Happy Kevin McCarthy’s Judgement Day! Around about noon today, it is likely that Kevin McCarthy will fail in his never-ending quest to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Republican hasn’t been able to line up enough support from his own party to win a vote, and so it looks like the House will fail to pick a speaker on the first ballot for only the second time since the Civil War.
Currently McCarthy’s allies are projecting bull-headed optimism that they’ll get there on the second, or third, or tenth, or whateverth try. Even if they do, it only looks likely to happen if McCarthy makes a series of concessions that will increase the power of the far right of the party. One such proposal is to lower the threshold for calling a vote to unseat the speaker, effectively putting a loaded gun in the hands of Republican extremists which can be discharged if McCarthy ever looks like he’s acting too sanely. This alone is likely to make the House completely ungovernable.
Another of the right’s demands is the creation of a special committee to investigate “federal government activity and look into political partisanship at agencies, such as the FBI and the Justice Department”, which seems to be an attempt by far-right members to centralize their political probes of the Biden administration in one body. Yet another is “a rule that legislation will only have a single purpose”, banning the sort of omnibus bills which are one of the few ways that the House manages to get anything done.
McCarthy’s woes are compounded by the fact that although more moderate members of the House Republican caucus aren’t making as much noise in the media, many of them are unhappy about the concessions he’s offering to the party’s (more) extremist wing - and if he makes too many further steps to appease the right, then the bottom could fall out of his support in the center. Pity poor Kevin - he’s going to have a tough day.
This spectacle has launched chatter about a possible “unity candidate”, someone who could become speaker by winning votes from both Democrats and moderate Republicans. The idea has some appeal - it would be a rare moment of bipartisanship, it would allow the House to get on with its business, and it would keep the craziest Republicans from having too much influence over legislation. If that sounds too good to be true, it probably is - there’s little likelihood that many Democrats would cross party lines to vote for a Republican as speaker. And although GOP moderates are using the threat of a unity speaker to try to force the right wing of their own party to blink, few serious discussions about a unity candidate have actually taken place.
However, if McCarthy is still losing ballot numbers 10 or 20, the idea might start to seem more serious. A unity speaker might emerge as the only alternative to weeks of chaos or a much more unpalatable right-wing speaker. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.
If this happens, Democrats need to be very clear about the stakes of the situation. Republicans will essentially be asking Democrats to bail them out from a mess of their own making. The GOP is in this mess because they have a very narrow House majority, and the reason they have a very narrow House majority is because their extremism was rejected by the American people in the midterms and the extreme candidates who did get elected are fundamentally unserious people with no interest in or aptitude for governing. A non-functioning House is a big problem for America, but it’s fundamentally a bigger problem for the political party which can’t come up with enough adults to run it.
If Republicans want a helping hand from Democrats, they’re going to have to make some big concessions. This isn’t a time for Democrats to take the high road - it’s time to wring their opponents for everything they can get. They ought to demand control of key committees and that no committee will engage in hyper-partisan investigations of the Biden administration. They should present a list of GOP colleagues - the Lauren Boeberts and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world - who are not welcome on any committee. And they ought to seek a guarantee that the House will not hold the country hostage over either the debt ceiling or government funding, but instead focus on governing.
And here’s the thing - even if they demand these concessions, Democrats are actually doing Republicans a favor. The party just had one of the worst midterm showings in the history of modern American politics because it is widely perceived as a party of extremists more interested in parroting election conspiracy theories than governing. Two years of paralysis and partisan theater in Congress are not going to make the GOP look any better to voters come 2024. By enabling a unity speaker, Democrats would be allowing whatever Republican moderates there are left to disassociate themselves from their party’s most electorally harmful individuals and strategies. It’s not just a good deal for the country, but also for the GOP.
Of course, there are also good reasons for the Democrats not to save Republicans from themselves - letting them get bogged down in intra-party warfare will highlight their extremism and incompetence to voters. Wading into that fight and supporting one faction, however supposedly “moderate”, will also be seen as risky and compromising, forcing Democrats to get their hands dirty and to seem to endorse some Republican figures. It might be even better to seek some sort of unofficial coalition which leaves the speaker’s chair empty or as a mere figurehead and only comes together on key votes like government funding. This sort of “confidence and supply” arrangement which sometimes emerges in European countries after close elections would keep the country ticking over, but it would be important to marry it with steps to neutralize the harm Republicans could do through partisan investigations.
Whatever Democrats do, now is the time to recognize the position of strength they are in. Republicans cannot and will not govern. Forcing them to do the bare minimum might be the least bad option for the country - but it should come at a steep price.