OP-ED: House Republicans booting McCarthy as speaker shows how inept the GOP has become
I have never in my life seen anything come close to the unmitigated, painfully self-inflicted dysfunction permeating today's House Republican Conference.
No one has! In 247 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, no Congress has ever fired the Speaker of the House mid-term (Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.), let alone elect a replacement speaker (Steve Scalise, R-La.), only to give him the guillotine and promote the person he defeated (Jim Jordan R-Ohio). For those counting at home, that’s three speakers in two weeks, all while the wheels of government grind to a halt. Yet here we sit, watching them scramble, no closer to re-opening the House of Representatives.
This is quite literally once-in-a-quarter millennium ineptitude.
And it’s far from without consequence. Our nation is heavily invested in two wars overseas but cannot provide new support. We are less than 40 days from a likely government shutdown — not coincidentally, thanks to the same people who got us into this Speaker quagmire — and are not able to even work on passing the appropriations bills to avert it. All that on top of our inability to address the everyday needs of the American people.
If I sound frustrated, it’s with good reason. I’ve been an elected official for 11 years and never served in the majority. And yet, I’ve passed bills, struck compromise and shared laughs with many Republicans. I passed dozens of bills as a State Senator in Frankfort and am, to date, the only first-term Democrat in the House to have passed a bill.
Bipartisanship is and has been as much a part of my DNA as basketball and bourbon; it’s something I’m proud of. No matter how much I disagree with the other side, I am always looking for areas of common ground, where we can work together, because as far as I’m concerned, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters in this work is improving people’s lives.
So to see a Speaker booted for no sin but the very act of putting legislation on the floor that Democrats could support, to me, is beyond the pale. It sounds almost too absurd to believe, but that’s what McCarthy’s Republican detractors cited as their motivation — because he was willing to keep the government open for 45 days. It also means Democrats are effectively barred from helping solve the mess, since bipartisanship would disqualify a Republican in the eyes of the extremists in charge of their caucus.
When compromise is forbidden, what real hope can we have for progress?
Former Speaker McCarthy’s act of bipartisanship is not where the story starts
This historic fiasco became inevitable in the concessions Republicans made to elect a Speaker at the beginning of the year. Most of the headlines were about the delays — the session started four days late after 15 votes, the longest delay in more than a century. What often got glossed over is the concessions, which allowed a single extremist to upend the House and derail our federal government indefinitely.
And that’s exactly what happened. It was inevitable. A relatively small collection of narcissistic extremists shut down the House, but it was the Republican establishment that gave them the power to do it. They put Toonces the cat behind the wheel and then marveled with shock that he drove us off a cliff.
Truly, it didn’t start there either. This has been a decades-long shift from a Republican Party that valued integrity enough to help force Nixon from office to one that celebrates and elevates Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Party leaders made decision after decision that taking power was worth getting into bed with the most insidious narcissists no matter the cost to the country.
Think I’m exaggerating? It looks like they are about to elect a speaker in Jim Jordan, who lost the initial speaker’s election in their conference to Steve Scalise, only to have the extremists from the Freedom Caucus — a caucus Jordan founded — refuse to recognize the results of that election. I guess this isn’t surprising; Jordan himself has been accused of working with Donald Trump and Mark Meadows to help overturn 2020 election results and defied a House subpoena to discuss his role. Not to mention the sexual abuse scandal with the Ohio State wrestling team when Jordan coached there. Wow, and I’m old enough to remember when it was a big deal whether Bill Clinton inhaled.
This is not leadership, and it bears no resemblance to public service
At the simplest and most obvious level, this is not leadership, and it bears no resemblance to public service. For too long, leaders like McCarthy put their own power above everything else — morals, the needs of the American people, functional government. They relied on lunatics to hold onto the reins, and it was only a matter of time before those lunatics snatched the reins from them.
And from us.
Leadership isn’t about the pursuit of power; it’s about wielding power to strengthen community, do what’s right and reinforce the institutions that keep our democracy strong. Leadership is about finding compromise and solutions when it’s personally uncomfortable because our country will benefit.
That’s why Democrats remain willing to compromise, finding ways to put people over politics. I hope traditional Republicans and Republican voters will reject this trend of power-at-all-costs narcissism in their ranks before it’s too late.
Congressman Morgan McGarvey represents Louisville, Kentucky, and serves on the Veterans Affairs and Small Business Committees.
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Morgan McGarvey