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So what happened at “People’s House” on Tuesday?
Members who make up less than 5 percent of the House and less than 10 percent of the Republican Caucus have stalled the House.
Kevin McCarthy, who is becoming more and more like Charlie Brown on the pitcher’s mound, won 85% of the House Republican vote last November. But the Republican majority in the House is so thin that only 5 of his 222 defectors were needed to cast a cloud over McCarthy’s choice as Speaker. Conservative hardliners then made a series of demands — to which McCarthy was largely inclined to comply — that ceded even more power to an ever-smaller group. (One of these requests was to give one member the power to vote to remove the chairman, the very power that helped remove the previous chairman.)
Did it matter that a majority of House Republicans didn’t accept these demands? Did it matter that an overwhelming majority of them wanted to give McCarthy the speaker’s gavel? Through determination, this small band of wayward men and women managed to leverage 5% of the vote to paralyze Congress, at least temporarily.
Well, this may not be so surprising. One of the salient aspects of our current politics is the growing disdain in the Republican world for the whole idea of ​​majority rule.
For example, you might think Republicans are worried about not winning the popular vote for the president. Once upon a time they won more often than they lost. From 1952 to 1988, Republicans won 7 out of 10 elections. Since then, they have won once and lost seven times. Sure, that’s not how presidents get elected, but Republicans are more likely to talk about “voter integrity” and ask questions about voters in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit than trying to increase their share of the vote. One of Wisconsin’s top GOPers even said Republicans would win every election statewide if Milwaukee and Madison weren’t counted. Behind these “voter honesty” proposals is the implicit belief that the “wrong people” are voting.
There is substantial support for the idea of ​​an “independent state legislature” among some right-wing thinkers. It has the power to draw the boundaries and set the rules (and perhaps even vote) of elections that courts cannot challenge. Or even voters who want an independent re-election commission. It’s too early to tell exactly how the court will rule on this issue, but it may be overkill, even for the overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court’s aggressive conservatives.
The current smash-up in the House has led a disgruntled House Republican majority to finally say “enough” to the rebels, who are sure to cause more mayhem after this episode. It remains to be seen if they will come to say so. Could they be denied commission assignments? Another minority — a shrinking band of truly moderate Republicans — has joined the Democratic (Of course unlikely, and the lessons of what happened to pro-impeachment House Republicans suggest no happy ending to this tactic).
What we do know is that we are being taught another lesson about how fragile the majority – and our very system of governance – is.
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