The House Speaker Election: Another View From The Peanut Gallery

As the late great Yogi Berra once said, "it's deja vu all over again." It is the beginning of the 119th Congress and the House side of Capitol Hill has had a bit of a rough start, for the second Congressional session in a row. Mike Johnson, who became Speaker in the middle of last session, ran to remain Speaker, and he was arguably in a much better position than his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was at this same point as the 118th Congressional Session started. Johnson had - at least to start - far fewer initial holdouts after he initially failed to get the nomination during the first vote for Speaker. The saving grace for Johnson was that some GOP members on the House floor changed their votes, thus belatedly giving Johnson the Speaker's gavel. There was plenty of drama on the floor for a while, and the GOP looked like there was a struggle to simply get their act together, so not a great start. At least we'll avoid the seemingly countless votes for the Speaker's gavel. This time, on a technicality, it was only one vote for Speaker.

So this was a chaotic start to the new session. The reality is that narrow majorities have consequences, and the GOP has even less wiggle room in the House than last session. Add to the numbers the fact that the GOP has been in disarray for a while now, and simply does not have the cohesiveness to effectively govern. The problem Johnson faced, and this is the problem any GOP Speaker nominee would have faced, is that he simply cannot afford to lose more than one vote if he wanted a majority of House members to make him Speaker to start off this session. The other problem is that once voted in, any Speaker will need the help of Democratic members of the House in order to pass legislation. The Freedom Caucus faction finds any sort of governing coalition unacceptable. Although I think it will be harder this session to remove a speaker than last session, Johnson will need to look over his shoulder for as long as he holds the position. Johnson has faced plenty of friction during his tenure as Speaker, and I would expect that to remain the case. Really, any vote of consequence, such as for the any budget legislation or raising the debt ceiling, will require Democratic help in order to pass. I suspect that the maximalist demands of the more extreme end of the GOP caucus will be untenable. The next two years will likely yield little legislation of consequence, which perhaps is something we can breathe a sigh of relief over.

I thought one of the more powerful moments was the statement by Stacey Plaskett, who represents the US Virgin Islands delegation. She drew attention to the fact that the US has a significant number of territories as well as the District of Columbia, that have a presence in the House, but no vote, including for Speaker. Her frustration was palpable, and she did receive something of a standing ovation for speaking up for the voiceless territories are controlled by our government. It is colonialism, pure and simple. These territories need to be made into states and have some voice in our government. Obviously the situation won't change any time too soon, but it is a travesty and should be called out for what it is. 

The chaos this morning and afternoon in the House is not a good harbinger for the GOP's plans for the first two years of a Trump term. I won't lose sleep over that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The GOP's authoritarian turn - more graphics from V-Dem

Image
I wanted to follow up on a previous post about the authoritarian turn that the GOP has taken this century. Both of the following graphics I obtained from a working paper (no longer online, regrettably) by V-Dem in 2020. I seriously doubt the trends have changed. The Guardian had a good summary of the findings. For our purposes I am using the term authoritarianism and illiberalism as synonyms.  This first figure shows two dimensions: economic left/right and illiberalism (authoritarianism). Both dimensions start at 0 and end at 1. A party espousing economic conservatism would appear closer to 1 on the economic dimension. A party espousing authoritarian approach to governing will be closer to 1 on the Illiberalism dimension. Notice that Venezuela's ruling party actually scores a perfect 1 on illiberalism. The GOP appears in orange print and the Democratic Party appears in blue print. Other governing political parties appear in gray, and we get a baseline idea of where autocracies te...
Read more

The US Republican Party is no Longer Conservative: It is Authoritarian (repost)

Image
Note: This post comes from my academic blog and was published a little over three years ago. I am making some minor edits to account for the year we live in, but am otherwise leaving it unchanged in terms of content, given that I would still arrive at the same conclusions based on V-Dem's data analyses described in the following paragraphs.  The data tell the tale. The mass media and still too many of the US intelligentsia refer to the Republican Party (GOP) as conservative, and its politicians and followers as conservatives. I would argue that the party leadership, its politicians, and its activist base abandoned conservatism a long time ago, and took a much more authoritarian turn. And before anyone tries to get too far into the weeds here, I published some research roughly nine years ago (and I am far from alone I suspect) distinguishing at least some very substantial facets of conservatism from authoritarianism. That there are actual conservatives in the US who want n...
Read more

Ozymandias

When I think of our current era and all of its dictators and would-be dictators, there is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that rings as true now as it did when he wrote it:     I met a traveller from an antique land,     Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone     Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,     Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,     And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,     Tell that its sculptor well those passions read     Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,     The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;     And on the pedestal, these words appear:     My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;     Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!     Nothing beside remains. Round the decay     Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and ...
Read more