The Perils Of Partisanship

The House Is Divided. Where Will It Stand?

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand

Matthew 12:25

For Kevin McCarthy, passing the continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown last weekend became the epitome of the “Pyrrhic victory” when a rebellion within the Republican caucus culminated in his ouster as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of the job Tuesday in an extraordinary showdown — a first in U.S. history, forced by a contingent of hard-right conservatives and throwing the House and its Republican leadership into chaos.

It’s the end of the political line for McCarthy, who has said repeatedly that he never gives up, but found himself with almost no options remaining. Neither the right-flank Republicans who engineered his ouster nor the Democrats who piled on seem open to negotiating.

Almost immediately, other GOP Congressmen began lining up for the House battle to become the next Speaker, principally House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan.

The race sets up a showdown that will test the abilities of both men to build support from a majority of the House GOP conference, the divides among which have been on display this year as Republican leaders navigated a narrow four-vote majority.

The coming week will see the House Republicans sort through the chaos of McCarthy’s ouster and select a new Speaker. However, no matter which individual wins the contest, a central and thorny question will remain:

How can the Speaker hope to move legislation through the House, with both Democrats and Republicans practically at war with each other?

That will prove no easy question, for if McCarthy’s ouster proves anything it is that the House is well and truly divided against itself.

The backdrop for McCarthy’s removal had been the dumpster fire that was the Continuing Resolution to keep the government open and funded for the next 45 days.

Shutdown Averted...Barely

While the passage of the resolution should have been a moment for either party to hail the virtues of bipartisan legislating, there were no such celebrations. Even Dementia Joe lost little time in firing a broadside at House Republicans after the CR had passed.

But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place. Just a few months ago, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis. For weeks, extreme House Republicans tried to walk away from that deal by demanding drastic cuts that would have been devastating for millions of Americans. They failed.

The runup to the passage of the Continuing Resolution had been filled with ample amounts of finger pointing and partisan hyperbole, with even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries characterizing the threatened government shutdown as being an “extreme MAGA Republican shutdown.”

The irony of such hyperbole from Congressman Jeffries is that the CR which ended up passing the House and later the Senate moved through the chamber essentially by securing Democratic votes for its passage.

The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels, until Nov. 17, setting up another potential crisis if they fail to more fully fund government by then. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting.

Note the dynamics at play here: Congress needs to pass the CR to avoid a shutdown. Kevin McCarthy and the more moderate Republicans join forces with the Democrats over the conservative Republicans to pass the CR. The Democrats spend their rhetorical energies blasting the “extreme MAGA Republicans” rather than extending an olive branch to the Republicans who agreed to work across the aisle to fund the government for another 45 days.

Hakeem Jeffries even did a little bit of campaigning among House Democrats against Kevin McCarthy.

Despite having joined forces for the CR, the Democrats voted en bloc to remove McCarthy as Speaker of the House, giving 8 Republicans the power to make or break a Republican Speaker.

While McCarthy enjoyed support from most Republicans in his slim majority, eight Republican detractors — many of the same hard-right holdouts who tried to stop him from becoming speaker in January — essentially forced him out.

Stillness fell as the presiding officer gaveled the vote closed, 216-210, saying the office of the speaker “is hereby declared vacant.”

Kevin McCarthy worked with the Democrats to avert a government shutdown—delivering ostensibly a political win for Democrats particularly since the CR does not make any spending cuts—and the Democrats repaid his bipartisan efforts by throwing him under Matt Gaetz’ motion to vacate bus.

The two Republicans now vying for the Speaker’s chair, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, are notably more conservative and far more aligned with the GOP members who engineered McCarthy’s downfall than with the Democrats.

Mr. Scalise, the former leader of the Republican Study Committee, is considered more conservative than Mr. McCarthy, with whom he had a somewhat icy relationship. And he is already lining up some powerful support. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip, has thrown his backing behind Mr. Scalise, according to people familiar with the matter, and is hoping to take the No. 2 spot himself.

Mr. Jordan, 59, is considered one of the original hard-line conservative members of Congress. A thorn in the side of previous speakers, Mr. Jordan is a co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and mentored many of its younger, rowdier members.

But Mr. Jordan, who has been in Congress since 2007, has also risen in the leadership ranks in recent years, becoming allies with Mr. McCarthy and being named the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Jordan is a close ally of Mr. Trump with whom he speaks frequently. He has been Mr. Trump’s leading defender on Capitol Hill, using his committee to attempt to intervene in the various legal cases against the former president.

Neither individual has a political resume which is going to be more amenable to bipartisan legislative efforts than that of the outgoing Speaker McCarthy. Even if they were not leaning more conservative, that the Democrats without hesitation refused to support McCarthy despite McCarthy’s bipartisan efforts to avert a government shutdown effectively communicates to any Republican aiming for the Speaker’s chair that the Democrats cannot be trusted to show any trust or loyalty across the aisle.

Bear in mind that, in working to pass the Continuing Resolution, McCarthy made an explicit appeal for bipartisanship.

"What I am asking, Republicans and Democrats alike, put your partisanship away," said McCarthy. "Focus on the American public."

McCarthy needs a two-thirds majority to pass their Continuing Resolution (CR), which would require a significant number of Democrats - who have strongly supported more Ukraine aid - to cross the aisle.

The House GOP bill would be a 'clean' Continuing Resolution, which won't include Ukraine funding or border assistance.

"We will put a clean funding stopgap on the floor to keep government open for 45 days for the House and Senate to get their work done," said McCarthy following a meeting. "We will also, knowing what had transpired through the summer, the disasters in Florida, the horrendous fire in Hawaii, and also the disasters in California and Vermont. We will put the supplemental portion that the president asked for in disaster there too."

"Keeping the government open while we continue to do our work to end the wasteful spending and the wokeism and most important, secure our border," McCarthy said.

Regardless of how one views the politics behind the CR, or the propriety of its passage, the legislative reality is that it passed primarily because Kevin McCarthy made a very direct appeal across the aisle. Whether one views that as a good political move or a poor one does not change the fact that it was the political move Kevin McCarthy made. That political move did not give him any grace or favor with Democrats when the motion to vacate was introduced.

Perversely, the motion to vacate was presumably made possible because McCarthy himself agreed to the rule change after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured him the Democrats would have his back should the GOP hardliners put such a motion forward.

McCarthy said he spoke to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) before he became speaker, letting her know he was having a problem getting the votes to obtain the speakership.

"She said, 'What's the problem?' I said, 'They want this one, one person can rule you out' — she was the only speaker to have changed that rule," McCarthy said. "I had the power to call the vote on her, but I never would — I lost some votes because of it. And she said, 'Just give it to them. I'll always back you up. I made the same offer to [John] Boehner and same thing to Paul because I believe in the institution.'"

Pelosi was absent from the vote to vacate McCarthy. She had traveled to California with the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein on her final journey home after dying on Friday at 90.

When the motion to vacate did get introduced, Nancy Pelosi did not back Kevin McCarthy up in the slightest degree. If Congressman McCarthy’s recollection of Nancy Pelosi’s words is even broadly accurate, the Democrats arguably welched on a committment without which McCarthy might not have agreed to the rules change which made this entire situation possible.

As a direct consequence, no matter who ultimately winds up as the next Speaker, it is difficult to conceive of an outcome where the incoming Speaker will be more disposed towards working with Democrats to advance legislation. It is bordering on impossible to concieve of an outcome where the incoming Speaker will be more amenable towards allowing Democratic agenda items to advance in the House.

As George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley observed, there are no real winners here: Not the Democrats, not the Republicans, and certainly not the House of Representatives as an institution.

As Democrats profess alarm over government shutdowns and the lack of legislation on key issues, this vacating of the chair will only delay business in the “People’s House.” It was certainly a thrilling moment for many, but few would argue that it was good for the institution. Indeed, they are more likely to get an even more conservative and strident speaker than McCarthy.

As for Republicans, they will now have to negotiate with Rep. Matt Gaetz and the other seven members to be able to resume business. In the meantime, much of the business on the border, the budget, and the impeachment inquiry will have to wait in abeyance.

At the same time, the chaos could well cost moderate Republicans their seats as the media portrays the GOP as careening and unable to govern effectively. That would then hand the House back to the Democrats in 2024. McCarthy was credited with raising a huge amount of money to reelect Republicans and coordinating a strategy to take the House majority.

The new speaker will face the same realities in dealing with a Democratically-controlled Senate and a Democratic White House in getting anything through Congress.

By voting against Kevin McCarthy, the Democrats would seem to have ensured the House leadership will be more antagonistic towards them and more hostile to their agenda items. For all the media talk about chaos amids Republican ranks in the House, the Democrats have also voted for more chaos and less order in the House.

All of which begs the eternal question: “What now?” This is the peril of partisanship when left unchecked: there is neither a winner nor a loser, just chaos. For every momentary bit of orgasmic glee felt by various actors in this mess, no one emerges from Kevin McCarthy’s ouster in a stronger position.

Matt Gaetz and the Republican hardliners did successfully flex their political muscles in a momentary burst of political relevance, but how have they changed the political calculus within the Congress? How does ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker facilitate advancing conservative Republican agenda items through a Democratic Senate?

Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats are in the minority within the House, and cannot play kingmaker until they reclaim it. Yet they could and did play king killer, but to what effect? How does replacing Kevin McCarthy with a more strident, more conservative, more partisan, and—most importantly—less trusting Speaker facilitate advancing Democrat legislation through a Republican House?

The House Republicans successfully demonstrated party unity…almost. Their ability to project a unified front was completely undone by 8 hardline conservatives who can be as critical of GOP leadership as they can be of Democratic leadership.

Around November 17, the government runs out of money again, and we will once again be faced with more shutdown psychodrama. At that time, what will have changed, except for less willingness among Democrats and Republicans for working together to pass leglastion?

How does ousting McCarthy make those budget negotiations in November any easier? Does Matt Gaetz truly believe the Democrats will be cowed into submission on anything?

While the media likes to prattle on about the “Republican civil war”, the divides are clearly more complex than internecine Republican power struggles. Animosity and distrust between Republicans and Democrats have also played a major role in removing McCarthy as Speaker. That animosity and that distrust will not evaporate between now and November 17, nor even between now and the 2024 election.

The House of Representatives is clearly divided and clearly dysfunctional. How it hopes to pass any legislation at all in coming months, including the next budget for funding the federal government, is not at all clear.

Kevin McCarthy narrowly avoided a government shutdown last week. This week Matt Gaetz may very well have engineered a Congressional shutdown—and no one has any plan for putting Congress back to work.