This is Republicans’ mess. But it hurts the whole country. Democrats have to help them clean it up.
The best — and, given the three weeks of paralysis, perhaps the only — ways to unfreeze the House involve Democrats doing more than watching Republicans fail. This would require at least some tacit understandings between the two parties, which neither side has seemed eager to develop. That has to change.
One option is to empower the House’s acting leader, Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), to conduct House business while Republicans seek a permanent replacement. Another is for Republicans to bring a different candidate to the floor, one who passes basic reasonableness tests, such as wanting to keep the government running and respecting the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.
Republicans have considered and even tried some of these options. Mr. Emmer was a decent pick. What they haven’t done is rely on Democrats to make the math work.
Democrats, meanwhile, have not made this easy. They have routinely unanimously backed their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), for speaker, the point of which is to raise the threshold for the Republican candidate du jour to achieve a majority on the floor. This, in turn, has allowed a small number of GOP radicals to deny a majority to various speaker candidates.
Democrats have more productive options. They, or at least a substantial number of them, could vote “present” rather than for Mr. Jeffries. This would change the math, lowering the threshold to achieve a majority. Mr. McHenry could get the votes to be temporarily in charge, or the next Tom Emmer-type could become speaker, without having to placate the far right.
Either outcome would help Democrats and, more importantly, the country. The House could get on with funding the government, which would otherwise have to close next month, as well as approving more aid to Israel and Ukraine. Democrats would sideline GOP ultras who exerted too much influence during now-former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s brief tenure, as when he approved a spurious impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
In a Post op-ed, Mr. Jeffries proposed a grand power-sharing agreement between the parties in the House. Republicans would not effectively sacrifice their majority for Democratic help. If Democrats cooperated without demanding big, public concessions in return, Republican worries that they would, in effect, end up co-ruling with the minority party would be less pronounced. Yet, the center of gravity in the House would nevertheless move toward the middle, which would smooth funding the government and other critical bipartisan negotiations.
We are not naive. Lawmakers interested in a productive approach would have to overcome substantial obstacles, beyond even pervasive Capitol Hill partisanship. One is fear among Republicans of former president Donald Trump and fringe conservative commentators such as Stephen K. Bannon, whose hectoring from the sidelines contributed to Mr. Emmer’s collapse. “He fought me all the way,” the former president railed before Mr. Emmer dropped out. “Voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!” The sad truth is that voices of dysfunction have been more influential than those of the large number of Republicans who recoil from the chaos.
Another obstacle is the embarrassing fact that personal animosities also contribute to the House’s morass. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Mr. McCarthy had an icy relationship before Mr. Gaetz moved to oust Mr. McCarthy, sparking the speakership crisis. Mr. Emmer might have been hurt by latent hard feelings about his run for his current job, House majority whip, which he won by just nine votes.
The fact remains that, if just a handful of Democrats had voted “present” on Mr. Gaetz’s motion to dethrone Mr. McCarthy, the House would have been at work for the past three weeks and Mr. McCarthy would have felt freer to govern without constant worry that hard-right obstructionists would take him down for keeping the government open, as they eventually did. Something more like the national interest would have prevailed. At some point, it should.
Credit: Source link
