Republicans Confront Historic Dysfunction in the House

House Republicans are eager to use their newly attained majority power. But the GOP is finding itself without a clear or strong leader at a time when the party needs it most.

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Republicans Confront Historic Dysfunction in the House

The Democrats enter the new year as the minority party in the House of Representatives, a role that typically means two years of marginalization and frustration in a chamber where the majority party makes all the rules. Yet it was Democrats on Tuesday who looked gleeful and unified as they watched the painful process of a Republican Party unable to agree on a new House speaker.

On the GOP side, lawmakers bickered and sat grimly, often displaying an obvious lack of enthusiasm as they cast their votes for the person who will be second in line to the presidency. None was engaging at all with Rep.-elect George Santos, New York Republican whose business and family resume was exposed, post-Election Day, of being a series of lies.

Democrats, meanwhile, reveled in the scene, delivering a consistent bloc of 212 votes for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York for speaker – not enough to win the job but enough to further embarrass Republicans who could not seem to manage their own spoils of November electoral victory.

"It doesn't send a positive message" to voters if Republicans continue to squabble over who should be speaker, says Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, remaining hopeful that the GOP leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, would eventually prevail.

"If we can't unify as a party, how in the world can we govern?" he adds.

Republicans are eager to use their new power to investigate the Biden administration and family, and to thwart President Joe Biden's legislative agenda – – on paper, an easy task for the party that has a numerical majority in the House. Unlike the Senate, the House does not have filibusters or other rules to give the minority party a vote.

But the GOP is finding itself without a clear or strong leader at a time when the party needs to assert its new majority power. McCarthy was repeatedly humiliated Tuesday, as a defiant contingent of Republicans refused on several ballots to support him for speaker. Jeffries, in fact, kept getting more votes – though not the majority needed to secure the speakership.

The party's last president, Donald Trump, has seen his influence wane at the same time. After losing reelection, Trump watched as his endorsed candidates in key races for the Senate and governorships lost their races. In some polls, Trump – the only announced 2024 presidential candidate – lags behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump wanted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, out of his leadership post, but McConnell secured his position easily. And McCarthy, whom Trump endorsed for speaker in mid-December, was fighting his own party for the role on Tuesday.

"This is a full grade embarrassment. House Republicans had years to get their act together – and remain in a circular firing squad," Ron Christie, a GOP strategist who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney, tweeted on Tuesday morning.

"Today's dysfunction in Washington is more evidence that the divide in our party isn't about policy or ideology," tweeted Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican who is finishing his term as Maryland governor. "It's between those who want to win and get common sense conservative results and those who want to be a performance act at the circus."

McCarthy's foes are members of the anti-establishment, right-wing Freedom Caucus who think McCarthy is too mainstream to lead the party. And since McCarthy could afford to lose just four GOP votes in his quest to lead the chamber, he could not alienate the entire group.

That led McCarthy to agree to some remarkable concessions – including one that would allow just five members to force a no-confidence vote in the speaker, should they desire – a rule that would make for a very vulnerable tenure for any speaker.

But that apparently wasn't enough to assure a speedy coronation for McCarthy. At one point in a closed-door morning meeting, McCaul says, McCarthy asked one of his foes, "What more could you want?" – and the member had no answer.

Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had somewhat parallel issues with the progressive wing of her own party, a group that held up the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure act in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to secure a higher price tag on a broad domestic spending and climate change bill.

But McCarthy - despite having a slightly bigger majority than Pelosi had – faces an unusual problem: fellow Republicans who aren't concerned about the optics or legislative holdups of a drawn-out Speakership vote, says Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political science professor who was previously a GOP Capitol Hill staffer.

Every party leader has to deal with feuding factions, Pitney says. But "you've got a faction that simply isn't interested in old-fashioned lawmaking," Pitney says.

"They simply want to score ideological points, get their names on social media." Threats of denying the holdouts assignments on committees don't work, Pitney says, since these lawmakers aren't interested in policy-making anyway.

"It's a shame. It makes us look foolish. If I didn't know any better, it's like the Democrats paid these people off," Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican, told Fox News. "Let's make it look like the Republicans can't govern and don't deserve any gavels whatsoever. That's what it makes it look like."

Even if McCarthy does become speaker, analysts and lawmakers say, he comes into the job already weakened – demonstrably not the first (or second, or third) choice of his colleagues and in a speaker's chair that might as well be an aircraft ejection seat, given that only five members would be needed for a no-confidence vote.

And that suits the Democrats just fine.

"I love their chaos. They deserve it," says Rep. Bill Pascrell, New Jersey Democrat. "The only way to defeat somebody is to have them defeat themselves."