The Patriot Post® · In Brief: A Broken Congress
In the wake of toppling House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, Republicans must be asking a simple question: Now what? Political analyst Daniel Greenfield has some thoughts.
When Democrats are in the majority, they get their way. And when Republicans are in the majority, the Democrats also get their way. Most recently, after the stopgap spending bill was passed, Rep Jamie Raskin took to MSNBC to boast that the Democrats “got the vast majority of what we wanted” from it. And for some Republicans that was the last straw.
Eight House Republicans allied with Democrats on a vote to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy. And for the first time in over a century, a House Speaker was successfully booted from office.
A civil war among Republicans came down to threats from both sides of collaborating with Democrats in a House of Representatives with a narrow majority. And collaborating with Democrats seems to be the only thing that House Republicans know how to do anymore.
After years of cowering over government shutdowns and “meaningless virtue signaling votes,” House Republicans are in utter disarray. And it’s often an image problem, Greenfield says.
Why are Democrats able to effectively wield their House majority while Republicans couldn’t? The Democrats are not afraid of what Republicans think of them. They develop a plan, implement it and dismiss Republican efforts to stop them. Republicans however care a great deal about what Democrats, in the House, in the media and the culture, think of them.
That and the fear of taking responsibility paralyzes Republicans. The solution is as simple as it is profound. It begins with some questions:
What is the purpose of a GOP House majority? What is it there to accomplish? When all the hysterical fundraising emails, texts and carrier pigeons have been sent, what does it do? …
The Gingrich revolution briefly shook things up by giving the House GOP majority an agenda and an identity. And while the results were a long way from perfect, the branding gave the body some sense of purpose. Since then, House GOP majorities have no such mission. The leadership has tightened the screws leading to more resentment and no meaningful results.
The GOP has spent a long time treating its voters as if they were idiots, but they’re far from it. The average small dollar donor may not spend a lot of time delving into the ins and outs of legislative procedure, but understands perfectly well that he keeps investing time, energy and money with little to show for it except more fundraising letters, excuses and drama.
Conservatives are angry. And rightly so. They’ve been funding a revolution and getting a continuing resolution. The mismatch between rhetoric and results can only go on for so long. But the only thing a civil war does is hand more power and leverage to the Democrats.
The House Republican mission is not the business of government, but the business of revolution. The Democrats see that as their mission and it’s time that Republicans did too.
Ultimately, he concludes:
The House GOP doesn’t have a speaker because it doesn’t have a mission. And without a mission, it’s only a matter of time until every session falls apart into self-serving drama. Either the House GOP will find its mission or it will continue to waste time that America doesn’t have.
Either Republicans will find their mission or they will lose.