Chaos, self-cannibalization, embarrassment and political gravedigging might be what comes to mind when describing the House of Representatives.
In fact, these are all words in the headlines of every major news organization reporting the last 20 days (and counting) the House of Representatives have gone without a speaker.
The Speaker of the House is one of the most important members of the legislative branch and third in line to the presidency. Their role is essential in communicating legislation between Washington officials and the public. Without them, legislation goes unpassed and non-negotiable.
How can you battle the terms of agreement without a representative doing the bidding? You can’t.
After a 269-day speakership — the shortest in over 140 years — the House of Representatives is leaderless. And to boot, it’s the first time a speaker has ever been voted out of office.
This mayhem is just another ramification for MAGA-influenced anti-government conservatism driving our country’s governing body into an unproductive and shameful wasteland of soap-opera-level quality. Considering there’s a debt-ceiling deal threatening a government shutdown and two global conflicts, there’s no time for the American government to be in this position.
While former speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the position a little over two weeks ago, the impending doom started over six months ago — the moment McCarthy was sworn in.
It took 15 rounds of voting and one of the slimmest voting majorities for McCarthy to officially fill the position. This came at the cost of concessions to the hard right, particularly members of the Freedom Caucus.
Most emblematic of his vulnerability in the speakership though was allowing the possibility for any one member to raise a motion to expel him. This meant that any one person, probably someone unsatisfied with him for any given reason, would be allowed to attempt to remove him.
That’s exactly what happened.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, an attention-seeking Republican from Florida, summoned a vote on the “motion to vacate.” And after a stunning upset, McCarthy lost his speakership, despite hailing from the present majority party.
“Chaos doesn’t scare me! American decline does,” Gaetz wrote on social media following up the ensuing disarray.
The disruption and outrage we’ve seen from the Gaetz brand of Republicans works well when the minority party benefits from being flashy and brazen. But when granted the power, and in context of the majority party, they’ve proven to be unserious in the actual governing part of their jobs.
In short, around a dozen people are suppressing the ability of over 400 other elected officials to run the government effectively — the infighting among Republican leaders is holding their entire party hostage. That’s a massive failure on the part of the Republicans and comes as a disappointment to all Americans who are ultimately affected by intraparty stagnancy.
In the days following McCarthy’s departure, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise abandoned his bid for speakership. Following that, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan dropped out after three failed votes. Now, nine Republican candidates are vying to be the next Speaker of the House, including Pennsylvania’s Dan Meuser.
Moving out of the unnerving soap opera and into the realm of pure power politics, it’s hard not to see how these recent events have given Democrats a wonderful opportunity to win back the House in the 2024 election.
Both parties have relied heavily on negative partisanship in ads to mobilize voters in previous elections, and with Republicans reduced to infighting and unable to effectively govern as the majority party since gaining it in the 2022 midterms, the attack ads almost write themselves.
If Republicans in the House cannot even agree on a speaker, how can people trust them to wield power in our government?
We should point out that, though many of the members of the Editorial Board lean left politically, attack ads, even those that benefit Democrats, are not healthy for or beneficial to democracy.
And if this were swapped party-wise, we would likewise criticize the Democratic party for similar disruption.
Still, adjectives like “beneficial” and “healthy” can hardly be used to define any part of current American politics, so we’ll take what we can get — and we hope we can get someone soon.
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