A painful precedent

The federal government has entered a new level of dysfunction. It’s like being in the middle of your favorite soap opera when the power goes out.

For the first time in U.S. history, the House of Representatives has ousted its duly-elected speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California.

“They don’t get to say they’re conservative because they’re angry and they’re chaotic,” McCarthy said of the eight Republican colleagues who voted against him. “That’s not the party I belong to. The party of Reagan was if you believed in your principles, that you could govern in a conservative way. They are not conservative and they do not have the right to have the title.”

Forget governing – they’re all too busy posturing, pandering and party pearl-clutching.

It’s like playing a game without knowing what constitutes a win.

And now, all 200 Democratic House members voted in unison to oust him, just days after he worked across the aisle with Democrats, to the discontent of his own party, to pass a spending bill.

McCarthy demonstrated that he can make bipartisan deals, albeit eleventh-hour ones to avert a national crisis. Some will argue it was the only time he has ever put the country ahead of his political career.

No, the Dems didn’t get everything they wanted. There was no support for Ukraine, but there was domestic disaster relief and funds to keep thousands of government employees from being furloughed and National Parks from shutting down.

With this vote, Democrats will be on record voting with the far-right GOP representatives they claim they don’t want to support.

The Democrats gave the far-right fringe exactly what they wanted. And now they have to face the fallout. No, they had no obligation to save McCarthy, that’s true. However, I see this as more of a choice between function and dysfunction.

If just four of them would have broken with their party, they could have gone back to work for the country right away.

The first time around, all 212 Democrats voted for Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, in 14 of the 15 votes.

So what happens next?

It is nearly certain that any candidate the Dems put forth to fill the vacancy will not get any support from the far-right GOP legislators that voted McCarthy out.

Patrick McHenry of North Carolina has been named speaker pro tempore, which means he will lead the House until a new speaker can be named.

And who knows how long that will take. I don’t even really like Kevin McCarthy. I just know that even with the majority, it took the Republicans 15 votes and a whole lot of hand-wringing to elect a speaker in January.

At the time McCarthy was the only man standing with (nearly) enough votes to lead the House.

We were following along in the newsroom as it unfolded. With each vote, “breaking news” of another failed attempt by McCarthy hit our phone screens. At the beginning of the longest speaker election since the Civil War era, 20 Republican colleagues voted against him. At the end, six of them voted “present” to lower the threshold he needed to secure the spot.

There were concessions too … big ones. McCarthy agreed to disallow members from voting via proxy, put limitations on spending bills and brought back a more than 100-year-old rule that gave legislators the authority to reduce federal government employee salaries. And the kicker – he agreed to allow a “motion to vacate” from a single House member to lead to his ouster. He all but fulfilled his own destiny with that one, even though the rule was only recently changed to make removal more difficult during Nancy Pelosi’s reign.

The last time there was a contentious election for speaker was exactly 100 years ago, in 1923. That time it took nine ballots.

On January 5, 2023, Ron Elving for NPR wrote, “For generations it was the definition of party loyalty for every member of each party to vote for its nominee for speaker. In fact for 50 years after World War II, not a single stray vote was cast for anyone other than the two major party nominees.”

Now, just 10 months later, the House Republicans are looking for their next leader. Who knows, maybe they have someone in mind. For all I know they will have someone in place before this column goes to press.

Yet, after the chaos of this year, I don’t see that being the case. If governing was a chess game, and the players were worth their salt, they would have to know their next three moves before they made this one. I don’t think they’ve thought past yesterday.

Who needs soap operas when the Congressional Chaos saga has been renewed for another season? I’ll keep one eye open for this one.