Republican Rules of Disorder.

January 3, 2023

          Less than eighteen hours before the House of Representatives must choose its Speaker, Kevin McCarthy cannot find 218 votes to be elected by his 222-member caucus. As of Monday evening, it is anyone’s guess whether McCarthy will succeed in his career-long quest to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. Whoever is ultimately elected will be a weakened leader beholden to a handful of irrational extremists that occupy the fringes of a fringe party. To gain four votes, McCarthy offered adoption of a rule allowing a handful of disgruntled backbenchers to call for a vote of no confidence in the Speaker at any time (a “motion to vacate the chair.”) After McCarthy offered that humiliating concession, one of the hold-outs called McCarthy ‘part of the swamp cartel’. An inauspicious reply to an olive branch!

          If McCarthy is not elected on the first ballot, it will be the first time in a century that the majority party’s nominee has failed to be elected as Speaker on the first vote. See Congressional Research Service, Speakers of the House: Elections, 1913-2021. Per CRS, under the rules governing the election of the Speaker,

If no candidate receives the requisite majority, the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected. Since 1913, this procedure has been necessary only in 1923, when nine ballots were required before a Speaker was elected.

          Although we do not know who Republicans will elect as Speaker, we do know what rules the GOP will adopt when they finally gain control of the House. The GOP published a summary of its proposed rules package, available here: 118th Congress House Rules Package.

          A more detailed explanation of the rules package is here, see Forbes, Here’s What Republicans Plan To Do As They Retake The House — Including Investigating The DOJ And Gutting The Ethics Office.  

          The proposed rules package makes clear that Republicans are intent on sowing disorder and discord rather than legislating for the common good. Among the performatively stupid and purely vengeful rules proposed by Republicans are the following:

“Establish a subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to investigate the full extent of the Biden Administration’s assault on the constitutional rights of American citizens.”

Require the January 6th Committee to turn over its documents to the House Administration Committee rather than the National Archives.

Eliminate House staff labor unions.

Implement changes to the Office of Congressional Ethics that would remove Democrats from the office’s board and make it harder to staff (this item per Forbes’ description).

Investigate the origin of the coronavirus as part of a plan to “keep China at bay.”

“Prevent the House from automatically suspending the debt limit upon passage of a budget resolution.”

Require a supermajority of three-fifths of the House to raise taxes (a plainly unconstitutional requirement),

Establish a “cut-as-you-go” policy that requires any increases in mandatory government spending to be offset by decreased spending elsewhere.

          In addition to the above, Republicans will bring to the floor a dozen “doomed to fail” bills that are nothing more than talking points in the culture war that passes for the GOP platform in 2023. Per Forbes:

The House would be allowed to take up a series of controversial bills outside of its normal processes, which could make them easier to pass, including legislation prohibiting taxpayer funds from being used on abortions, authorizing Homeland Security to suspend the entry of migrants into the country, increasing oil and gas production and adding additional healthcare restrictions regarding fetuses who survive attempted abortions.

          Notably absent from the rules package is any mention of legislation to improve the lives of Americans. The comparison to the historically successful 117th Congress under the deft control of Democrats could not be starker.

Biden to appear with McConnell to celebrate infrastructure investments.

          As the House prepares to descend into the Eighth Circle of Hell (reserved for politicians, hypocrites, and false prophets), Joe Biden will be joining Mitch McConnell to celebrate a major investment in Kentucky made possible by the historic infrastructure bill of 2021. See Courier-Journal, President Biden to appear with Mitch McConnell in Kentucky to tout infrastructure spending. In addition to McConnell, Biden will be joined by Democrats Senator Sherrod Brown and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Republican Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio.

          The infrastructure bill of 2021 was one of Biden’s many successes that benefitted all Americans. In case you need a reminder of everything Democrats achieved during the last term of Congress under Biden’s leadership, see Accomplishments - Joe Biden. Against Biden’s historic achievements, Republicans will be investigating the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

          Republicans must not understand the word “weaponization.” Whatever they think it means, it doesn’t mean cutting prescription drug costs, repairing highways and bridges, expanding broadband service, reducing carbon emissions, investing in US-based microchip manufacturing, improving drinking water, and protecting women from domestic violence—all of which Joe Biden accomplished during the first two years of his term.

 Ukraine, Zelenskyy, and right-wing lies.

          Yesterday, I strongly urged readers to watch a New Year’s greeting by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, here: New Year greetings of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy (with English subtitles). Hundreds of readers sent notes of thanks for the recommendation. If you haven’t watched Zelenskyy’s speech, it will inspire you. I guarantee it!

          But . . . as always, whenever I praise Ukraine’s resistance to Russia, I receive a handful of comments that say (a) Ukraine “provoked” Russia’s invasion by expressing a desire to join NATO, and (b) that Ukraine is responsible for the ongoing suffering of its people because it continues to resist Russia’s efforts to re-unify Russia and Ukraine. These readers frequently also mention an alleged promise by NATO that it would not admit any former states of the USSR. No such promise was ever made, but it is repeated among the right wing as justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

          In case you are ever confronted with the argument, the NATO homepage has helpful resources to debunk the alleged promise not to admit former USSR states into NATO. See NATO, NATO-Russia: setting the record straight. As noted, Mikhail Gorbachev has stated publicly that no such promise was ever made. Later, Boris Yeltsin repeatedly asked Bill Clinton for a promise not to admit former USSR states into NATO. Clinton told Yeltsin that the US could make no such promise because NATO operated by consensus.

          The facts and arguments are much more nuanced than my brief summary, but if you hear the argument, a good reference point is the NATO homepage.

          The right wing’s support for Putin after the atrocities visited on Ukraine is inexplicable. On Monday, disgraced retired General Michael Flynn told Steve Bannon,

Russia has achieved all of their objectives, and they’re now exposing . . . bio labs that have been in [Ukraine] sponsored by the US. The guy that just showed up to speak to our Congress in a sweatsuit [Zelenskyy] should’ve been thrown out.

          At a time when Volodymyr Zelenskyy is leading his people and the world by example, the GOP is spreading Putin’s lies that Russia invaded Ukraine to shut down non-existent biological laboratories. If you want the truth of the war in Ukraine, watch Zelenskyy’s new year’s greeting. It will make you a better person.

Concluding Thoughts.

          A challenge for me—and you—over the next two years will be avoiding the understandable urge to focus excessively on the latest outrage or dysfunction in the Republican Party. Those outrageous acts and dysfunctions are relevant because they are the actions of a party that represents the greatest threat to our democracy in the last hundred years. But it is not enough to focus on the outrage and dysfunction. Somehow, we must find the gumption and dedication to remain positively engaged when it seems that Republicans are setting the agenda with fake committees and show trials and performative legislation designed to divide Americans.

          We must recognize that the point of their bad-faith antics is to distract and discourage us, to deflect the conversation from substance to shadows, from Joe Biden announcing a new bridge to Rand Paul berating Dr. Fauci about face masks and hydroxychloroquine. We can’t stop Republicans from engaging in their performative depravity, but we can maintain a professional distance from their play acting by recognizing it for what it is—cheap, made-for-tv melodrama. Let’s focus on what matters to Americans and keep the GOP’s antics in perspective. I will make an effort to do so over the next two years; I hope you will, too.

Talk to you tomorrow!