Like a lot of other Democrats I’ve gotten a kick out of watching the Republicans flail around trying to pick a successor to the hapless McCarthy. There has probably never been anyone seriously considered for Speaker of the House as unqualified as Gym Jordan in the entire history of this country. He, along with so many of the extreme right contingent that now dominates the Republican Party, is emblematic of what I believe is a Congress bought and paid for by the same type of billionaires that have bought the Supreme Court. A stupid and/or half insane congressman is a feature, not a bug, if the point is to build a Congress full of people who will do the bidding of the rich.
But while it’s been fun, I can’t help wondering where this will lead us in the end. The House hasn’t functioned much since the Republicans regained control in 2022, but, given the way the rules are written, it can’t function at all without a Speaker. Again, that’s a feature, not a bug, to some on the right. But we have the ridiculous debt ceiling issue to face again in a few weeks, and we should have a functioning Congress to deal with the fallout from the war in Israel, to mention only two issues that need some attention.
It’s hard to see how this gets resolved. The total nutcases (Gaetz, Boebert, Greene, et. al., will demand a nutjob, and the “moderates” won’t go along. The “moderates” are between a rock and a hard place. If they okay a Jordan type, they lose the sane vote in their districts, and most of them come from tossup districts or districts Biden won in 2020. If they don’t okay a Jordan type, their MAGA voters may stay home, and those are votes they can’t afford to lose. That assumes, of course, that Trump is in jail by then, but even if he’s the candidate, many of those MAGAs will simply not vote in those races. Oh, for the days, they must be moaning, when we got the nutjob vote by telling them what they want to hear but not giving them what they think they want. The nutcases in Congress, of course, will never vote for a “moderate”.
The only practical solution is for the “moderates” to put up one of their own, and make a deal with the Democrats to modify the rules of Congress to make it easier to get a bill on the floor for a vote. There’s no rational reason why the Speaker should be able to keep critical legislation from being considered. I don’t see this happening because the “moderates” don’t want to further inflame the MAGA base, and the Democrats have learned that you can’t trust Republicans, so any promises made are worthless.
We’ll see.
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