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The pure theatre of events in the US House of Representatives this week is many things: a once-in-a-century impasse; a power struggle; a barometer of dysfunction; a gift to the Democrats.
Joe Biden, the president, is right — even if entirely self-serving — to remark that it all looks “a little embarrassing” for the Republicans. Even if the matter is ultimately resolved, the humiliating, repeated repudiation of Kevin McCarthy’s attempts to be Speaker of the House — a role that is second in line to the presidency — represents an existential moment for the party. Its members and backers need to wake up.
It should have been smooth sailing for McCarthy, the majority leader who needs 218 votes to take the Speaker’s gavel. Instead, 20 rebels have blocked his nomination, despite his many desperate attempts to appease them. They are mostly on the far right of the Republican party, which won a wafer-thin majority in November’s midterm elections, and many are aligned with Donald Trump (though not following the former president’s call to back McCarthy).
At the time of writing, no viable alternative to McCarthy has emerged. The House is constitutionally required to elect a Speaker and cannot start the business of governing until then.
That it has come to this should be no surprise, least of all to McCarthy; a consummate dealmaker who has made so many compromises to court the Freedom Caucus of his party and Trump that he is unrecognisable from the affable, moderate Republican that he started his political life as in California.
Having actively courted anti-government members of what was the Tea Party a decade ago, it can hardly be a shock to McCarthy that those reactionaries now refuse to be governed. Nor that they make a mockery of the trade-offs necessary both to take office and also to govern. Neither is McCarthy the first Republican to suffer: just ask former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.
This is the cautionary tale for centrists across the world of the dangers of aligning with extreme cabals that can then hold legislatures to ransom.
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/790bae48-8e11-4b75-9307-1a2ee4aa7695
