The New Neo

It’s very common for me to see a question – sometimes rhetorical and sometimes otherwise – that can be answered rather easily with a simple search. Most of the time I don’t mind doing that search, but I wonder why people don’t do it themselves more often. After all, one of the good aspects of the internet is that it gives us the ability to look things up quickly without hauling ourselves to the library and spending a ton of time locating the proper source. It’s all here at our fingertips – literally.

Sometimes the searching isn’t so simple, of course. But it often is. For example, I sometime read something like, “No GOP politician has ever spoken out against [fill in the blank] or supported [fill in the blank].” And yet all I have to do is take 30 seconds of searching to find quotes from GOP politicians doing just that.

So, what gives? Do we often think if we haven’t heard something it means it didn’t happen? There’s a cacophony of noise out there and only some of it filters through.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention something else, which is that a huge percentage of online commenters on the right hate, despise, and detest the GOP and especially its representatives in Congress. The sense of betrayal is epic, fueled by hundreds of truly disappointing, frustrating, and infuriating incidents. That colors perceptions of just about everything that happens in Congress, from the idea that Democrats always get what they want (no, they don’t, although they often do), to the idea that Republicans in Congress are utterly corrupt liars who only care about money and are in league with the Democrats but just aren’t honest about it (the “Uniparty”).

I don’t quite agree, but not because I don’t feel some of the same feelings. And it’s not because I’m so trusting of the GOP, either. I think it’s because I’m more cynical, not less, about the possibilities of government and of Congress. I’m actually pretty cynical about all politicians. But I think that means that at a certain level I accept that the people who enter politics have certain characteristics and motivations that many of the rest of us don’t share, or we’d be entering politics too. Those characteristics don’t tend to be noble, although a few of them are. Politics is always a pretty dirty business and I think there’s something inherent in it that means it’s not going to become clean, and that purists and idealists do well in politics only in the movies. In addition, I do think that some people in Congress are quite smart, hard-working, and dedicated, but it’s not the rule and I don’t think it’s ever going to be the rule.

Plus, the GOP hasn’t had anything but narrow majorities for a long time, and because members of the GOP tend to be less likely to toe the party line than Democrats are, you always will get some defectors here and there. When majorities are large – and the Democrats often used to have very large majorities during the 20th century, although not recently – a few defections don’t matter. When majorities are small (as the rare GOP majorities have tended to be since before FDR), defections do matter – as the Democrats found out during the last Congress, when Manchin and Sinema made the rest of the Democrats gnash their teeth with frustration at their refusal to get with the program.

So just a few people can frustrate narrow Republican majorities. John McCain did that with the “skinny” Obamacare repeal in 2017, casting the deciding vote against it. His defection seems to have been a surprise:

McConnell, who seemed to exhaust every trick in the procedural playbook to get to this point, seemed surprised and undercut by the result.

The defeat ends — for now — the health care debate in Congress. The chamber adjourned following the defeat, and there are no further Senate votes this week…

Republican senators said there was no consensus and no plan for what comes next on health care. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned of potentially severe political consequences for Republicans for failing to deliver on what has been the GOP’s unifying campaign pledge for the previous three elections.

“I sadly feel a great many Americans will feel betrayed,” Cruz told reporters, “that they were lied to, and that sentiment will not be unjustified.”

The “skinny repeal” was a pared-down version of Republican proposals to undo Obamacare with no plan for what to replace it with. It would have eliminated the individual and employer mandate and key taxes, defunded Planned Parenthood for a year and eliminated key protections of health benefits that were required under Obamacare.

The bill was deeply unpopular, but GOP leaders worked to assure members it would never become law. Instead, they wanted the Senate to pass it in order to advance the legislation to a third round of negotiations with the House to try to craft a final bill both chambers could pass.

Many of you who hate the GOP for this and so many other failures will probably say it was all a plot, that McConnell knew what McCain would do and colluded with it, and that the GOP never actually wanted to repeal Obamacare. What do I think? I think the Republican Party was divided about what was an acceptable alternative to Obamacare – they’d studied and proposed tons of them – and that McCain blindsided McConnell, with great relish. I think the confused-sounding agenda described in the last paragraph – “they wanted the Senate to pass it in order to advance the legislation to a third round of negotiations with the House to try to craft a final bill both chambers could pass”- is a reflection of the way Congress works when a party doesn’t have overwhelming and united majorities in both houses. I think compromise is hard, and members of Congress used to be better at it and voters more tolerant of it. Those days aregone.

And yes, I would like to see a much better leader in there than McConnell. But whom would that person be, and would that person actually want the office? Being Speaker is a complex, difficult, and mostly thankless task, especially with such tiny majorities. And although the job seems powerful and it is, the actual power can be thwarted by just a few members of Congress and then the Speaker gets blamed for it.

But ah, you say, the Democrats stay united. My answer is that they don’t always – again, see Manchin and Sinema – and also that Democrats are different than Republicans in temperament and in the willingness to go with the group.

In other words, Republican cats are more difficult to herd than Democrat cats.

Hate on the GOP in general or certain Republicans in particular all you want. But I think we should be realistic about what’s possible in Congress and especially with a tiny majority in one house of Congress. Also, if someone in the GOP (or anyone, actually) is reported in the media and/or blogs and/or social media as having said something that gets your goat, please look up the entire quote and its context. You may get some surprises.

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.

I’m no Einstein.

(I thought I’d get that out of the way first.)

However, I’ve always liked that word: Gedankenexperiment, otherwise known as “thought experiment.” I’ve got one for you about the current brouhaha over electing a Speaker in the House.

Imagine that the majority of GOP members of the House were staunch conservatives who agree with you, and they’ve nominated a person for Speaker who is a candidate you think would be good for the job. And yet, because the GOP margin over the Democrats is very small, only a few of those GOP House members can defect from the majority or this person you like cannot win the Speakership.

In fact, no one can win the Speakership without almost all the GOP votes. So, near-unity on a Speaker candidate isn’t just desirable for some abstract reason, it’s necessary for a very practical reason.

But there’s a very small number – it might be 5 or it might be as many as 20, but it’s small compared to the total of 222 – of GOP members of the House are holding out. They are all RINOs, and they want their guy (or one of several guys). Their guys have very little support and can’t win either; in one or two cases their guys have said they don’t even want the job and wouldn’t take it. But those 5-to-20 RINO supporters hold out, ballot after ballot after ballot. You’re not sure what their endgame is, but there’s a way – highly unlikely, but theoretically possible – for them to vote “present” and facilitate the election of the leftist Democrat around whom the Democrats are solidly (with no defections whatsoever) behind.

There is some indication that the 5-to-20 RINOs holding out are jockeying for more power for themselves in committees. You hear a lot of rumors, but you don’t know what’s really going on behind the scenes. Meanwhile, the business of the House is stalled. That includes things you want to have happen – such as the cutting of funds to the IRS, or the investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden, or any number of other things on the agenda:

“If we had elected Kevin McCarthy speaker we would have already voted to defund the 87,000 new IRS agents, new border security measures, and a select committee on China,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) told the Free Beacon. “We would also be sending notices to the Biden administration that we’re coming for answers on the FBI, Department of Justice, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and conflicts of interest surrounding the Biden family.”

Without a House speaker, the legislative body grinds to a halt. No members can be sworn in, introduce legislation, or issue subpoenas. For all intents and purposes, the United States currently doesn’t have a House of Representatives. But the failure to find a House speaker carries political consequences as well. The longer the fight drags on, the longer Biden, who is expected to run for reelection in 2024, goes without virtually any real oversight in the form of hearings and subpoenas.

So, how would you feel about all of that?

Commenter “Gregory Harper” writes:

What I don’t understand is why people like Dan Crenshaw also seem so desperate to have McCarthy elected. So desperate that he calls fellow Republicans “terrorists”. Surely there are alternatives to McCarthy. If McCarthy really cares about the party and the country, he should step aside.

If you contemplate the hypothetical I’ve offered in this post, maybe it’s easier to understand why someone like Crenshaw calls them “terrorists.” Maybe it’s also easier if we take a look at what Crenshaw actually said instead of the soundbite:

Look, [the holdouts] came into this without a plan. And look, if you want to and here’s. Here’s what I’ll tell them. What I’ve been telling them. If you wanted to have someone else as speaker, you know, you knew this moment was coming. Is like, you know, an election is coming. And when you know an election is coming, you start running. You start building support. You go out and you fundraise. If there’s somebody else wanted to run, if they want to run a different candidate, well, they could have been competing with Kevin McCarthy this whole time. But they didn’t. They had no plan. They have some list of demands that mostly have been met. The speech Scott Perry just gave about what needs to change and etc., etc., those have been met as have largely been agreed to in the rules package. So we don’t know what the hell he’s talking about at this point. They settled on Jim Jordan for a while. He’s obviously very well-respected conservative leader, but then they did some, but now they’re settling on a freshman named Byron Donalds. I, I don’t know where that came from. They’re they’re making the argument that it’s about identity politics and that we should have a black speaker, that that’s actually where they’re going with this. No one knows what the heck is going on or what their end game is. They basically closed all the doors and pulled, depends on the grenades and are staring at each other like, what the hell do we do? Everyone is trying to work with them in good faith to give them an off ramp, because this is this is a terrible situation for them personally. They are responsible for holding up a GOP agenda. They could be responsible for Democrats pulling some really clever deals, maybe forcing a plurality vote, maybe potentially getting a rules package the Democrats want. I don’t know. I mean, the possibilities we could talk for hours about them, but they’re dangerous for Republicans. The best solution here is go with the guy that already won 85% of our internal vote. He won the primary with 85%. And so the obvious thing to do after that is to vote for him in the general election, which is what we’re doing now. We’ve asked these different members repeatedly what they want and they can’t tell us they give us these policies to give us. It’s like they’re talking on the campaign trail. They say the place doesn’t work. Washington is broken. Enough is enough. We don’t trust the system. We don’t trust it. You follow the rules and we’re like, What? What does that mean? Give me something specific. And they won’t…

Lauren Boebert…gets up and she basically tells Donald Trump to f off [after his support of McCarthy for Speaker]. That’s what she just did. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I just I just couldn’t believe it. So I don’t know what path they’re going down. I think, again, they’ve pulled the pins on the grenades and they locked themselves inside of a room and they were trying to give them off ramps and they weren’t articulate what those off ramps are. I mean, it’s genuinely frightening…

[If Steve Scalise is nominated] we all know [this dynamic] wouldn’t change, which is why we can’t give in. And so those of us who are standing against this, we’re standing for principle. They are standing for notoriety. They’re standing for that extra news that because nobody ever cares about them and they’re frustrated by that, and they want that extra news that we know that we can’t give in to this because then they will always run the conference and they’ll just get another scalp and another scalp, whether it’s whether it’s Boehner or Paul Ryan or them McCarthy. Scalise would just be next and we all know it. We just can’t allow that to happen. That’s why those of us are saying like, look, you pushed us into this corner. So now we’re now we’re saying we won’t vote for anyone but McCarthy. That’s why we’re saying it, because we cannot let the terrorists win. That’s basically what’s happening. And I do have to go.

You don’t have to agree with him to understand exactly what he’s saying and why he’s saying it. And he didn’t call the holdouts “terrorists” – he used an analogy that involves the inadvisability of giving in to the pressure of terrorists, a small group who want to throw their weight around and use threats of violence to do it. He sees the holdouts as basically destructive rather than constructive, as well as publicity seekers.

To me it makes some sense, mainly because of what he explains in the first paragraph I excerpted from his interview: they have no candidate of their own. They need a viable alternative or they leave themselves very open to charges such as Crenshaw’s.

NOTE: I realize that a lot of people detest McCarthy because he didn’t advance the right’s agenda when he could have done so, and therefore they don’t trust him at all (I’m hardly keen on him myself). Their argument is that he won’t do what he’s promised to do, such as investigating Biden or dealing with the IRS or any of it. He’s pledged to do it, the House members seem determined to do it, and someone like Crenshaw and lots of other House members like Jordan and Scalise (who voted for him for Speaker) seem to trust him to do it. Why not trust them? – because until a viable alternative shows itself, this current escapade seems merely a case of obstructionism.