THE VANDALS HAVE WON - UPDATED

It doesn’t matter if the next Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives is Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Elise Stafnik, Jim Jordan or Mickey Mouse. It is irrelevant if Kevin McCarthy wins or loses the Speaker of the House election. The crisis has grown beyond the point of electing one leader.

The fatal blow was struck yesterday. Whoever the winner is, they are going to live with this and it is going to change Republican politics forever - and not for the better:

Yesterday, McCarthy made a major concession to those who are voting against him by promising not to participate in open seat House Republican primaries in safe Republican districts.

What he has promised to do will allow more MAGA extremists to win House seats. McCarthy has agreed not to fund moderate or establishment candidates that can defeat extremists in safe Republican districts.

This means that within two to three more elections, as the remaining “sane” Republicans take a good look at the lay of the political landscape and conclude they’ve had enough of the insanity, that their replacements will be House Freedom Caucus members. By the election of 2030, the House Freedom Caucus will be the majority of the House Republican Caucus.

This may mean that the Republicans never form a congressional majority after 2024, but that’s almost irrelevant. A group of some 200 Republicans in Congress - and the polarization of America means no party is going to govern with the kind of majorities either party has had in the past - composed of a majority of crazies will be impossible to work with. They will be Obstructionists Only, and they will gum up the works wherever they find an opportunity. They will make efforts to actually govern excruciatingly painful.

Possibly, this agreement that McCarthy may prove to be the death knell of the Republican party in government, since if a MAGA candidate is extreme enough,that candidacy could create an opportunity for Democrats to flip safe-Republican districts. However, in the solidly-red states, their gerrymanders will insure a hard core of these people still prevail.

Any growth for Democrats will come from turning “purple” states “blue,” taking control of state legislatures and changing redistricting to more fair respresentation. This has to be a major party goal by 2030 - the party “missed the boat” in 2010, which gave the Republicans the opening to move as they have taken, which was solidified by them winning the second “decennial” election and firming up their control of state legislatures. The Democrats made a big move in reversing this by taking back control of four state legislatures this past November, but this work at the state level is going to have to not onlyu continue but increase.

Replacing Republican gerrymanders with Democratic gerrymanders isn’t necessary. Republicans need gerrymandered districts because their policies and political goals are unpopular; they can only win when they reduce the size of the opposition vote. California changed to independent redistricting, and while it gave heartburn to several solid Democrats who were forced in 2022 to run in districts that were different from what they had run in before, there is still a strong Democratic majority in the state congressional delegation, and both houses of the State Legislature have such solid Democratic majorities that Republicans are unable to create any problems in governing now. That was accomplished by “fair” districts. The fact that the majorities Democrats won last November were narrow is proof the system is working.

The “McCarthy Surrender” on financing “establishment” candidates in the primaries will likely spread to state-level offices, with a resulting increase in the number of “crazies” in state legislatures.

This “surrender” is actually something party activists on both sides have long wanted. When the DNC tried this past year to make a rule that they would no longer work with any Democratic consultant who worked with a campaign that primaried a sitting member of congress, there was a lot out outcry. (Bowel) Movement Conservatives are not the only ones who complain about “the establishment” putting their thumb on the scales. I used to be one of the “activists” who was among the complainers, but over the years I came to see that too many challengers didn’t turn out over time to be who I had initially thought they were. I am very glad in retrospect that those people flamed out before they got into office and became the public FUBAR they privately turned out to be.

“Electability” is important. You can have the best, most knowledgeable-on-the-important-issues candidate imaginable, and if they can’t at least make themselves electable if they aren’t from the beginning, you are wasting time, money and energy campaigning for them. If a challenger can beat an incumbent even with the thumb-on-the-scale advantage of incumbency, there’s a real strong likelihood that the right person won. And afterwards they get the support of “the establishment” having proven themselves “electable” because that is the establishment’s only goal - maintaining/expanding the majority. The career of AOC is a perfect example of this in action. Watching Republicans come up to her during the past two days has been a demonstration that even the enemy knows a worthy opponent when they see one. Listening to her in the interviews she did on MSNBC Tuesday night, it was clear she has learned how things work, and applied her very strong intelligence to becoming an “effective operator” in the House (that’s a compliment).

But the surrender McCarthy has made is significantly different than what a similar “surrender” would look like on the Democratic side.

This is what was released yesterday:

“Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF)—the independent PAC endorsed by Kevin McCarthy—and the Club for Growth reached agreement on support for Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“CLF will not spend in any open-seat primaries in safe Republican districts and CLF will not grant resources to other super-PACs to do so.

“[The Club for Growth agrees that] this agreement on super PACs fulfills a major concern we have pressed for. We understand that Leader McCarthy and Members are working on a rules agreement that will meet the principles we have set out . . . .

“No one in Congress or their staff has directed or suggested CLF take any action here.”

That last sentence is the purest horse-hockey, but the sentence that is important is: “CLF will not spend in any open-seat primaries in safe Republican districts and CLF will not grant resources to other super-PACs to do so.”

This ostensibly “disarms” both sides in an open-seat primary, since it means the super-PACs like the Koch Brothers, America First, etc., won’t be spending on behalf of the “crazy” candidate. But in reality, it means that the insurgent “crazy” candidate - who traditionally raises less money during their campaign for the seat - will not have such a steep hill to climb to avoid being massively outspent.

The overall result is a lessening of the power of the “establishment” wing, such as it is in the Republican Party - but don’t go mistaking these people for the “reasonable” wing of the party, those people don’t exist; these people may be more “pragmatic” than the House Freedom Caucus members, but that’s as close to “normal politician” as they get.

This is a victory for the House Freedom Caucus that they will hold regardless of the outcome of the Speakership vote.

It’s not the only one.

On McCarthy’s ninth attempt to climb the hill, a member of the House Freedom Caucus stepped up to nominate him, telling his fellow conservatives that they had “won,” that McCarthy’s willingness to accept their rule changes meant they had achieved their goals, and it was now time to vote him into office.

This congressman went out of his way to say that restoring the “motion to vacate” was not a threat to the Speaker, since the rule had existed for “more than a century” before Nancy Pelosi ended it, and that it had “never been invoked.” Yes, it’s merely a threat that congenial people can discuss. Like the debt ceiling vote that was never questioned or hijacked by anyone between 1917 and 2013, when the would-be founders of the House Freedom Caucus realized they could use it to jam through outcomes they could not achieve by normal political activity.

Does anyone think the new rule on the motion to vacate will remain unused for another century?

The details of the agreements McCarthy is negotiating are complicated and obscure - deliberately so, but their results will be the further destruction of the Republican Party as a responsible partner in governing this country.

Any rational observer would conclude that supporters and opponents of McCarthy directed the dark money PACs to enter into a treaty favorable to the Freedom Caucus to win a handful of votes for McCarthy. Votes that make the outcome worse for government in the United States 

UPDATE:

Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, one of the best-sourced reporters on Capitol Hill, tweeted:

NEW: Sources tell us a deal between MCCARTHY and his opponents is close. CHIP ROY and PATRICK MCHENRY have been negotiating it All the big players are now in TOM EMMER's 1st floor office. RALPH NORMAN says he expects an offer in writing tonight.

Alayna Treene of Axios reports that McHenry stated, “I can at least see the end.”

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