The Definition of Insanity
The House keeps voting for a new Speaker ... and they're no closer to choosing one. Plus I'll be joined by Congressional procedure wunderkind Matt Glassman for tomorrow's Zoom Chat
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.
It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, if that’s true, the US House of Representatives has lost its f***ing mind.
As I write this, the House is on its 9th ballot for Speaker, and we’re no closer to a resolution. Today has seen three failed votes, and that’s after Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy made additional concessions last night to the GOP’s Taliban caucus. At this point, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the goal of the anti-McCarthy contingent is to stop McCarthy. Full stop.
As to an alternate choice, which the entire GOP caucus could rally behind, it’s hard to see who that could be. Yesterday, the insurgents backed Florida Rep. Byron Donalds. Today, Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern got a handful of votes, as did Donalds. Rep. Matt Gertz voted for Donald Trump. It’s yet one more piece of evidence that the 20 holdouts have no strategy and Plan B. As I noted yesterday, it’s pure political nihilism.
Honestly, I have no idea how this ends or what the next steps could be … which is why I’m calling in the bug guns for tomorrow’s Truth and Consequences Zoom Chat. Matt Glassman has become a Twitter star over the past week because the man knows congressional procedure inside and out. So this is huge get for T&C! He’s going to join me at 12:30 tomorrow as we try to figure out how the House of Representatives finds a way out of this mess. You won’t want to miss this one. Here’s the link.
In the meantime, I have a new piece up at MSNBC that argues that no matter how this melodrama plays out, Kevin McCarthy will lose.
Even if McCarthy somehow wins the speakership, the No. 1 job of a legislative leader is to muster votes. If McCarthy already can’t follow through on this first and most basic task, how is he going to do it when there are real and substantive issues at stake — like appropriation bills and the looming debt limit? Maybe the insurgents give in after more concessions, but the message will be that everything is negotiable and that McCarthy can be pressured. If he prevails, the next two years will pivot from crisis to crisis: government shutdowns and debt limit crises, not to mention constant no-confidence votes from recalcitrant Republicans. Nothing will get done. And McCarthy, who is already a figure of pity rather than scorn, will be further reduced in the eyes of his colleagues and the electorate.
And he really has no one to blame but himself.
While it’s not impossible to have sympathy for any political leader facing the reactionary extremists of the GOP’s far-right bloc, McCarthy made his bed. Throughout his 16 years in Congress, he has worn his political ambitions on his sleeve. He isn’t associated with any notable policy objectives, unlike Paul Ryan or Newt Gingrich. In a party that demands orthodoxy, his politics are malleable and transactional. He isn’t a leader who projects confidence or ideological consistency but rather a follower of the prevailing political winds.
I will say this on McCarthy’s behalf. He’s in a slightly impossible position because, going back more than 25 years now, there’s been a chaos faction of the House GOP that seeks to out-extreme or out-conservative the party leadership. Newt Gingrich did it to Bob Michel in the early 1990s, which started this process, and since 2010, John Boehner and Paul Ryan suffered through these right-wing attacks as well — both eventually leaving Congress in disgust. The irony is that McCarthy used to be one of the so-called “young guns” looking to shake up Washington. Now those guns have been turned on him.
As the party has become more Trumpified and even less interested in governing, the challenge for the GOP leadership has become more acute. The extremists demand ideological orthodoxy; delight in causing chaos; are more focused on trending on Twitter or showing up on Fox News than actually legislating, and have virtually no interest/incentive to compromise. This situation could go on for days, weeks, or even months, and there’s little reason to think they care. They won’t pay a high political price; if anything, it could boost their credibility on the far right. So there was always going to be a fight like this, no matter who was the wannabe Speaker.
However, my sympathy is very limited. McCarthy has indulged the jihadists, just as he and his fellow Republicans have indulged Donald Trump, going on 6 years now. Maybe he had no choice, and maybe there was no way out, but it’s hard to sympathize with the guy who helped make all this dysfunction possible. Indeed, as noted above, what’s made things worse for McCarthy is that his ambition to be Speaker was so obvious — and his politics so clearly transactional — that it’s difficult for anyone in the GOP caucus to fully trust him. And by projecting such obvious weakness he’s been incredibly easy to push around. Simply by being a member of the House GOP leadership, McCarthy was likely going to face opposition, but the intensity of it has a lot to do with how McCarthy has handled his job as GOP leader. So he was dealt a bad hand, but he’s made the situation far worse.
Matt and I will discuss this tomorrow at 12:30 so come join us then.
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South Carolina’s Supreme Court overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban.
Damar Hamlin is showing dramatic improvement.
Musical Interlude
Typo alert: Gaetz, not Gertz.