Held Hostage by the Far Right

Congress is crippled at the moment. It is understandable the Democrats also voted to remove Kevin McCarthy.

It is extremely hard to analyze last week’s spectacle on Capitol Hill soberly. A group of just eight extreme right-leaning House Republicans managed to paralyze legislative business in the most powerful country in the world.

With the removal of McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives, the chamber is unable to make any decisions. A vote on the new budget is overdue, but impossible for now. Consequently, there is the threat of another government shutdown in mid-November. This would not only leave millions of civil servants and military personnel without pay, but would also halt further military aid for Ukraine, which continues to be bombed daily by Russian forces and faces an extremely difficult winter.

It’s a fiasco in the making. Since the Republicans won a slim majority of 222 to 213 in the House of Representatives in 2022, a few Republican members of Congress have been able to impose their will on the majority of their party. This bloc known as the Freedom Caucus, has used its power to great effect, letting McCarthy flounder for 15 votes until he was confirmed and then wresting important committee positions from him. More significantly, they changed the rule about how to vacate the position of speaker such that it no longer required a majority vote, but instead a single representative could force the vote. McCarthy was a hostage of the Freedom Caucus from that point forward.

They hung a rope around his neck, after he suddenly submitted a six-week interim budget, which passed with Democratic votes. McCarthy did the right thing in postponing the shutdown for now, but he simultaneously provoked the end of his political career.

Theoretically, a few Democratic votes could have prevented McCarthy’s removal. However, he had already destroyed any faith the Democrats might have had that McCarthy would not still blame them for the looming shutdown and use legislative trickery to enforce budget cuts. McCarthy had also launched impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden without any sufficient reason to do so. The Democrats wanted to show that the dangerous situation was solely the result of inner-party quarreling among Republicans, which surfaced in the congressional debate before McCarthy’s removal: “I would say, think long and hard before you plunge us into chaos, because that’s where we’re headed if we vacate the speakership,” Republican Tom Cole warned his colleagues.

But what will satisfy the Freedom Caucus radicals? That’s a difficult question to answer; there isn’t even an official list of the Caucus’s two to three dozen members. But they do indicate they want to drastically cut taxes and spending and scale back federal agencies, as well as abolish rules governing environmental and worker protection, and limit immigration as much as possible. They call it “draining the swamp.” None of this is even capable of gaining a majority within their own party. But compromises are taboo.

Short-Term Calculation

There is also a short-term method to the madness of the Republican radicals. It gives them social media attention and a national profile that instantly turns into political donations for the next campaign. Politically speaking, this is a continuation of the 2009 tea party movement, but today, it has transformed into the political cult known as “Make America Great Again,” disconnected from reality, with Donald Trump in charge.

Trump, of all people, is preparing to lead the way out of all the chaos. He plans to travel to Washington as early as Tuesday and hold talks with Republican members of Congress. So far, no one knows who might win enough votes to succeed McCarthy. Some have even suggested that Trump take his place, because surprisingly, the House speaker doesn’t have to hail from the House ranks. However, the speaker cannot be someone who has been indicted, according to the House rules of procedure, something which a majority could admittedly change.

Trump in the third highest political office in the United States, now that would be quite the historical joke.