Is the House Speaker impasse coming to an end?
I certainly hope so. The end might just be that the rebels have extracted enough concessions – some of them improvements on business-as-usual – and McCarthy gets elected. The latter is something that’s okay with me although not ideal because, as I’ve said before, no one emerged who was both better and willing to take the job.
The story as it now stands is that McCarthy got 214 votes on the most recent ballot, which was the 13th taken so far. Here’s a statement from one of the former holdouts:
We’re at a turning point. I’ve negotiated in good faith, with one purpose: to restore the People’s House back to its rightful owners. The framework for an agreement is in place, so in a good-faith effort, I voted to restore the People’s House by voting for @gopleader McCarthy.
— RepScottPerry (@RepScottPerry) January 6, 2023
What is this “framework” to which he refers? I don’t know, but the responses I see on Twitter are uniformly angry at him. For example: “Wow! Y’all caved quickly! This sucks!”. And at Instapundit it’s much the same thing in the comments there; for example, “Flipping the bird at their constituents in the process” and this:
That Republicans are even considering McCarthy for speaker in the first place is proof positive that Uni-party is in control and nothing will change. He might as well be a Democrat. He will let the J6ers rot in jail. There will be some showy investigations, and then sternly worded letters, and then… nothing.
I actually agree with that commenter that McCarthy and the other Republicans should have made much more of an issue of the J6 defendants and their treatment and differential prosecution. But then I can almost guarantee they would have been criticized by the left and moderates as “election deniers,” but more importantly by the right as being only about blah-blah-blahing and not doing anything. But without the power to control the DOJ, what could they actually do in terms of freeing these people? As for “showy investigations,” I’ll take it. The reality is that the GOP only controls the House by a hair, and controls neither the Senate nor the presidency.
The “framework” might involve this sort of thing:
Kim Strassel’s [WSJ] column is behind the paywall; I can read it. Her point it that these dissidents have forced McCarthy to agree to returning the House to most of the pre-Pelosi rules and procedures. Implemented, these will make the House once again a body which considers bills one by one, with discussion in committee and with amendments permitted on the floor. In fact, it would be a legislative body and not merely a rubber stamp for whatever monstrous bill the Speaker concocts and forces through. Strassel says the dissidents should just take the win.
But the House holdouts have drawn a line in the sand, and once someone like Perry crosses it, that person is considered to have betrayed the cause. So I think the net result of the whole thing is more cynicism and anger, not less.
In fact, it would be a legislative body and not merely a rubber stamp for whatever monstrous bill the Speaker concocts and forces through. Strassel says the dissidents should just take the win.
In terms of passing bills that’s fine I guess, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter much at the moment without control of the Senate and Executive branch. But I wonder what this portends with regards to the debt ceiling fight?
@Nonapod:without control of the Senate and Executive branch.
The House majority alone has the power to stop bad things which is huge, and it needs to be used for conservative ends. It should not be used to extract pork from the corpse of the Republic, which is what most of the Congresscritters in both parties are going to do.
Sometimes what you don’t allow to pass is as important as what you do allow to pass. This slim House majority could have prevented Obamacare from passing, for example (provided none of the GOPe defected). If the voting rights bill from last year came back it could be stopped, and of course it could have stopped the impeachment of Trump (and it could vote to impeach Biden, if purely symbolic gestures are important to you).
Frederick:
You write:
Agreed.
But then you add:
Well, yes. But at the time Obamacare was passed, there was no GOP House majority, slim or otherwise. But I assume you know that. I assume you also know that Obamacare was passed without any GOP votes at all. There were defections, but it was by Democrats, and only enough to allow the bill to pass anyway.
Perhaps you are just trying to illustrate and underline the fact that the House majority is valuable even without control of the Senate and the presidency. If that’s what you’re saying, then I absolutely agree.
But you see a House divided (Republicans following the circus act of The Globetrotters) will be an easier target for the Democrats. Will The Globetrotters decide to play on the same team with the other Republicans?
“no one emerged who was both better and willing to take the job.”
Better is subjective but that no one else really wanted the job, which is what happened with Paul Ryan as well, is just a massive, undeniable demonstration of how degenerate and dysfunctional are the House GOP and our political elites in general. NO ONE else wants to be third in line for the Presidency? NO ONE else wants the power? NO ONE else wants the historical status? NO ONE wants to get all the media attention and donor money they can ask for? Seriously?
These people don’t care about us. They don’t care about the nation. They don’t even care about themselves. All they care about is keeping their place at the money trough.
I hope I’m wrong but I can’t see this ending well.
Mike
Bunge for Congress in 2024.
“Its Mike’s time at the trough!”
That’s inspiring.
“The framework for an agreement is in place, so in a good-faith effort, I voted to restore the People’s House by voting for @gopleader McCarthy.” RepScottPerry
Upon what basis might one trust the GOPe and McCarthy’s assurances? Trust but verification requires the ability to impose consequences if assurances prove to be empty promises.
MBunge:
Being Speaker with a tiny majority of Republicans is both a difficult and thankless task. It also requires massive fundraising. It certainly doesn’t surprise me that people don’t want the job, nor do I see that as proof of degeneracy. Quite the opposite. But yes, Congress is a dysfunctional place. Government is messy and dirty. When you find the magic formula to change that, please tell the world.
It also requires massive fundraising.
I think the expert on the history of Congress is KC Johnson. Be interested to know when floor leaders acquired the obligation to be master fundraisers. I don’t recall hearing a thing about this until the last 10 years.
When do we get to see the ‘framework’? And when is it in black letters, binding on McCarthy and everyone else?
Government is messy and dirty. When you find the magic formula to change that, please tell the world.
Prior to 1961, the federal budget was routinely balanced; state legislatures still manage that. Prior to 1981, these catch-all continuing resolutions were unknown. Over the period running from 1920 to 1970, the U.S. Senate suffered a mean of one filibuster per year. And can anyone find an example from prior to 2007 of a rank-and-file House member being stripped of his committee assignments at the say so of the floor leader?
“Being Speaker with a tiny majority of Republicans is both a difficult and thankless task. It also requires massive fundraising. It certainly doesn’t surprise me that people don’t want the job, nor do I see that as proof of degeneracy.”
Elected members of the House actively don’t want to be Speaker because “it’s too hard” and you don’t find that an indication that our system is degenerating?
Mike
“And when is it in black letters, binding on McCarthy and everyone else?”
I could be wrong, but I believe any rules of the House are only binding until the House itself votes to waive them. So, if the uniparty ever finds these new rules inconvenient, I can’t imagine it will be a problem to get around them.
Mike
I imagine fund raising is the ideal way to keep House members in line. Having a $100 million slush fund, ready to primary any errant Rep. would have a chilling effect.
My understanding is one of the agreements will be the Speaker not using that money to punish the 20 rebel/patriots.
I wonder why they’re coming back at 10pm to vote. Sundance thinks it’s to potentially lower the threshold for a majority vote. If a half dozen or so Democratics don’t show up, that may neutralize the never-Mccarthyites. As good an explanation as any.
And wink,wink this will just be goodwill by the Democrats to help out the hapless Republican.
thats nowhere near what he meant,
so we will pretend that they are doing the peoples business,
The vote count on the 13th round does not add up:
McCarthy – 214 votes
Jeffries – 212 votes
Jordan – 6 votes
That is 432 votes. There should be 434. A Democrat from Virginia died shortly after the election and has not been replaced. Who are the two missing votes? Following Neo’s suggestion I looked it up and could not find anything. I seem to recall that one of them is missing because his wife had a premature baby but I could not find it.
@neo:Perhaps you are just trying to illustrate and underline the fact that the House majority is valuable even without control of the Senate and the presidency. If that’s what you’re saying, then I absolutely agree.
Indeed that is what I am saying. The slim House majority is an absolute veto on all legislation and spending, and quite valuable. But I predict it will not be used to further conservative ends, it will be sold to serve the ends of the Left. There will be a few GOPe defectors, McCarthy will shrug and say “slim majority, what are you going to do, send us more money and vote harder”, and there will be pork for everyone who plays along.
Those Globetrotters don’t want any karma to come back to them. Their constituents may feel differently. Time will tell.
om, did you vote for your Representative in the primary?
My understanding is one of the agreements will be the Speaker not using that money to punish the 20 rebel/patriots.
When I was active in local politics in New York, it was flatly illegal for party HQ to intervene in primary contests with a dime’s worth of expenditure. A piece of stationary was enough to be classed as an offense. I’m not sure how the law would have looked on a political action committee controlled by a legislative floor leader intervening in primary campaigns. Even if not unlawful, a floor leader intervening in primary contests outside the jurisdiction he represents is bad juju.
One thing from which the caucuses in both chambers would benefit would be rotation-in-office rules and mandatory retirement. Note, there have been since the positions were created in 1899 only four people who have occupied the position of Speaker of the House, floor leader in the House, or floor leader in the Senate for a sum of years exceeding that of Addison Mitchell McConnell: John McCormack, Sam Rayburn, Joseph W. Martin, and Nancy Pelosi. McCormack, Rayburn, and Martin were all younger than McConnell is today when they vacated those positions. (Rayburn and Martin were childless bachelors; Congress was their life. McCormack had a wife, but no children. Rayburn died in office, Martin was ejected by the House Republican caucus, and McCormack elected to retire to avoid being ejected).
It’s a measure of how decadent Congress is that this greasy crook just goes on and on.
Brian E:
I voted against him in the primary to no avail. I voted for him in the general as his opponent is a Democrat and there is a difference between Newsome and any Democrat. I hope Newsome is primaried again in 2024 but more successfully.
wesley hunt, a new member, and ken buck (who way back in 2010, ran for the senate in colorado) and was sandbagged by the gope, for some speck in their eye
Brian E:
The 4th District House Representatives for WA is Dan Newhouse not Newsome.
When I wrote the comment I knew it wasn’t right, even though he has been sending me emails to sell himself. There were at least 4 other Republicans running against him in the primary of 2022.
Bob,
Wesley Hunt (R-Tex) and Ken Buck (R-Co) didn’t vote. Not sure why. Roll Call vote info here.
if you have a lower vote threshold for a quorum, well you know the limbo game,
Frederick:
So you are predicting that McCarthy (assuming he becomes Speaker, which let’s assume) will use his post to present bills that the left wants, and that the House will pass them?
I don’t agree with that prediction. Yes, there may be a few bills brought up for a vote that very conservative people don’t like, but I very much doubt the bills he brings to a vote will be anything like what the Democrats would have passed. I guess there might be some truly bipartisan bills voted on as well. But I believe most of the bills voted on will be in line with the GOP agenda, although then a lot of people will criticize him by saying it’s all just failure theater because he knows they’ll never pass the Senate.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. But McCarthy is no good so The Globetrotters don’t need perfect, although they haven’t put up anything but a “stand -in.” (farce)
Bob Wilson:
See this:
I am very pleased to see the impasse is likely to soon be surmounted. I supported the dissidents and do hope they negotiated strenuously and in good faith. That said, I still respect the six holdouts. McCarthy doesn’t deserve the Speakership and he has earned all the distrust and ire hurled at him.
But it’s pretty clear he will become Speaker late this evening and we should be willing to give him a chance to prove our skepticism wrong.
Tell me again how The Globetrotter’s circus is so critical when Democrats are pulling this crap:
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2023/01/06/protecting-democracy-jan-6-committee-releases-social-security-numbers-of-trump-officials-n684706&
The Magnificent Seven are playing their game in the House while the Brandon junta and the rouge government agencies aren’t inconvenienced at all.
the omnibus helps fund the witchhunt, so thanks again mccarthy,
Ackler:
If they don’t go on and on and on with it, and if their demands were basically reasonable (and I’m sure some were), then I’m fine with it. It would be very interesting to see if McCarthy ends up proving skeptics wrong. But if does, many of them will almost certainly say he deserves no credit because he wouldn’t have done it without this pressure. Perhaps that would even be true, but I’d be more than willing to give him some credit, too. There’s a limit to what the House alone can accomplish, though, even if he’s willing.
Neo, I don’t quite understand Frederick’s point either. However, when I was pondering the “defund the 87,000 IRS agents”, I wouldn’t be surprised by the following:
GOPe puts forward a spending bill with a line item defending the 87,000 IRS agents.
It advances along party lines, and McCarthy heralds his Day 1 promise to defund.
But the bill goes nowhere else anytime soon, because it is not fully flushed out.
Months go by with amendment votes and changes to the bill. Adjustments made to help grease the skids of support for the Senate.
The deadline is reached (likely the debt ceiling but maybe the end of this particular Congress). None of us remember the day 1 promise and you can’t find it Googling for all the news related to the deadline. Somewhere along the way, an amendment was passed that put back funding to the IRS, but not for new IRS agents. Except, the IRS has by now hired the IRS agents. Whoops. Whoopsies.
Thus, it is a Republican bill that’s introduced, but it is amendments that water it down to something preferred less by Republican voters and won’t appease Democrats anyway.
Anna Paulina Luna’s terms look reasonable. If I was McCarthy, I’d accept.
@neo:So you are predicting that McCarthy (assuming he becomes Speaker, which let’s assume) will use his post to present bills that the left wants, and that the House will pass them?
No, because bills don’t become law after being neatly packaged and presented by the Speaker in single-issue units that the Left definitely does or does not want. For example, there’s riders, earmarks, and there’s reconciliation.
I don’t agree with that prediction.
Neither do I because bills are rarely that simple, which is something that 20 people some of us are calling “terrorists” say they are trying to move away from. The Speaker may present something relatively clean, then there will be a bunch of horse-trading, and what gets passed can have all kinds of nasty surprises in it, and there won’t be any accountability or redress. Kind of like how once you get a fake ballot in the pile there’s no way to get it back out again.
The suggested cure will be to send more money and vote harder next time.
Piled Higher and Deeper mischaracterizes the analogy that Crenshaw made, i.e., negotiation with terrorists, but tops that by inventing “some” that are calling the Globetrotters terrorists.
The suggested cure is also just a tad condescending, but then we are not worthy.
Frederick:
I never said anything about bills in single-issue units. I mentioned “bills the left wants” – are you contesting the idea that there are such bills? I was trying to get clarification on what you meant when you wrote “I predict that [the slim House majority] will not be used to further conservative ends, it will be sold to serve the ends of the Left.”
@neo:are you contesting the idea that there are such bills?
A bill “the Left wants” could take many forms. One such form is riders on a bill the Right wants. It could also take the form of reconciling a bill passed by the House toward the Senate form preferred by the Left. There’s many ways to make the sausage, and awfully hard to tell what’s in it or how it got there.
I was trying to get clarification on what you meant when you wrote “I predict that [the slim House majority] will not be used to further conservative ends, it will be sold to serve the ends of the Left.”
There is a long, complicated and accountability-diluting process of introducing, crafting, modifying, passing, and reconciling bills as the go through both Houses. The slim House majority will be used judiciously throughout this long, drawn-out, out-of-the-public-eye process to ensure that pork wanted by R’s gets inserted, but not to advance conservatism in any material way.
Does that clarify what I mean sufficiently?
Frederick:
Sort of. But why such bills would be assumed to not advance conservatism “in any material way” I don’t know. Also, the Republican Party is more conservative than it used to be, but I don’t think it’s majority conservative at this point.
Also, wouldn’t that have been called – in the olden days – a compromise? Because otherwise, nothing would be passed by a Senate controlled by the other party than the House? A compromise to get something for each party?
I’m not saying I would approve of such compromise. I’d have to know a lot more about each piece of legislation. Sometimes no legislation is better than some. But I wouldn’t assume that a compromise bill, with something for each party, is always by definition bad and a sellout.
the Republican Party is more conservative than it used to be
By what measure?
@neo:But why such bills would be assumed to not advance conservatism
I’m not assuming, I’m predicting.
Also, wouldn’t that have been called – in the olden days – a compromise?
Is compromise a good end in itself? You know it isn’t. What do wolf and sheep compromise on at dinner? You talk of the Left as an existential threat to our Republic–if those aren’t your exact words sorry–so what kinds of compromises should be made with existential threats? (Or if I’m not using your exact words however you want to describe them.)
But I wouldn’t assume that a compromise bill, with something for each party, is always by definition bad and a sellout.
Neither would I, and that’s not what I said. You’ve added “always bad” and you’ve added “by definition”. I’m predicting–not assuming or defining–that the bills that pass both Houses will not contain anything that materially advances conservatism, but will advance Leftist goals, and the reason will be that pork favorable to the GOPe is inserted as a tradeoff. A lot of things that pass will be neutral or symbolic (and those aren’t bad things, just things that fail to advance conservatism materially).
The House will hold the line on some egregious things–but that doesn’t advance conservatism, only fails to roll it back (which is also pretty important). This is a tactic, which we all should have got familiar with after four years of Trump, where you demand something outrageous in order to “compromise” on something you actually wanted. The more outrageous the demands of the Left, the more the GOPe can give up, claiming they “saved” us from the rest. (I call this the “Nordstrom Rack” tactic because their receipts tell you how much you “saved” vs inflated prices.)
The House will cave on some less egregious things which will advance the Left materially, but will get the appropriations they want; and we will be told we need a bigger majority so send money and vote harder. It’s a prediction, will love to be proven wrong.
@neo:the Republican Party is more conservative than it used to be, but I don’t think it’s majority conservative at this point.
I’ve been reluctant to ask this, it’s a rabbit hole with respect this issue here. But if you thought about it and wrote about it later, I’d be delighted to read it.
Hasn’t the Republican party been holding itself out as a conservative party since at least the 80s? Would, say, National Review, write a think piece about how Republicans have never been majority conservative but there’s more conservatives all the time and that’s a great trend? (I don’t remember such an article but maybe they have). Definitely the mainstream media paints Republicans as majority conservative, and we know why they do. But I do think most people in America, and certainly most people who vote for Republicans, do expect that the Republicans are and ought to be a conservative party.
So would you agree that (at least on the national level) Republican politicians aren’t really majority conservative but hold themselves out to be, and their voters are majority conservatives and expect their politicians to be?
There’s more than one point of disagreement you might have, so I wouldn’t ask anything further until I knew what you disagreed with there and how, but I do think that on the national level Republican politicians aren’t really majority conservative but hold themselves out to be, and their voters are majority conservatives and expect their politicians to be. Do you also think so?
(I take it further, this is why there is a GOPe that advances the goals of the Left in exchange for pork: partly out of venality and partly because they share some of those aims but can’t be explicit. Pretty sure you don’t agree with that part, but wondering what you think of the first part before getting into that.)
The Reagan Administration took an interest in notable adjustments to political economy, as did Congress during the period running from 1981 to 1983 and from 1995 to 1999. For more than 20 years, the default setting has been business as usual. Neither of the Bushes had any interest in aught but odd incremental adjustments in domestic policy. We had a Republican president and both houses of Congress from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2017 to 2019, but you’d hardly know it. George W. Bush wanted amnesty for illegal aliens and private accounts for Social Security, the former of interest to Big Donors and the latter of interest to a few policy wonks. As for Congress, the House Republican caucus has since 1999 been under the supervision of careerists (Hastert, Boehner, McCarthy) interrupted by an open borders extremist (Paul Ryan). The Senate Republican caucus has been under the supervision of Trent Lott (a man who was on the payroll of the U.S. Congress from the time he finished his law degree in 1967 to the time he landed a job at a lobbying firm at the close of 2006) and then Addison Mitchell McConnell (a bag man who has drawn public sector salaries for 49 of the last 56 years, including 41 years on the payroll of the U.S. Congress). There was an interregnum when an impressive fellow named Bill Frist was in charge. Dr. Frist had other things to do with his life than fart around in the Senate.
Just recently, we had the embarrassing spectacle of John Boehner, a man who openly loathes Ted Cruz, blubbering over Nancy Pelosi at her retirement gathering. There was no reason for him to attend and certainly no reason for him to yammer about how much his seedy daughters admire her. That’s a huge tell about the character and true dispositions of the man House Republicans wanted as their boss.
By what measure?
Dispositionally, it probably is more inclined to a starboard view than it was when Hugh Scott was in charge of the Senate Republican caucus. Of course, the Overton window never stops moving.
But the House holdouts have drawn a line in the sand, and once someone like Perry crosses it, that person is considered to have betrayed the cause. So I think the net result of the whole thing is more cynicism and anger, not less.
I haven’t picked up a whiff of this from interviews of the “House holdouts” as you put it. I am quite sure they knew from the beginning that the 14 were not NeverKevins, and the fact that there were no more than the twenty Rs after multiple votes opposing McCarthy–that none of the 200 were joining them–clued them by vote four or five that things would likely end up as they have.
They deserve to take satisfaction in what they all accomplished. The House is in a better place than it was on Jan 3.
That new rules package should attract AOC’s vote–and that of every D not in a leadership position.
Frederick:
And about whether the Republicans have long held themselves out to be conservative – actually, that’s not been my impression. Only during the Newt Gingrich years. Otherwise, a big tent has been the thing, and conservatives were seen as Other.
However, they have indeed held themselves out to be more conservative than the Democrats. And that is indeed the case; they are.
So it depends on what you’re comparing them to.
Also, you say that Republican voters are more conservative than the gist of Republican office-holders. That may be true, but I actually don’t know. It certainly is true for people who comment on blogs, and what might be called “the base.” But that’s not even remotely who all the voters are, and although those people are necessary for GOP wins they are not sufficient except in deep red areas. There are lots of more moderate GOP voters or even swing voters; I’m not sure how many but it is usually necessary to gain their votes as well. I think that dilemma has been the case for ages, although in general there’s been movement to the conservative side both in voters and in GOP politicians.