Matt Gaetz and Tim Burchett colluded with Democrats to overthrow Speaker Kevin McCarthy

By definition eight Republicans do not represent the present majority in the United States House of Representatives.

Nevertheless, 4% of House Republicans believe they are the anointed leaders for the majority of “true” conservatives.

While they’re clearly in a radical numerical minority, they genuinely believe they speak for the majority of Republicans and the nation itself.

Their mathematical deficiencies and delusions of their own grandeur are a political cancer which begs for a remedy.

Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz typically voted in sync

Republicans have broad agreement on securing our borders, addressing our debt, checking the regulatory state, and allowing a free marketplace to flourish.

Our conservative representatives vote together in the vast majority of instances.

For example, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, and his arch detractor, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, have voted together for 84% of the major votes in the 118th Congress.

Our representatives will disagree on the margins, but Republicans should leverage our majorities where and when they exist to move legislation.

The operative word there is “majorities.” Republicans can’t lead unless we have them. In our representative democracy, that’s how Americans decide thorny political issues.

What vexes conservatives on every issue we care about isn’t semantics; it’s the inability to build majorities which agree with us. There is no difference in a 216 to 210 vote to oust former Speaker McCarthy where all the Democrats sided with eight Republicans and a vote where eight Republicans sided with all the Democrats.

Political pundits will spin vote tallies however it suits them, but a vote count is and will always be a cold, unflinching reality.

Another view: Most Tennessee Congress members vote for a shutdown, showing a disinterest in governing

Real fiscal conservatives are rare; even Donald Trump didn’t govern like one

If conservatives want to move the legislative ball, elected majorities are non-negotiable.

Fiscal conservatives, in particular, are a minority of the Republican Party, and they’re unmistakably a minority in Congress overall.

I say this as a former staff attorney on the Hill who worked to rein in the regulatory state, slow down wasteful spending, and craft laws we’d actually enforce.

The last Republican president of the United States wasn’t even a fiscal conservative. If we can’t even convince majorities of our own party to hold a more strident line on profligate spending, why would Republicans expect to win on the issue against Democratic opposition?

Rather than do the hard work of winning elections, the GOP has redefined winning itself. Instead of passing legislation, we’ll settle for a tough talker on cable news. We’re cruising through primaries with flawed candidates, and then losing Senate seats in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

We topple our own speaker without any expectation that the next will be able to actually deliver more conservative results.

Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns.

Republicans will have to work with Democrats for the next speaker

Republicans have a few options to form a functional majority. The first and most preferable option for conservatives is that Republicans elect Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, or some other consensus speaker. The other two options are less likely but possible if tempers flare.

(Editor's note: A majority of Republicans chose Scalise over Jordan on Wednesday, but he withdrew on Thursday due to not being able to secure enough support from his caucus).

Either a few swing-district Republicans join Democrats and elect Speaker Hakeem Jeffries or a few swing-district Democrats join the Republican majority to elect someone less conservative than McCarthy.

If Republicans manage to elect a speaker on their own, that speaker will be in the same exact position as McCarthy: Do what a few Republican hostage-takers want or lose your job. With little time to pass the remaining legislative appropriations bills, it’s likely that we’re looking at a continuing resolution or omnibus to fund the government.

That’s why eight Republicans partnered with Democrats to remove the gavel from McCarthy’s hands in the first place. Do they plan to immediately fire the next speaker for the same?

Sign up for Black Tennessee Voices newsletter:Read compelling columns by Black writers from across Tennessee. 

The Republican insurgents played into the hands of Democrats

Republicans have allowed Gaetz, Andy Biggs, R-Arizona; Ken Buck, R-Colorado; Tim Burchett R-Tennessee; Eli Crane, R-Arizona; Bob Good, R-Virginia; Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina; and Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, to behave as if they speak for a majority of Republicans.

They simply do not.

Arguing that the rest of the House Republican Conference is part of the Uniparty doesn’t excuse the delusion. Most of America’s Republicans voted for and are represented by members of Congress who didn’t join the entire Democratic caucus to elect a new Speaker.

Too many conservatives are allowing the fringe to drive party behavior and lie openly that they represent most Republicans in the country.

The actual Republican majority is indeed frustrated that Congress can’t ever spend within its means. The flood of migrants crossing the Southern border is reaching a level that’s managed to finally draw bipartisan concern. Grocery bills are through the roof, and affording a home is increasingly difficult.

Republicans win on those issues by working together and building those necessary legislative majorities, not by empowering Democrats.

Sign up for Latino Tennessee Voices newsletter:Read compelling stories for and with the Latino community in Tennessee. 

GOP members of Congress who voted against McCarthy deserve to be punished

Imagine a future moment where eight swing state Republicans join Democrats to depose a newly elected Speaker Jordan.

Gaetz and his ilk would be calling for them to be jettisoned from the Republican Party immediately. That’s why former Speaker Newt Gingrich is demanding the political heads of the recent GOP turncoats now.

At some point, any successful speaker must make an example of his or her opponents. McCarthy was an accommodating leader who didn’t break any political bones. That was his fatal political error.

When it comes to the next speaker in the House of Representatives, he or she should take a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook on political opponents.

If Gaetz so much as threatens to side with all the Democrats again, the new speaker should take him out behind the political woodshed.

Boot him from the House Republican Conference, cut him off politically, and fund a solid conservative primary opponent who isn’t quite so arrogant.

Doing so will keep the narrow Republican majority focused on moving a conservative agenda instead of stabbing each other in the back.

Gaetz is correct that we can’t keep doing the same thing in Congress and hoping for different results. We must stop coddling petulant politicians willing to take the Republican majority hostage for their personal political theater.

USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney who worked for conservative Republicans.

He and his wife Justine are raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on X, formerly know as Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Republican fringe colluded with Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy