Ugly reality: The hubris of the Republican house

By the time this hits the ink, it’s likely the battle will be over, but the castigation here remains true for whatever comes next.

You can disagree, even violently, when it comes to your core beliefs, but in matters of structure and mechanics, elegance and forethought should rule.

The Republican majority in the House is tiny – five seats – and as one who studies legislatures, I would formally class this as a legislature in danger of capture. A captured legislative majority is one almost entirely ruled by a minute faction and most usually found not in majoritarian chambers like the House, but in multiparty environments like the Israeli Knesset or the Dutch parliament. In places like these, the faction is usually a separate political party, and they threaten to leave the ruling coalition unless their demands are met. If they do leave, they lose all power as the legislature rearranges itself into new coalitions.

There’s a lesson here.  But we’re not The Netherlands.

In a two-party nation such as ours, with constitutional constraints making it a two-party system, weirdness like this is very rare indeed. Thus, Rep. Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the Chair (removing Speaker McCarthy) is both atypical and potentially extremely destructive - not only of the Republican majority, but of the ability of the chamber to do much of anything, including creating some kind of patch-over budget to avoid a shutdown in the next 40 days. A few hotheaded Republicans voted in support of Mr. Gaetz’s motion, joined by the Democrats voting en bloc. Chaos. For everyone. Whatever the Democrat’s issue with the GOP leader, the situation has taken an awful turn for the worse – for all of us.

Why is Gaetz doing this? Mr. Gaetz, and his tiny constituency of maniacs of the ludicrous right, are doing this for the silliest of reasons: they do it because they can. Gaetz is not a conservative firebrand. He’s a grenade thrower; apparently indifferent as to the damage he might cause not only to his institution, but to his friends and co-partisans. He’s ambivalent to any ideological compass or direction, he represents no comprehensible policy agenda except blowing things up.  He revels in the momentary, even accidental, power that has come to hand.

My students in Political Economy have just finished a section on Thorstein Veblen, the economist whose “Theory of the Leisure Class” puts forward the idea that “conspicuous consumption” – faking prosperity – is the doom of the middle class. It’s the thing that prevents them from actually becoming affluent. They spend so much on the outward trinkets, trying to seem rich that they make obtaining real wealth impossible.

The same might be said of power. Spending so much of it to appear you have it may make it impossible to possess. It may be worth noting that Veblen titled his dissertation “Ethical Grounds of a Doctrine of Retribution."

The path is strange and twisted from here on out. McCarthy has said he’s had entirely enough – who knows what Gaetz’s choices are; House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) seems positioned to take over and might be able to draw the party together. With the help of a few Democrats, though - and there’s the rub.

Even with a new Republican speaker, if Gaetz and company keep at it, the chamber will require at least a few Democrats (or a few Republicans) willing to cross the aisle to make any policy acceptable to the Democrat-controlled Senate. Are the Democrats willing to leave off their own battles with the right long enough to help pass bills of crucial need, and be willing to work across the aisle as McCarthy, in his last days, found himself forced to do? Is the GOP willing to cut some deals?

If the choice is between Gaetz and power-sharing, I suspect I know what many would choose, and it would not be the wild man from Niceville.

Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College.  He is also a columnist for The Ledger.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Ugly reality: The hubris of the Republican house