These games will not end well for the country. The stakes are huge
‘Whoever eventually becomes Speaker will be on borrowed time, subject to being booted from office unless they go along with the Freedom Caucus’s demands.’‘Whoever eventually becomes Speaker will be on borrowed time, subject to being booted from office unless they go along with the Freedom Caucus’s demands.’Last modified on Wed 4 Jan 2023 18.29 GMTfter a new session begins, the first order of business for the House of Representatives is to pick a speaker.
With the group of hard-right irreconcilables opposing McCarthy getting larger rather than smaller as the day went on, it quickly became clear that the wannabe speaker had no plan for breaking the deadlock. If he hoped that his opponents would eventually tire of symbolism and bow down to practical reality, he was mistaken – for a large group of Republican lawmakers, particularly those in the far-right Freedom Caucus, symbolism is the entire purpose of holding office.
The spectacle of a party unable to even decide who should lead it is illuminating to voters, and Democrats should certainly celebrate these Republican misfortunes. It was the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the fall’s midterms which putin this position to begin with.
But Republican irresponsibility doesn’t just endanger the party’s own electoral prospects – it also endangers the country. America needs a functioning House of Representatives with a responsible speaker in order to discharge basic functions like funding the government and increasing the debt limit. The stakes are huge, and gridlock is not an option.
Yet it’s precisely these basic functions that Republicans want to either sabotage or weaponize, a process which could ultimately lead to the same result. Even the “moderate” Republican position represented by McCarthy is to refuse to raise the debt limit without spending cuts, and in any negotiation over the issue he would quickly become hostage to the Freedom Caucus.
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