Make yourself some popcorn and sit down with your favorite news network on Tuesday. We could witness a political drama of a type not seen since the period before the Civil War. Which somehow seems appropriate, given the tenor of today’s political discourse.
Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield is trying to achieve a lifelong goal: to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. Unless a desperate stalemate prompts the body to change the rules, McCarthy will need a majority vote of the entire chamber, which would be 218 if the 435 members voted for an individual by his or her name. name.
Republicans hold 222 seats in the 118th Congress, but five far-right members of the party have publicly declared themselves tough no-“Never Kevins” who say they will not support McCarthy under any circumstances. Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Matt Rosendale of Montana and Ralph Norman of South Carolina formed a bloc and vowed not to allow McCarthy to plead his case with them individually . It’s all or nothing.
Leaving McCarthy with, at the moment, 217 votes at best.
If no one gets at least 218 votes, Congress will vote again. And again, and again, until someone reaches the necessary threshold. Or until members, perhaps driven by exhaustion, vote to accept a plurality winner, as has happened in three of the previous 127 presidential elections.
McCarthy of course has more than five critics among House Republicans. In a secret ballot to select their new Majority Leader on Nov. 15, 31 Republicans voted for Biggs over McCarthy, while, and in a separate vote for No. 2, Louisiana’s Steve Scalise was unanimously elected majority whip. In other words, Scalise, who has been McCarthy’s trusty leadership sidekick, is 31 votes more popular in the Republican caucus than McCarthy and so, whether he likes it or not, is shaping up to be a viable alternative on multiple ballots. for the president.
McCarthy has been trying to win over his 44-member Freedom Caucus critics for months — years, really. In doing so, he has gone to great lengths to please what former Speaker John Boehner once called the House “legislative terrorists” — a subset of fringe members who have no agenda. real policies or ideologies other than fomenting chaos. McCarthy has secured the backing of one of the most prominent of this group – QAnon queen of Congress, Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene – with pledges of undisclosed influence. She now practically owns McCarthy, or so she bragged in October. “He’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway,” Greene told The New York Times. “And if he doesn’t, (a lot of far-right) are going to be very unhappy about it.”
Last week, McCarthy made his biggest concession yet to the far right, one that underscores how badly he sees the situation: He agreed to a rule change that would reduce the number of members required to force a “motion to leave the chair”. or remove the speaker. Previously, it took half of the majority party, or 111 members in this case, to force such a vote. McCarthy has agreed to reduce that number to five — a Faustian deal that makes him even more beholden to this reckless little faction in Congress.
McCarthy therefore has no margin for error in the ballot for the speaker, and, if he wins, little margin if he hopes to avoid the spectacle – and the very real threat – of a vote of no confidence. Any semblance of compromise or accommodation with Democrats could trigger such a vote. That’s why we’ve seen McCarthy, sparking theatrical outrage, declare his intention to investigate everything Democrats have said or done in the past two years down to the flavors available from Jell-O salad to the home cafeteria.
No one knows where Tuesday’s vote might go if McCarthy doesn’t win in the first round; a second ballot has not been required since 1923, when Republican Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts won the House’s ninth attempt to select a speaker.
The toughest battles over speaker selection have coincided with national disunity. Democrat Howell Cobb of Georgia, who would later become one of the founders of the Confederacy, won the 63rd ballot in 1849, setting what was then a record for revotes. The most prolonged vote for the speaker followed six years later when Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, whose more liberal Republican Party was just emerging from the ashes of the Whig Party, was selected after two months and 133 ballots. Even then, the vote was only settled after the House, torn by pre-war factions, approved a resolution that allowed for a plurality winner, and Banks won with just 103 votes. Another extended Speakers’ Vote (44 ballots) followed in 1859, and then came the Civil War.
Civil war is back, at least in terms of right-wing rhetoric. Gaetz defended the right of Americans “to maintain an armed rebellion against the government”, and Greene, before joining the McCarthy team, made statements tinged with similar hostility.
Now the stage is set for another protracted fight over the presidency, the first in exactly a century. One wonders when more sane Republicans will tire of the circus and, with the support of half a dozen conservative Democrats, reach out to a compromise candidate outside the current House slate.
It could happen. Faustian agreements rarely end well.
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