House Republicans tried and failed to elect a speaker after a tumultuous two weeks that saw the previous leader ousted by his own party, the House of Representatives all but shuttered, and the Republican conference in “chaos,” as one member put it.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the second GOP speaker nominee in two weeks, fell short of election in two floor votes this week as nearly two dozen fellow Republicans refused to back his nomination.
Speaker elections are normally a matter of routine. Why has it taken House Republicans so much time to accomplish the very first task of the majority?
The answer has to do with the numbers game that is the U.S. Congress, the temperament of the Republican Party, and the most basic element in any form of leadership: trust.
Razor-Thin Majority
Republicans have a nine-seat advantage in the House. It isn’t the smallest lead in history, but it means that just five Republicans can block anything the majority tries to do. And that has happened several times.Historically, Congress has had wild swings of momentum from one election cycle to the next, flipping dozens of seats from red to blue and vice versa. Because of that, the advantage enjoyed by the majority party has typically been a bit larger.
The past six times the GOP controlled the House, the average margin was 40 seats. For Democrats, the average lead was 45 seats over a similar period of time. With that many votes to spare, it’s easier to isolate the most liberal or most conservative members. With a small majority, it’s nearly impossible.
“The problem is they need 20 more Republican votes,” former speaker Newt Gingrich, a contributor to the publication, told The Epoch Times. “With 20 more Republican votes, you can afford to have eight or nine people act crazy. But when you’re down to four or five, it’s really difficult.”
Yet Democrats only had a 10-vote lead in the previous Congress but were able to rally behind their speaker and pass a number of significant pieces of legislation, including the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a whopping $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill.
Why haven’t Republicans displayed that kind of unity?
The GOP’s Stubborn Streak
A number of House Republicans have been ready to line up behind the conference nominee, whoever that might be, for the sake of progress.“At the end of the day, I would be happy to support Jim Jordan or Steve Scalise—or maybe there’s another person—but we just need to get it done,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said.
That represents a more traditional brand of Republicanism exemplified in President Ronald Reagan’s so-called 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. Ultimately, most Republicans have been willing to stick together regardless of intraparty differences.
Yet there has long been a stubborn streak among House Republicans that gives speakers fits from time to time.
One reason Mr. Gingrich declined to run for reelection as speaker in 1998, despite having delivered a balanced budget for four years, reformed welfare, and cut taxes, was opposition by hardliners within his own conference.
“I had 18 or 19 members who decided I wasn’t tough enough. They said they wouldn’t vote for me, period. Just like McCarthy,” Mr. Gingrich said, referring to ousted speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Former speakers John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) were similarly plagued by fierce opposition by a small but determined group of hardline Republican members.
That “my way or the highway” attitude isn’t unique to GOP congressmen. Republican voters are much less inclined to compromise than Democrats or independents, and that attitude has hardened over the past quarter century.
As the federal government approached a shutdown last month, 64 percent of Americans said they wanted members of Congress to compromise in order to avoid a shutdown, while 31 percent said members should stick to their principles, according to a Monmouth University poll.
However, only 50 percent of Republicans favored compromise while nearly an equal number, 46 percent, said GOP congressmen should stick to their principles.
Twenty-five years ago, Republican voters were still less likely to compromise than were Democrats, but they were noticeably more willing than today.
In December 1996, 63 percent of Republicans said congressmen should compromise to find agreement with then-President Bill Clinton. Only 28 percent said they should “stand up for their principles,” according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
The stubborn streak among Republicans appears to have widened over the years, and that’s increasingly reflected in Congress.
As Rep. Max Miller (R-Texas) said just before the first GOP nominating conference, “If Jim Jordan does not get the majority within that room, I will go down to the House floor and continue to vote for Jim Jordan.”
Now a handful of Republicans are saying they'll back anyone but Mr. Jordan.
Lack of Trust
House Republicans generally agree on their agenda but often disagree on how to get the job done.Some want to see the federal deficit eliminated almost immediately. To them, cutting federal spending by 1 percent shows a lack of seriousness. They fear that if Congress won’t make hard choices right now, it never will.
Others take a longer view. They see small spending cuts as incremental victories that will add up to a major achievement.
That difference in approach can lead to suspicion and mistrust, despite working for the same goal.
Mr. Boehner wrote about that phenomenon in his memoir “On the House.” He was speaker when the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) was enacted in 2010, and he led attempts to overturn the legislation until his retirement in 2015.
“As hard as it is to pass a law like Obamacare in the first place, it can be just as hard or harder to repeal or ‘unpass’ it,“ he wrote. ”The way to do it is to dismantle key components bit by bit.”
Not everyone agreed.
Complaining about one lawmaker who wanted a different approach, Mr. Boehner wrote: “He wanted it done in one fell swoop, and it was his way or the highway. And the rest of us, who opposed Obamacare but didn’t kill it immediately, were just stupid or lazy or worse—traitors.”
Some of that bad blood lingers in the Republican cloakroom.
Mr. McCarthy was ousted from the speakership in part because a few members believed that he wasn’t serious about cutting federal spending. The last straw was when he passed a continuing spending resolution on Sept. 30, which they said signaled a return to business as usual.
As Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said when arguing for Mr. McCarthy’s removal, “We need a speaker, ideally somebody who doesn’t want to be speaker and hasn’t pursued that at all costs for his entire adult life, who will take the moment and do everything possible to fight for the country.”
For this Republican conference, choosing a speaker wasn’t a matter of picking the next name on the list.
“Trust has been shattered in that room,” Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) said.
Finding Unity
The Republican majority is diverse, so much so that some members wonder aloud whether a consensus candidate can be found.Some districts are solidly Republican, including a few that former President Donald Trump carried by more than 50 percentage points in 2020. Other districts are solidly purple. Eighteen Republicans represent districts won by President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Some seats merely lean Republican in preference polling. Others are considered toss-ups in 2024.
Unifying the conference may prove challenging for whoever becomes the next speaker.
Theorizing that Mr. Jordan might yet prevail in winning the gavel, Mr. Gingrich reflected on the challenge of creating unity.
“I think the question is, can Jordan figure out which fights to pick?” Mr. Gingrich said. “When he walks into the conference and says, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ what percent of the conference will go with him?
“And what happens if the conference rebels? I don’t think we know that right now.”
