Republicans remain paralyzed and speaker-less over a week after McCarthy’s ouster

The tur­moil of House Repub­li­cans, divid­ed by fac­tions and feuds, shows a par­ty unable to gov­ern at a time when America’s com­mit­ments are vital­ly need­ed abroad while at home, anoth­er gov­ern­ment shut­down looms in just five weeks.

While Israel’s Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and arch-rival Ben­ny Gantz have formed a wartime uni­ty gov­ern­ment, as did the Unit­ed States when Franklin Roo­sevelt invit­ed Repub­li­can lumi­nar­ies to take top posts, Repub­li­cans in the “peo­ples House” can­not even pick a Speak­er from their own ranks.

They are the con­fir­ma­tion of an axiom made famous by Sam Ray­burn and LBJ: “Any fool can kick a barn down. But it takes a real car­pen­ter to build one.”

A few ultra MAGA rep­re­sen­ta­tives suc­cess­ful­ly deposed House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy for dar­ing to agree on a con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion that kept the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment going for less than two months. The cau­cus then failed to sup­port Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Scalise as his suc­ces­sor, even though the Louisiana Repub­li­can once described him­self as “David Duke with­out the bag­gage.”) (Duke is a for­mer Impe­r­i­al Wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan.)

The Trump wor­ship­pers’ can­di­date is Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Jor­dan, the screechy chair of a com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing impeach­ment of Pres­i­dent Biden. “The peo­ple want Jim Jor­dan,” mes­saged deposed Fox Busi­ness host Lou Dobbs. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, R‑Texas, opined: “My phi­los­o­phy in polit­i­cal endorse­ments is to sup­port the strongest con­ser­v­a­tive who can win. That is Jim Jordan.”

As stal­wart con­ser­v­a­tive Liz Cheney (once a mem­ber of House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship) point­ed out, how­ev­er: “Jim Jor­dan was involved in Trump’s con­spir­a­cy to steal the elec­tion and seize pow­er. He urged Pence to refuse to count law­ful elec­toral votes… They’ll lose the House major­i­ty and deserve to.”

Jor­dan, a Free­dom Cau­cus founder and fix­ture on right-wing media, was nom­i­nat­ed for Speak­er by the House Repub­li­can Cau­cus late on Fri­day afternoon.

Pro­gres­sives might cheer the prospect, except that they are a key com­po­nent in keep­ing the coun­try togeth­er, and the gov­ern­ment func­tion­al, while the Repub­li­can Par­ty comes apart. With the dan­ger of anoth­er Trump can­di­da­cy loom­ing, we must focus at least some of the country’s atten­tion on jobs being cre­at­ed and goals achieved thanks to the infra­struc­ture pack­age, the CHIPS and Sci­ence Act and the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act. Heck, the North­west has just been picked as one of sev­en nation­wide hubs for clean hydrogen.

Still, the Repub­li­cans are a spec­ta­cle. The mono­lith­ic right-wing media is even fray­ing. Ex-House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich has demand­ed on FNC that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz (who kicked the barn down and insti­gat­ed McCarthy’s removal), be thrown out of the Repub­li­can Caucus.

Talk show host Mark Levin depicts Gaetz as a trai­tor “work­ing with the Marx­ists in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.” Mean­time, FNC host Lau­ra Ingra­ham host­ed Gaetz the night of McCarthy’s ouster and cheered him on with encour­ag­ing com­ments such as “Gaetz was bril­liant in tak­ing out McCarthy. Genius!”

The Repub­li­can implo­sion is root­ed in sev­er­al fac­tors. The first is right wing media, start­ing with Rush Lim­baugh in the ear­ly Clin­ton years, fol­lowed by Fox News in the late 1990s and a pro­lif­er­a­tion of mini-Limbaughs.

What fol­lowed was a diver­gence that con­tin­ues to this day. When hand­ed majori­ties, some par­ty estab­lish­ment con­ser­v­a­tives have want­ed to gov­ern, albeit by cut­ting social and envi­ron­men­tal pro­grams to the bone and giv­ing tax breaks to the rich. (They’ve suc­ceed­ed on the lat­ter count.)

To achieve rat­ings, how­ev­er, the talk show host need to keep listeners/viewers mad, and tuned in. Hence, they come down hard on any effort to work out society’s com­pro­mis­es, even when it is to their advan­tage. Right-wing media killed a 2007 immi­gra­tion reform pack­age that passed the Sen­ate by a 68–30 vote.

The Repub­li­can lead­er­ship used to use mon­ey as a cud­gel in enforc­ing obe­di­ence. It could be with­held as pun­ish­ment. Con­trol the mon­ey and you could con­trol the mem­bers, as demon­strat­ed by Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell.

The rise of right-wing media, and ²⁴⁄₇ news cycles, have allowed Con­gress’ emp­ty drums to bang loud­ly. The Inter­net has helped. Fundrais­ing let­ters used to require vol­un­teers. Staff would be pressed into fundrais­ing par­ties over stale piz­za. Nowa­days, all you have to do is push a fin­ger and send out an email.

Mak­ing noise has become a key to cam­paign bucks. Look at the mil­lions raised by con­spir­a­cy pro­mot­er Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene in Geor­gia, or the bankrolling of failed fas­cist House hope­ful Joe Kent (who’s run­ning again) in this state.

Dur­ing debate over McCarthy’s ouster, col­leagues bit­ter­ly com­plained that Gaetz and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nan­cy Mace, R‑South Car­oli­na, were send­ing out a bliz­zard of fundrais­ing appeals quot­ing their rhetoric on the House floor.

The Repub­li­can base has also been rad­i­cal­ized. They’ve raged at social change, which con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics has not stopped. The Equal Rights Amend­ment was blocked, but there are now twen­ty-three female sen­a­tors and three female jus­tices on the Supreme Court. Mar­riage equal­i­ty has become the law of the land, and with over­whelm­ing sup­port from mil­len­ni­als and Gen­er­a­tion Z.

If you want to wit­ness the anger, buy a tick­et to the Sno­homish Coun­ty Repub­li­cans’ Lin­coln Day Din­ner or watch the speak­ers being brought in to address King Coun­ty Repub­li­cans. Cov­er­ing the 2012 race for Gov­er­nor, I repeat­ed­ly watched Repub­li­can Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na be forced to serve as warmup speak­er while a radio talk show host was the headliner.

Of course, Trump fans the flames of this right-wing rad­i­cal­ism, with his con­spir­a­cy charges and his coup attempt, as well as rhetoric that is increas­ing­ly vio­lent. He hauls in mil­lions, even using fundrais­ing blasts to deliv­er threats to those who don’t pony up.

Biden’s defeat­ed pre­de­ces­sor has talked about charg­ing MSNBC with “trea­son,” like­wise just retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair­man Gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley. At his civ­il tri­al for busi­ness fraud, he has called New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James a “polit­i­cal ani­mal,” Judge Arthur Engoron a “rogue,” and slan­dered the judge’s law clerk by false­ly describ­ing her as Sen­a­tor Chuck Schumer’s “girl­friend.”

Kevin McCarthy tried cease­less pan­der­ing, start­ing with his trip to Mar-a-Lago days after the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capitol.

Mil­i­tant extrem­ists were giv­en seats on the House Rules Com­mit­tee. Jim Jor­dan was giv­en an impeach­ment plat­form. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Schiff was thrown off the House Intel­li­gence Committee.

All to no avail.

The spec­ta­cle in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., should not turn off rea­son­able peo­ple to pol­i­tics. Quite the con­trary. They should engage and reen­gage. Attempts to hijack the coun­try have been turned back before by decent peo­ple, wit­ness the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and McCarthy­ism in the 1950s.

We have a Repub­lic to preserve.