the speakership, has gone down to defeat. In that time, the California Republican gained not a single additional vote, despite trying concessions, indignation, confrontation, plaintive appeals and occasional brave smiles.
When a new speaker is chosen, McCarthy or someone else, that person will enter the office weakened and compromised, presiding over a majority that is not just fragile but also highly volatile. This is a dangerous combination not just for the party but for the country. The power of the Freedom Caucus rebels, who have demonstrated an insatiable appetite to claim power and extract concessions, means that even the most basic but essential functions of Congress — among them passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling limit to cover previously authorized spending — will be difficult to achieve.
An Achilles’ heel of today’s Republican Party has been its inability to govern when in power. Anti-government antagonism, which has grown steadily over the past decade, has often rendered the party incapable of separating bold political claims and aspirations — repealing the Affordable Care Act, for example — from the grittier but less satisfying work of finding compromise. Many of the new members have come to Washington not to legislate but to stop legislation, to “drain the swamp,” as former president Donald Trump has put it. Performative politics have become more appealing (and often more rewarding, in terms of fame and campaign contributions) than working in the trenches to produce results.
The House has become its own special petri dish, breeding the most virulent strain of what ails the broader party. Two days of ballots that showed the competing factions dug in against one another have given the American people an unsatisfying opening look at what the newly elected House majority is about.
The party as a whole has been torn apart by a variety of factors that have been at work for more than a decade, the rise of the tea party and the grass-roots rebellion against the GOP establishment that shaped the 2010 midterm elections to the destructive impact of Trump and the corresponding estrangement with longtime allies in big business to the weakness of elected officials to stand up against the worst influences threatening the party’s long-term health.
The POLITICO Playbook team take us “Inside McCarthy’s brewing speaker deal.”
After spending the last 48 hours on life support, KEVIN McCARTHY’s bid for the speakership is seeing a potential revival.
Following a rollercoaster of a Wednesday during which the California Republican failed three more times to secure the 218 votes for the gavel, McCarthy and some of his critics finally got in a room and had what both sides are describing as productive conversations.
This morning, after slamming coffee at midnight and working the phones until the wee hours, we have a readout of new concessions McCarthy has offered his critics and where things stand.
NEW CONCESSIONS ON THE TABLE: Here’s what’s being discussed, according to one well-placed source familiar with these talks. And, keep in mind, negotiations are ongoing and fluid:
- A one-member “motion to vacate”: The GOP leader appears to have finally acquiesced to a demand to lower the threshold needed to force a vote ousting a speaker to just one member. While McCarthy originally indicated that restoring the one-member “motion to vacate” was a red line, his allies now argue that there’s not a huge practical difference between this and his previous offer of requiring five members to trigger the vote.
- Rules Committee seats for the Freedom Caucus: McCarthy is prepared to give the House Freedom Caucus two seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees the amendment process for the floor. (Some conservatives are still holding out for four seats on the panel.) There are also talks about giving a third seat to a conservative close to the Freedom Caucus but not in it — someone like Reps. THOMAS MASSIE (R-Ky.). Who will pick those members? We’re told there is ongoing haggling. Typically, it’s the speaker’s prerogative, but conservatives want to choose their own members for these jobs.
- A vote on term limits: This is a key demand of Rep. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), who has proposed a constitutional amendment limiting lawmakers to three terms in the House.
- Major changes to the appropriations process: Fears of another trillion-plus-dollar omnibus spending bill have been a major driver of the conservative backlash to McCarthy. The brewing deal includes a promise for standalone votes on each of the 12 yearly appropriations bills, which would be considered under what is known as an “open rule,” allowing floor amendments to be offered by any lawmaker. Conservatives also won a concession to carve out any earmarks included in those packages for separate votes, though it’s unclear if they’d be voted on as one package or separately.
The late-night exchange of paper followed anothermajor breakthrough for the GOP leader: The McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund reached a deal with the conservative Club for Growth, which had initially signaled opposition to a Speaker McCarthy, to stay out of open House primaries for safe Republican seats. In the past, the two groups often found themselves at war with each other, with CLF pouring in millions to back establishment candidates while the Club endorsed those on the far right. In return for that promise, the Club has dropped its opposition to McCarthy.
While I’m sympathetic to the idea of smaller spending bills that are more targeted rather than the massive omnibus bills that have become the norm, all of this is a recipe for disaster. Governing a narrow majority would have been hard enough under the old rules; it would be impossible under rules literally designed to stymy legislating at every step. Not only would the inmates be running the asylum, the craziest one would have veto power.
