The broken GOP has a majority in the House in name only. It’s giving frightening new meaning to the old saw about politicians’ forming a circular firing squad.
The broken GOP has a majority in the House in name only. It’s giving frightening new meaning to the old saw about politicians’ forming a circular firing squad.
The problem is that neither does anybody else.
The ironic thing about all of this is that the Founding Fathers structured everything in such a way that this should have never been an issue at all. It was originally designed for all parties to vote on a speaker. Whether or not there were two parties, three parties, or 27 parties is irrelevant. The speaker was intended to be someone that all parties could agree on, not just the majority party.
It only got this way because tribal politics has taken over our entire political system, devolving into tribal warfare and an “us vs them” mentality. Compromise or even acknowledgement that the other side may have a valid point on anything is considered weakness and is not acceptable. It has reshaped both houses of Congress into a two-party system where one side is openly admitting they refuse to work with the other side because fuck you that’s why. The problem is that the two-party tribal warfare system cannot even begin to function when there are effectively three tribes digging in their heels, none with the defining majority, and each seeing the other two as adversaries.
Didn’t George Washington warn about political parties taking over and making things worse? Maybe he had something there.
They may have warned about it, but with FPTP, they designed a system that forces tribalism. So I guess good on him for seeing the issue they made, but less good that they opted to create it.
How so? The structure has ‘majority wins’ and there’s nothing to compel the majority to vote for a candidate that ‘all parties agree on’, nor would that even make sense.
This may not be your intent, but this reads like a very elaborate "both sides’ argument, when it’s really clear that the pathological behavior here isn’t evenly distributed between the ‘tribes’.
If the roles were reversed, I’d be shocked if Democrats didn’t compromise and put in place a power-sharing agreement to allow the House to function.
The structure wasn’t specifically designed with two parties. In fact, many of the founding fathers were against the idea of parties at all. It was designed to accomodate multiple parties.
Look at it this way. Let’s say the MAGA wing officially defects from the main GOP and forms its own party (which is essentially what’s happening in practice if not officially right now). We now would have three parties, none of which would actually have a majority. What are we supposed to do? Stand around and shrug for the next two years? Hold a WWE deathmatch to determine the winner? No. Eventually, they’re going to have to find one candidate that all parties can agree on. Maybe some moderate Republicans join Democrats in voting for Jeffries. Maybe some centrist Democrats break ranks and vote for a moderate Republican. Maybe the moderate Republicans just get worn out and vote for one of the crazies in MAGA. But when you have 3 parties trying to work in a system that was hijacked to accomodate only two parties, something’s got to give.
I didn’t say it was, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s what happened.
They’re trying to get away from this because the Democrats have a reputation for caving in the end, and getting shafted for it. Look at what McCarthy just did to them. He worked with Dems to get a debt ceiling bill passed, and then reneged on the deal the nanosecond it became politically inconvenient for him. Multiple high-ranking Republicans are outright saying any deal that involves Democrats is off the table. Many are outright blaming Democrats for their own mess, and demanding that Democrats save them from themselves so they can go right back to shitting on Democrats.. McCarthy himself outright said that they know they’re supposed to be working with Democrats and that this is the way it was originally intended to function, but they just don’t want to.
Why the fuck would Democrats want to work with them if this is the way they’re going to be treated? Why the fuck would Democrats want to work with them when they outright say that this is the way they’ll treat Democrats anyway?
If Democrats caved (again) and entered into a power-sharing agreement, they immediately lose all leverage the minute that speaker is actually installed. There would be nothing stopping the Speaker from reneging on a deal the exact same way McCarthy did, and since they’re in the minority, any attempt at actually enforcing the agreement would just be voted down by the GOP. They’d collectively look like Charlie Brown as the GOP once again yanks the football away.