The House Republican Conference, by its own admission, is now in a state of ungovernable chaos. As Republican Peter King recently said on the record, “We look absolutely crazy.” Whereas 15 Republicans are currently running for President, the job listing for Speaker of the House may as well as be posted on Craigslist. Nearly three weeks after John Boehner announced his resignation, zero serious candidates have emerged for the job thirdin line for the presidency. Which begs the question, what has sparked this historic and immediate collapse in the House Republican Caucus?
The House GOP has, of course, been a mess for some years now. It has been incredibly successful at growing its majority in the House — since the election of President Obama, each biennial House election has yielded a larger Republican majority than the last. However, this majority — even when accompanied by GOP control of the Senate – has yielded almost no substantive results to speak of. The Republican Party promised us that it would govern and govern well if given control of the House. To put it shortly, we’re all — Democrats and Republicans alike — still waiting.
The Speaker of the House used to be a meaningful and influential job. As Vox recently detailed, most rank-and-file members of Congress, upon their arrival in Washington, D.C., are shocked to discover how little influence they have over actual policy or legislation, and how much time they spend instead at ribbon-cutting ceremonies or town parades back home. Their only hope of achieving some real lasting effect on American life, then, is to seek a spot in leadership — a committee chairmanship, party leadership or even Speaker. Now, however, only two of the 247 majority members of the House — all of whom are ambitious politicians who at least theoretically came to Washington to govern — have displayed any interest in the job, and neither one has garnered much support.
Even John Boehner compared his jobto that of a garbage man. After all, the post-Tea Party Speaker’s job has been reduced to two competing objectives: negotiate with a Democrat president while corralling a caucus that is ungovernable, in which 40 members refuse to negotiate.
Say what you will about money in politics, general dysfunction in Congress or intransigent policy positions, but bar none the fault for this leadership crisis lies with the House Freedom Caucus. As the 40-ish most radically conservative members of the House, they are (for the purposes of the Speaker election) a third-party presence, refusing to vote for anyone who would even consider what Barney Frank called “conspiracy to commit government” by negotiating with the President on anything, at all, ever. Elected on a wave of Tea Party, anti-government fervor over the last four years, these members of Congress have — to say it charitably — changed the dynamic in the House. The House Freedom Caucus has no interest in governing, no interest even in passing critical legislation like a budget or a debt ceiling increase, without which the world would be plunged into a deep and entirely self-inflicted recession.
They might say this as a point of pride, but the Freedom Caucus sees governing as a bad thing, negotiation as sin and compromise as failure. Which might be OK, if your party controlled the presidency. But refusing to acknowledge that repealing Obamacare or defunding Planned Parenthood just aren’t going to happen and trying to hold the government hostage out of refusal to admit that isn’t what voters of any party had in mind when they sent the Freedom Caucus to Washington.
Republicans like to portray themselves as the grown-ups, the adults in the room, the serious ones. Whether on fiscal policy or national defense, during campaigns the GOP loves nothing more than to portray Democrats as out-of-touch idealists who just want to tax and spend. In case 30 years of failed trickle-down economics wasn’t enough evidence, though, the recent House leadership crisis will hopefully set the record straight. A majority as enormous as this one that can’t even get enough votes to elect a Speaker is a dangerous thing to say the least and should be cause for worry for all of us going forward as Congress faces yet another series of self-inflicted “fiscal cliffs.”
Ryan Dukeman is a Wilson School major from Westwood, Mass. He can be reached at rdukeman@princeton.edu.
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