Late thoughts on the Speaker of the House Humiliation

Stepping into this subject late because I wanted to see how things played out before I stepped into anything icky. I'm glad I did. Also, I wanted to better understand the so-called concessions McCarthy made to get the speakership. But, more than anything, I’m on so many levels of disinformation, I don’t believe any of the framing around the 15 votes for Speaker of the House.

Before I say more, I want to lay down that I simply do not see how the dustup damages the GOP in any sense with independents or winnable Democrats. This is inside baseball that those sorts don't even follow, much less remember two Novembers from now. The importance of the speakership vote can be and has been very easily overstated. Moreover, nothing about the vote was ever going to do diminish the prominence of figures like Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert, just as it didn’t raise the profiles of Michael Cloud or Anna Paulina Luna. 

If the 20 holdouts had only gone for two or three rounds—that is, if McCarthy didn’t accomplish what was meant to be a fait accompli the first two or three times—we’d all probably say “that was crazy” and promptly forget about it. But 15 rounds is quite a show! A much better show than, say, five or ten rounds. As in, you should at least consider that it was a show. 

Among the many common political practices that make ordinary folks think of politics as sleazy is the ritual of lining up votes so as to reasonably anticipate the outcome before a vote is even brought up.  Anyone trying to convince me that McCarthy subjected himself to 14 rounds of what pundits predictably labeled a humiliation in any manner other than willingly has earned my future suspicions when the time comes that they want to sell me some waterfront property.

What makes the most sense to this causal observer is that McCarthy needed a way to distance himself from, perhaps, a couple personalities, but more importantly, some agenda item that he would like to enact but can’t be seen as wanting to enact.

Now, I would be worried if I genuinely believed that McCarthy had to be dragged kicking and screaming to concede to such contentious far-right fringe ideas as:

1. 72-hour review period before bills come to the floor

2. Single-subject bills with germaneness rules

3. Voting on separate appropriations bills rather than an omnibus

4. Pairing debt limit increases to spending cuts

5. Capping spending as part of a commitment to balance the budget

6. A vote (just a vote) on term limits

But I don’t believe McCarthy needed to be dragged to those. Nor do I believe he has any opposition, principled or otherwise, to reinstating a few rules that barely ever saw use. The Motion to Vacate the Chair has basically never been used. Similarly, critics of the Holman rule since the beginning have been proven wrong about it undermining committees. I’m not sure I even believe the detractors enough to think they could even be negotiating levers where the power lies in the threat.

Of course, McCarthy could genuinely oppose putting more members of the Freedom Caucus on committees. At the same time, that is a must-ask for the holdouts. I would have to look into specific members and specific committees to say more, but frankly, I just don’t think that is where this is at.

In the whole list, I’m left with just three items that could plausibly cause the GOP some hurt down the line. Two of them are a stretch. One is a commitment to a vote (again, just a vote) on the Texas delegation’s border security plan. We can probably predict the Democrats’ response as easily as we can dismiss it. Similarly, the end of COVID emergency funding will of course elicit wails from Democrats until something else comes along to attract their outrage. Both if done promptly will be long forgotten before two Novembers pass.

That just leaves the Church-stye committee to investigate the Weaponization of the Federal Government. This has potential to bore the public who are perpetually weary of perpetual investigations. It’s funny that they never get used to it. More seriously, it has the potential to provide fodder for the Democrats and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) to attack Republicans with. Given that the left can make a scandal out of two scoops of ice cream, is this a serious concern anymore? 

But as with all of the other items on the list of concessions, I have difficulty believing McCarthy is truly set against the Church-style committee. Rather, McCarthy finds himself in a position of being unable to openly support or oppose it. He can’t support it because the parallels to the other McCarthy are just too easy to make, given their shared surname. He can’t oppose it because, loathe as some in the GOP are to do it, you have to feed the base red meat sometimes. That and the minor inconvenience of it being the right thing to do.

In order to sufficiently muddy the waters, McCarthy can’t oppose or accede to just the Church-style committee. He has to oppose then reluctantly accede to a list of demands that the committee just so happens to be included in. It might hide better if the list were longer, but no one in the GOP benefits if McCarthy comes out looking weak. 

I fear that I’ve already overexplained something fairly simple, so I’ll finish by emphasizing that this is my own interpretation of events that none of us is likely to ever hear the final word on, even long after it ceases to matter. Wrong or right, I stand by it on the grounds that, if you’re one of the many who has come to regard politics as largely theater, then you owe it to yourself to start watching and understanding it like it’s a show. Otherwise, you’re just another player in it.