Dysfunction Or Destruction?

Tomorrow, it will be three weeks since the United States of America had an actual Speaker of the House of Representatives. On 3 October, Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy (CA) was voted out of his position as the Speaker due to a revolt of the hard right MAGA Republicans. They were enraged that he worked to pass a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government operating until 17 November of this year. For those zealots, doing anything with the support of Democrats is unacceptable. In this case, it was, to them, an outrageous breach of faith that Mr. McCarthy worked to allow the government to continue to operate without their hard right policies in place. Since then, the Republicans (the majority party in the House is always responsible for choosing the Speaker) have floated a number of options for choosing a new Speaker, including giving the current Speaker Pro Tempore Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) more power to enact some basic legislation. (Under the current rules, the Speaker Pro Tempore can only preside over the election of a permanent Speaker.) Complicated, it is. The only good thing that has happened so far is that Representative Jim Jordan (MAGA-OH) failed three times in his attempt to bully, intimidate, and threaten his way into the Speakership.

Democrats have consistently and unanimously voted for Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Note that he gets more votes than any Republican so far (it takes a majority of 50% plus one to be elected). Mr. Jeffries continually floats bipartisan proposals to solve the crisis, but Republicans refuse to allow Democrats to participate (see above and the impact on Mr. McCarthy when trying to use bipartisanship).

As I write, nine Representatives have thrown their hats into the ring to attempt to convince their colleagues that they should take the gavel. I will note that only two of those running voted to certify the election of President Biden in 2020. It would seem that acknowledging the results of a free and fair election would be a prerequisite for the job which is second in the line of succession to the presidency, but it is not in the current state of the party formerly known as the Republican Party. This does not bode well for certifying the 2024 election results should their preferred candidate lose.

As the old saying goes, “pay backs are hell!” This past week numerous Republicans and their families were the recipients of death threats, vile insults, intimidating emails and other actions that are part and parcel of the MAGA playbook against their perceived “enemies” (fellow Americans) because they would not support Mr. Jordan as Speaker. They were aghast at what they heard and appalled that it happened. Hmmm. I don’t recall any of them standing up and expressing their outrage when political violence was threatened by an ex-president and his MAGA acolytes against those in the other party, the Department of Justice, FBI, or judiciary, to name but a few of their targets.

The main question I now have is whether the Republican Party’s inability to preform the most rudimentary of parliamentary duties is a result of their dysfunction or is it a deliberate attempt at destruction? There are a solid block of the hard right in the caucus that are perfectly happy to knee cap the democratic process and thereby prevent the most basic of government functions to take place. If past performance is indicative of future results, then I opine that although not planned, the current state of affairs fits perfectly into their scheme to burn it all down and start over under autocratic rule with a certain ex-president in charge.

The world is on fire with serious conflicts in Europe and the Middle East that each have the potential to blow up into wide-spread wars impacting our own national security. The government shuts down because of the lack of spending authority in about four weeks. All funding for the military, foreign aid, government functions, etc. originates in the House of Representatives, which can take up no legislation without a Speaker. Layer on top of that Republicans in the Senate holding up promotions for over 300 senior military officers and the Ambassadors to Israel and Egypt, as well as other ambassadors, in the midst of an explosive crisis.

Such actions have serious domestic and international consequences. The lack of the House to get itself in order is not only a national embarrassment, it sends exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries and undermines our claims that democracy is the best form of government on the planet. Putin, Xi, Kim and others are loving it.

Meanwhile, an ex-president is openly admiring our adversaries, mocking our own men and women in uniform and generally running amok as he pursues his personal wealth and power.

Even the most casual observer of our domestic political turmoil would recognize that the Democrats are interested in, and capable of, governing even if one may disagree with particular policies. That same observer would also recognize that as a party, Republicans either have no interest in, or ability to, govern. Governing requires positive actions. The MAGA crowd, and those Republicans that refuse to stand up to them, have only negative actions to sustain them. They are against a lot, but there is little to nothing that they are doing to move the country forward.

At the risk of sounding like a doomsayer, I do not see things getting any better leading up to and beyond the 2024 election. Political violence and dysfunction are part of the MAGA playbook. There will be serious attempts to disrupt the elections and we already know that the MAGA followers will not accept the results of any election that they do not win. We had one failure of imagination in that no one expected an attempted coup in our country. It happened. Given the current state of affairs fomented by one man and his followers in and out of Congress, I have little expectation that things will improve over the coming year. Dysfunction or destruction? It does not matter. The results are the same.