TUESDAY'S TRAINWRECK

It’s only taken the Republicans a century to end up back at the same game they screwed up the last time they screwed up the vote for SpEaker of the House.

In January 1923, Frederick Huntington Gillett, a career Republican politician from Massachusetts who had been a Representative ever since he was elected to Congress in 1892 after serving as Assistant Attorney General and a year in the state House of Representatives, had been elected Speaker in the 1918 and 1920 elections. But this time, as the New York Times reported, he was quite a few votes short of the majority to retain the Speakership, due to “Republican radicals.” While that might sound like a total replay of events now, it’s not quite.

In the election of 1922, four political parties sent representatives to the House: 225 Republicans, 207 Democrats, 2 Farmer-Labor (from Minnesota) and one Socialist. One of the Farmer-Labor Party representatives had defeated Andrew Volstead, the Republican “father of Prohibition,” which was already massively unpopular and leading to a turn to general lawlessness in the country unseen before. 1922 was also the first year that the new Ku Klux Klan sent open members - both Democrats and Republicans from the South (D) and Midwest - to the 68th Congress. This would eventually have a major effect on legislation in the new Congress and in the country for the next 40 years. The Republicans had lost 77 seats in November 1922, but they still were the majority by 17. There was division between the “progressive” Republicans - the ones the NYT called the “radicals” who followed Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFolletee - while the old Teddy Roosevelt “Bull Moose” Republicans considered LaFollette a subversive.

In the first ballot for Speaker on December 3, 1923, at the start of the 68th Congress, Speaker Gillett received 197 votes, while the Democratic candidate, Finis J. Garrett of Tennessee, received 195. 12 Democrats, the two Farmer-Labor representatives and Socialist victor Berger, along with 28 Progressive Republicans, didn't vote and no candidate received a majority of the votes of the House membership. Democrats were quoted in the papers the next day saying that the situation was a “Republican problem” and they had no cause to aid either side. The election for speaker went through nine roll calls over three days before Representative John Nelson, a Wisconsin Republican, brokered a deal in which the Progressive renegades would support Gillett if he agreed to certain procedural reforms. Majority Leader Nicholas Longworth (Teddy Roosevelt' son-in-law whose womanizing would result in his becoming the most famous cuckold in Washington while Speaker of the House while his wife Alice Roosevelt Longworth, began her 50-year career as a “Washington character” by answering his bad behavior with her own), agreed to the plan. On the tenth ballot, Gillett was elected Speaker; he would leave in 1924, when he was elected to the Senate. Longworth then replaced him.

The difference between then and now was that the Republican battle 100 years ago was over political principles. The Republicans who opposed him and refused to vote stood for progressive ideas and concrete programs. They made the price of their votes further democratic reforms to the way the committee structures of the House worked. The 68th Congress reorganized the Veterans’ Bureau and established the Foreign Service. It passed the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, which set campaign finance law for almost 50 years and overrode President Calvin Coolidge’s veto of veterans’ compensation for the World War I Bonus, which would become a tool of contention in 1932.

Unfortunately, the 68th Congress passed The Immigration Act of 1924 on April 12, 1924 which pretty much told every non-Northern European to go to the back of the line, and all Asians to fuggedaboudit until 1965. The act was the high point of Klan influence in Congress.

Tomorrow’s big question is who will be the next Speaker of the House. It shouldn’t be a question. The leader of the Republican opposition for the last four years should obviously become Speaker. But, today’s Republican Party differs a lot from the previous century.

Kevin McCarthy, the man who would literally sell his soul to be Speaker, who has lusted after it through thick and thin since being denied the position in 2015, is about to find out the real meaning of the words Shitstorm and Clusterfuck, and the real meaning of the term Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Last night, he really did try to sell his soul, agreeing to allow a motion to vacate, something he had said he never would do, which allows any member at any time to force a vote on firing him as Speaker. Should he become Speaker, this means that any of the most extreme members of the GOP caucus holds a veto on McCarthy’s every action because they control his Speakership, so long as the one taking aim can get two or three other members to vote with them.

This was actually used against John Boehner in 2015, and constantly threatened against Paul Ryan till he resigned. But even then that was an era in which there was not a large bloc of parliamentary terrorists so willing to make use of such extreme actions. It’s a parliamentary procedural exercise like the debt ceiling. Congress has had the ability to engineer debt ceiling hostage dramas for decades. But it was only a few years ago that it occurred to anyone that doing so was OK.

Essentially, with McCarthy acquiescing to this, the Speakership election won’t be just next week, but will rather be an on-going permanent open vote. Which will mean that McCarthy - who not only has no backbone but also no principles other than his lust for the power of the office - will be a hostage to the worst parts of the Republicans in the House.

However, at the time of this writing the night before the circus, Kevin McCarthy doesn’t appear to have locked up the votes for Speaker, even with his surrender on the motion to vacate and his promise to create a select committee on competing with China, and a special panel to investigate “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which is aimed at the FBI, Justice Department and other federal agencies that Republicans complain have been used by the Biden administration to go after Trump and MAGA Republicans. Even close allies privately worry that it’s “hard to see a path” for McCarthy to get the 218 votes he needs. Suinday afternoon, McCarthy presented his proposals to end proxy voting; no “virtual” or “hybrid” committee hearings; removal of magnetometers outside the House chamber; ending fines for mask or security protocol violations; and return of the “Holman Rule” allowing Republicans to zero out spending on executive-branch offices they don’t like; and all bills will be posted for 72 hours before a final vote. When he offered the family jewels to his opponents, he said, “In short, I will work with everyone in our party to build conservative consensus and translate that consensus into action.”

It still wasn’t enough. There are five “Never Kevin” votes in the caucus and another 9-10 “Maybe Never Kevin” votes.

The battle McCarthy faces is significantly different from that of Frederick Gillet. It is a symptom of a more fundamental rot within the Republican Party. In 1923, the reolt was over questions of policy, but in this battle all we hear about is power and its exercise, not policy. For what does McCarthy stand?

One can strain and not hear anything about legislation from Republican representatives. It’s all about who is going to have the power; there is nothing said about how they want to use it to help the American people. There will be the ritual Investigation of the Hunter Biden Laptop, the Investigation of the Crimes of Dr. Fauci And The Fake Pandemic, along with a dangerous game of chicken around the debt ceiling and kowtowing to their mentor Putin regarding aid to Ukraine.

This is why the Republicans are having such trouble with the speaker vote. When you stand for nothing beyond the raw exercise of power, the only thing being voted on is power itself. And none of them will give up any of the power they think they can get.

Perhaps the good news is that the new House Republican majority will not be able to hit the ground running on Tuesday, since a prolonged fight over the Speakership delays the establishment of committees and assignments to those committees.

We the American people can forget about the House passing any serious legislation; there is also the previous inability of Republicans to pass disaster relief, such as what happened with Hurricane Sandy relief. If a natural disaster strikes, will McCarthy allow disaster relief to be blocked because not doing so would mean a motion to vacate?

No, don’t even think about Democrats “saving the day.” House Democrats are not going to help moderate Republicans elect their own speaker. The best thing for Democrats would be the Republicans falling on their faces and demonstrating their inability to be trusted with any political power, returning the majority back to Democrats in 2024.

For those who still don’t understand why Democrats will not help, it’s because even if they wanted to, they can’t. As Josh Marshall pointed out at TPM, any Republican speaker who becomes speaker with Democratic votes will be instantly discredited among all Republicans. A Speaker McCarthy or any other Republican speaker would instantly become radioactive in GOP politics and it wouldn’t even happen because that radioactivity would be obvious in advance. The price of five Democrats crossing over would be losing at least 100 Republican votes, probably more.

The guiding principle of McCarthy’s leadership as Minority Leader and what he would do as Speaker is to accede to any and all demands of the House Freedom Caucus. This is why Marjorie Traitor Goon and Gym Jordan are his biggest advocates.

“We’re supposed to be hitting the ground running here, but instead it’s just a big belly flop,” a Republican lawmaker told Politico. “Believe me, it’s not just members of the Freedom Caucus who are aggravated. As the days and hours trickle on, the more aggravated people become.”

Tomorrow will show that McCarthy has been completely humiliated and that Republicans are off to one of the worst starts to a new Congress in modern American history.

That’s actually good news for the rest of us, because the more Republicans demonstrate their incompetence and their fecklessness, the more likely we will end this version of the party in 2024.

Maybe even permanently. (A boy can dream)

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