They Have to Stick Together

Two and a half years ago I wrote a blog post called “We Have to Stick Together.” This was back in March of 2021: Joe Manchin was single-handedly holding up a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. The Senate was divided 50-50 (with Vice President Harris as the tie-breaking vote), so in order for legislation to move forward then all 50 Democrats had to stick together. (In the end, the Senate passed the stimulus package and Biden signed it into law, but only after Manchin got one of his key concessions: cutting unemployment benefits from $400 per week to $300 per week.)

One of the points I brought up in that article was how Republicans traditionally stick together more often than Democrats, largely because Republicans rally around a single idea (cutting taxes, opposing freedom of choice) while Democrats’ proposals offer more complexity. Take gun control, for example. Republicans uniformly reject any kind of gun control legislation, but Democrats offer a wide range of solutions: background checks and other red flag laws, banning the sales of military-grade weapons, raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm, etc. Because “gun control” is more complex than “opposing gun control,” it becomes harder to unify around a single idea.

What a difference a couple years makes!

This week continued the fiasco in the House of Representatives initiated by Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate former speaker Kevin McCarthy on October 3. For almost three weeks now we haven’t had a speaker of the House. As the Guardian noted, this is the longest the United States has ever gone without a speaker. And this is from a party that holds a majority in the House! A party that once knew how to stick together. So what’s going on?

It’s been interesting to see how the power has shifted among House Republicans. If you remember earlier this year, it took McCarthy a record 15 ballots to finally secure enough votes to become speaker. At that time it was the most radical wing of the Republican party that held the power. Those members used their leverage to secure committee seats and force McCarthy to agree to the motion-to-vacate rule that would eventually be his undoing.

Then began the hard work of filling that vacuum. Steve Scalise looked to be the next nominee, although he withdrew before the House had a chance to vote. From there it went to Jim Jordan, a guy perhaps even scarier than Scalise, if only because of the outsized role he played in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. (I did a quick search for Jordan’s name in my January 6th Report summaries, and he shows up nine times.)

I was really worried that Jordan would strong-arm his way into the speakership, even if it meant another humiliating 15 ballots. But instead, something amazing happened: Some of the more moderate members of the Republican party (particularly those who were elected to districts that Biden won in 2020) stood up and rejected Jordan’s nomination. With each of the three successive ballots their opposition grew, first at 20 members, then 22, then 25.

Each of those holdouts was the target of a pressure campaign to flip their votes. As the Guardian article I linked to above mentions, they received angry phone calls and death threats. One representative’s wife slept beside a loaded gun. It was bullying of the worst kind — and it was coming from a would-be leader of the Republican party. Every part of this is disgusting.

But it also indicates a really fascinating flip in power: It’s no longer the extremists calling the shots, but the moderates who are flexing their muscles. If this trend continues, then maybe we can get back to an era of bipartisanship. (I can dream, right???)

I think Republicans have finally realized that just because they rigged the game doesn’t mean they always win. This is true in a couple ways. First, with last year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the pushback from left-leaning voters has proven to be a strong motivator in elections. And second, all the gerrymandering that Republicans endorsed with the 2010 REDMAP initiative is coming back to haunt them. The only competition for seats in districts that reliably vote Republican come from candidates further to the right of the current representative. This is how we end up with people like Matt Gaetz and other members of the cult of personality — people who are more interested in getting attention than getting shit done. Gaetz is from a district that only encourages this kind of behavior, and I think Republicans are finally realizing that this is a problem for them as well.

Because if they’re not able to stick together, then the chaos in the House is only going to get worse. Last week Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) announced she won’t be running for re-election. The reason why? “DC is broken,” says the ardent Trump supporter, which is a little like someone joining a pick-up game of basketball, taking out a pair of scissors and repeatedly stabbing the ball, then complaining that the game is broken. Well, yeah, but only because you made it that way.

The worst part, though, is that Republicans don’t really have an incentive to sort this out quickly. As I said back in January about the never-Kevin movement: “To them, big government is inherently dysfunctional, and if they can prove that point while fucking around like this then all the better.” In any healthy and functioning democracy, the focus should be on working together to solve problems, not how to obstruct laws or break the system. But this is where we are, and for every day that the Republicans can’t stick together then it’s another day where every American loses.

Amazingly, Democrats have been consistent with each vote. They’ve done a great job sticking together. For 18 ballots, each and every one of them have voted for Hakeem Jeffries. Stay strong, friends.