If you go over to the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report and click on their map of House districts, you can get an idea of the huge red swath of America that feels comfortable with the lunatic stylings of Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson and Glenn Beck. These are folks, our fellow citizens, who don’t do so much as a double-take when a candidate for office accuses the president of being a secret Muslim or calls for creating alligator-filled moats surrounded by electrified fences at our southern border. Want to replicate Adolph Eichmann’s railway transportation efficiency for moving undesirable human beings?
Well, that sounds like a swell idea.
After all, Eichmann famously declared in his defense “that he was guilty of arranging the transports, but he did not feel guilty for the consequences.” The “Deport them all” order doesn’t contemplate consequences for the human beings who are targeted.
In this environment, there isn’t much about the mood of the Banausinnen that is compatible with the leadership of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, so it’s natural that the Republican congressional leadership should succumb sooner rather than later to some kind of vicious political challenge from within.
For the Speaker, this could be sooner than most people think. Technically, I think it is already the case that the Democrats have the power to save Boehner’s political life or let him be overcome by the braying dogs. And the right, knowing this, is seeking to frame it as a fatal condition.
If all 188 Democrats banded together and simply voted “present” on the motion to oust Boehner, the incumbent Speaker would easily win a majority of his 247-member GOP conference. He would just needs 124 votes, or more than half of the GOP lawmakers voting that particular day.
But striking such a deal with Democrats would further infuriate the right, making it even more difficult for Boehner to bring along conservatives on a host of fiscal issues he’ll have to confront this year, including raising the debt ceiling, a fight over budget caps and extending highway funding.
Conservatives say Boehner would be committing political suicide if he relies on Pelosi to save his hide.
Such a move would expose his weakness and ruin his credibility within the GOP conference, they say, putting him in an even worse standing with the far right than he is today.
“If the votes called to vacate the chair, then I see Boehner resigning,” the conservative lawmaker said of a possible floor vote to remove the Speaker. “He could go cut a deal with Pelosi, but would you really want to govern after that, knowing that Democrats saved your bacon?
“He’d be worse off — it’d be an embarrassment,” the source added. “That would be pretty pathetic to want [the speakership] that badly that you would take it under those circumstances.”
I guess we should talk about the office of the Speaker of the House, because it isn’t the same thing as the head of one particular party (that would be the Majority and Minority Leaders). Technically, the Speaker doesn’t even have to be an elected member of Congress. The only requirement is that an absolute majority of elected House members support the Speaker, and if they support Kim Kardashian, then she’s the Speaker. While it’s true that the House has never chose a non-member to lead them, the fact that they could highlights that it’s a position of majority leadership that isn’t necessarily the same thing as being the leader of the most populous party. It’s only because we really only have two parties that the Speaker is always from a party than enjoys an absolute majority rather than, say, a strong plurality. We don’t get consensus picks for Speaker, but the schism in the modern Republican Party has grown to a point that we really ought to have a consensus Speaker, if only so that we can pay our bills on time.
This is already how the House works in practice, as the Democrats have repeatedly had to provide the votes Boehner needs to keep the government operating. Having a challenge to his gavel that formalizes this arrangement wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, and it wouldn’t be any cause for shame on Boehner’s part.
But it would be an earthshaking event because it would bring to light these distinctions and features of our system that are usually hidden. I imagine Europeans would be just as perplexed and fascinated by the spectacle as they were watching us examine hanging chads while cable news anchors painfully tried to explain the rules of the Electoral College.
It would certainly present a cause for us all to reevaluate how we understand the political situation in the country and in the Republican Party in particular. The majority in the House would not be a Republican majority anymore, which is why the Democrats could at least in theory demand some leadership posts and committee chairs in return for saving Boehner.
That wouldn’t happen in this go-round simply because the break with tradition would be too much and Boehner would resign rather than preside over such a coup against his own party. But it would be structurally how Congress should be organized, and that would eventually become the reality just because the logic of it is so strong.
In fact, if Boehner were to resign, the Democrats could at least open up negotiations with what remained of Boehner’s leadership team to see what price they are willing to pay to remain in control. If they chose to vote for their own political funerals by supporting a far-right Speaker, then they too would be lacking in political imagination as well as basic survival skills.
Don’t count on ambitious (moderate Republican) politicians failing to adapt to the new political reality for long, though, because those bills gotta get paid.
“and that would eventually become the reality just because the logic of it is so strong.”
I do not understand what you mean by this.
As to your post in general, I think it would generate political assassination attempts if it happened.
Okay, try this.
For a moment, forget you ever heard of the U.S. Congress and that you know nothing about it other than it is responsible for funding the American government.
If there is a group in Congress that (by voting for to appropriate money) is responsible for operating the government, then that group ought to be the group in power and the group that makes the ultimate decisions about how that money is spent.
If that group doesn’t align on any left-right Democrat-Republican axis, that’s of no consequence, really. They’re still the functional majority.
What we’ve had for several years now is a functional majority in which most of the members have no say in how the money is spent, and have no leadership positions or committee chairs.
That’s not how any parliamentary system works and it’s not how Congress should work.
The reason that Pelosi has gone along with this so far is because:
But, if we get the devil we don’t know anyway, and if they don’t pay the bills, then a second coup becomes necessary. And once we have the devil and we have the chaos, there’s no reason to hold back on making reasonable demands for power-sharing.
As for the elusive moderate Republicans, they run the House right now but are on the cusp of being overthrown. If they are overthrown, it won’t be long before the consequences of not paying our bills become so acute that something needs to be done.
At that point, the only solution is a consensus Speaker. We have this already in practice, but not in a fair and sensible way.
A coup will break the GOP in two, in other words, because at the end of the day there are only two possibilities:
Ah, got it thanks. I don’t think moderate Republicans would have the guts to form a ‘coalition’ government openly until after a disaster like a debt default, but I agree that is probably how Congress should work.
A shame Reagan is dead and therefore, ineligible. Hastert’s little legal problem makes him a no-go. And too many dislike Newt. Ted Cruz is otherwise employed. Going through the laundry list of possible non-members of the House, only one pops out as someone that would be willing and able to take the job — Romney — and that wouldn’t satisfy a majority. I’d suggest they go with Liz Cheney.
Just for the sake of argument, could you please name 3 of those “Moderate” Republicans?
Peter King would do it. Not sure who else.
Maybe Amash.
Maybe one or two of the California Republicans? Some of them are getting pretty nervous about the direction of the national party.
Traveling back in time from the future, King is denouncing Boehner’s resignation as a victory for crazies.
The thing with the CA republican delegation is while they have a first hand look at craziness sending them into obsolescence, they also come out of that same group so as time passes more are fine with it.
So let me get this straight:
Peter King (“There are no good mooslims”) is a moderate.
Justin Amash (opposes the ACA, abortion under any circumstances, opposed the NDAA) is a moderate.
and there might be another somewhere in the California delegation.
YOU GUYS CAN’T NAME 3 MODERATE REPUBLICANS.
To my mind, this means that for all intents and purposes:
THERE ARE NO MODERATE REPUBLICANS
Moderate Republicans in our time are the ones who want to pay our bills.
By THAT definition, Mussolini was a moderate because he only wanted to conquer Tunisia and Ethiopia.
I would be good with a full-on 4-way split, from left-to-right:
I think that would be an honest and orderly arrangement of things, but I do not know how sustainable it would be or how the final numbers in the House would turn out.
So Booman thinks there could be a Democratic Party re-alignment with Boehner. Sorry I don’t see it. Boehner is the leader of the most dishonest wing of the GOP. I think people on both sides of the aisle are tired of the lies. Here’s one of their leaders, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), “The right-wing Marxists have teamed up with Pelosi.” Right-wing Marxists? Who wants to deal with this sort of mendacity?
In your groupings above I could see the Democratic Socialists, let’s call them The Bernies, and the Tea Party, lets call them The Trumps seeking common goals. Because let’s face it you pretty much know where you stand with the Trumps so why not deal with the group you can at least have an honest conversation with.
Look you are not going to de-fund Planned Parenthood, or repeal Obamacare anyway, so why not agree on that and then get some stuff done – and re-elected.
Defeat the TPP, protect SS and Medicare (yes most Trumps support these winning American ideas), protect American jobs (the Bernies and Trumps prefer different methods but agree on legislating protectionism)… there’s more, you get the idea. That’s what I’d do.
Good post, Booman. Thanks.
If only John Boehner delighted in wielding political power the way Willie Brown did in the California legislature, this could already have happened.
Thanks for your insights, Martin. This could be how the fever finally breaks. Perhaps those in leadership of the GOP can see where things are headed, with Trump appearing unstoppable in the primaries and a good chunk of their House caucus making governing impossible. Perhaps they’ll decide it’s time for a coalition government. And then perhaps the Republican party will reform or split in two.
Sooner or later, something along these lines appears likely because old folks aren’t dropping fast enough to rob their rump of the party from their power to gum up the works again and again. A coalition in the House together with a Goldwater-type debacle on election day would probably make clear to everyone — even those in the media who would rather drink poison than acknowledge where we are and where we’re going — that a realignment has occurred.
I think this is exactly right. The GOP is going to split eventually, and sooner is more likely than later. It doesn’t seem like there are any moderate Republicans any more, but that’s only because they have to kowtow to the base. They will moderate when they see a better political future in moderation.
The fever has to get higher still but I think that appears to be in the cards. The curtain is closing on the Obama Presidency, but the Republicans are going to eat a lot more shit on the way to that end because Obama doesn’t believe in lame ducks. First, they will lose on any budget/shutdown battle. Second, Obama is going to get a global climate agreement in December. Third, Obama’s last agenda item is criminal justice and race. It isn’t going to be pretty for the Republicans.
The Republican base will be in a rage come 2016. What will fuel that rage to the absolute height? Hillary Clinton, running on the Obama record and agenda, absolutely crushes the Republican. (I can’t decide whether they would be angrier if Trump lost or if Bush lost.) Crushed by the one person the Republican base hates as much as Obama. Crushed by Hillary Fucking Clinton.
That’s when the fever breaks. If I’m honest with myself I’ll admit part of the reason I support Hillary is because a Clinton victory would be the absolutely worst result imaginable for the Republicans.
I’d like to think you are right, Tom, but having lived most of my life in the Deep South … nah. This fever is here for the duration of my life, at least.
The fever breaks when those people who can be moved out of the swamp are moved. We will know when it happens when the establishment Republicans stop trying to please the tea party and start trying to deal with Democrats and the issues that face the country.
Yes, I agree. Tea Party folks, many of them, may be so deeply enmeshed in their world view that they won’t change. But the ones who are kissing their butts will at some point see that it’s not serving their interests. That’s when the crazy breaks. And I think you’re right — it’s when the crazies push things to such an extreme, and there’s so little reward in it because they’re actually paying a political price, the former moderates can no longer abide.
.. and Boner quits.
Looks like Boehner took a third option.