In my last piece (and my first real post), I outlined why I basically supported the actions of the 20 or so “holdouts,” Republican House representatives who were refusing to vote for Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Now that the dust has settled, I am happy to say that I believe my viewpoint was vindicated. That warrants a brief update going over the results.
One of the most common criticisms of these “holdouts” was that they had no viable replacement for Kevin McCarthy. This was correct, and I argued that it also didn’t matter, because simply holding McCarthy’s feet to the fire was an end in itself. It would have been good to have a Jim Jordan instead of McCarthy, no doubt, we just couldn’t get that far this time (hopefully next time).
Now, if the whole circus had ended with the holdouts simply folding and getting nothing for their efforts, I think I might have to alter my position. Fortunately this was not the case. All sorts of concessions were asked for and many were apparently granted. Now, some of these things are purely symbolic, if even that.
For instance, forming a committee to do some sort of big investigation into the FBI. It’s not that the FBI doesn’t deserve scrutiny, it’s just that we don’t need a drawn-out investigation to tell us things we already know. We already know the FBI plays for the other team. Unless there is some means of imposing hard consequences, a partisan investigation is empty grandstanding. And yes, of course it’s partisan, even when it’s my team doing it—I would never care about the results of any Democratic investigation about anything, so I don’t expect that a single Democrat will care about this one.
Most of the so-called concessions unfortunately fall into this category. For example, the Daily Wire article lists: “getting a vote on a border security plan, a budget that doesn’t allow the debt ceiling to increase, an end to all COVID mandates and funding, a term limit vote, single subject bills, and allowing at least 72 hours given for members to read bills.” None of these will actually become policy, though they at least have the nominal value of forcing moderates to vote on them. This is to be expected, as with Democrats controlling the rest of government, there simply isn’t much McCarthy could offer in terms of actual policy wins, even if he wanted to.
There is one concession that might actually matter, though. A rules change stating that now just a single member of the House will be able to call for a new speaker vote if McCarthy steps out of line. Previously, a majority of the chamber would have to vote in favor of such a thing, which would be nigh-impossible to achieve. This rule went from something irrelevant that none of us even knew about to potentially being an actual tool of accountability by which the few somewhat decent members of Congress can threaten the speaker and disrupt the proceedings of their mostly-worthless colleagues.
We don’t know whether this tool will actually be effective or not but the potential is clearly there. If McCarthy starts getting too squishy for conservatives’ liking, all it takes is a single Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert to call a vote on his speakership. Republican representatives would be forced to vote with McCarthy—and implicitly against their constituents—or vice versa, putting them in an uncomfortable position and making it clear who stands where. This whole circus could start up all over again.
I would say that this concession by itself warrants the speakership clown show, given that conservatives have paid no real price for it. The media have already moved on and the whole affair is already forgotten. No one will remember it by the next election in 2024. But that one-member motion to recall rule? That’s still going to be there. And besides, since McConnell took away the power of the purse in his disgusting omnibus deal with Pelosi, the House has nothing else worthwhile to do until September.
Another heuristic I would cite in support of this action is simply that the Freedom Caucus Chairman expressed pleasure with the outcome. I don’t know everything about Congress, but I know that I consider most members of it worthless or worse, and the Freedom Caucus to more or less represent the few who aren’t. So if the leader of the relative few good (or at least not entirely bad) politicians is happy, I take that as a good sign.
The obvious lessons here are:
Disrupting the establishment works, or can work.
Don’t back down. They held what, 15 speaker votes or something like that, until McCarthy finally crawled over the finish line? Imagine if the holdouts had flopped over and folded on vote 12. Applying leverage successfully requires a willingness to play hardball.
Yes, going after “your own side” is important, perhaps even more important than attacking the other side. This requires a willingness to recognize that many of the people on “your side” are really only halfway on your side. They need to be kicked in the balls until they are all the way there.
Again, these are obvious, and you would think they don’t bear repeating, but. I think we should never underestimate the right’s capability for self-sabotage. Even Marjorie Taylor-Greene, commonly perceived as the rightiest of the right, got this one wrong (although her catfight with Boebert over it was amusing). The left may be terrible at many other things, but they recognize and practice the basic, fundamental dynamics of power as easily and as naturally as breathing air.
The right sucks at this. It is perhaps our biggest weakness. We are too busy worrying about our “principles,” too scared of power to try and acquire more of it. Politics is a dirty, nasty business. The rules of politics are “whatever you can get away with,” and that’s not an exaggeration. If you want to play something clean and fair, take up a sport.
A less obvious lesson would be not to let the left’s reaction shape things entirely. Leftists were having a hoot and a holler watching all of this play out. Yes, in many cases, it is a good heuristic that if the left is for something, we should probably be against it, and vice versa. But that’s just a heuristic, not the core measure. It may be difficult to remember now, but in the earlier stages of the 2016 campaign, the left was quite friendly to Trump, who they still viewed as a joke and also believed was sabotaging the Republican primaries. A little ways down the road, and they weren’t laughing anymore.