Tweet This
(NOTE: This article has been updated based on the breaking news of Kevin McCarthy's decision not to run for speaker.)
Today’s shocking withdrawal by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speaker’s election confirms what has become increasingly apparent over the past year: Republican’s don’t know how to deal with what is now the U.S. equivalent of a parliamentary system of government.
Not counting Democrats, there are now three political parties in the House of Representatives. They all call themselves “Republicans” and caucus together but they so don’t play well together in the sandbox that they’re really different entities in an extremely fragile coalition.
The largest of these three parties is the “Boehners” – the more establishment and mainstream (relatively speaking, of course) group that’s thinks it’s job is to govern. They are about 150 Boehners, which means it doesn’t have enough votes to do anything without the support of the other two parties.
The second of the three is the “Scareds” – the around 50 members that generally vote with the Boehners except when they’re afraid of defying the third party (see below) on particularly touchy issues. These Republicans are all from very conservative GOP congressional districts where the primary rather than the general election is what determines whether they return to Congress. They are vulnerable to politically fatal primary challenge from the third party if they support the Boehners on high-profile votes.
The third is what used to be known as the tea party but is now commonly referred to as the “Freedom Caucus” – the between 40 and 50 ultra-conservative Republicans that militantly disagree with the Boehners on strategy and tactics and are willing to break away whenever doing so suits their needs. They don’t fear any reprisals when they do so and often oppose the Boehners with impunity.
Whenever the Freedom Caucus withdraws its support, the Boehners don’t have enough Republican votes to get anything done, especially when the threat of retribution pushes at least some of the Scareds to support what the Freedom Caucus wants.
Led by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) himself, the Boehners have generally kept the three-party GOP coalition together by adopting Freedom Caucus positions until the very last minute and then getting that party’s tacit approval to get the votes it needs from Democrats…the other political party in the House. This repeatedly is how the Boehners handled all of the big budget-related issues like government shutdowns, debt ceiling raises and fiscal cliffs. At the end, the Freedom Caucus praised the Boehners for making the good fight and took credit for pushing them to (or in the case of the shutdown over) the limit.
But the Freedom Caucus has now changed the rules by which it will participate in the three-party GOP coalition: It is now insisting the Boehners run the House the way it wants or it will take its ball, that is, its 40-50 votes, and go home.
This has all become evident in what’s happened over just the past few weeks.
First, the leader of the Boehner party decided to resign because his ruling coalition had disintegrated. He realized that he no longer has the votes to prevent a federal government shutdown without enraging the Freedom Caucus minority party and putting his prime minister position in serious jeopardy.
Second, the Freedom Caucus withheld its vote in the Republican caucus for the proposed new Boehner party leader – Kevin McCarthy -- which prevented him from having the 218 votes he needs to be elected the next prime minister.
Third, McCarthy withdrew.
Fourth, it’s immediately clear that there’s no obvious person to take McCarthy’s place.
McCarthy obviously saw what Boehner saw several weeks ago. He either would have had to meet at least some of the Freedom Caucus’ demands for high-level leadership and committee positions (the equivalent of ministries in a parliamentary system) and take-no-prisoners legislative tactics, tell the Freedom Caucus to go to hell, get Democrats to support him or decide not to run.
Working with the real opposition political party – the Democrats – would have been the natural move in a true parliamentary system (Take a look at the excellent television series Borgen (especially this episode) to see how this would work). But it would also have been political suicide. McCarthy would have had to make significant concessions to House Democrats for them to abandon the standard congressional practice of voting for someone from your own party or voting present and it’s doubtful he could have done that without a serious effort from the three GOP parties to unseat him. His ability to lead would have been significantly weakened at the very least.
So McCarthy pulled a Boehner and decided to let someone else deal with the situation.
In a parliamentary government this would lead to a call for a new election. In the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, there’s just chaos.
