The nature of Kevin McCarthy’s election and now the new House rules both reflect the divisions and dysfunctionality in today’s Republican Party and broader American politics — and will deepen it further.
Soon after getting elected as the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives in an unprecedented 15th attempt, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy delivered to the Far-Right legislators of his party a set of a new rules that will govern the functioning of the chamber.
The rules have also enabled the formation of a subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee to examine the “weaponisation of the federal government”, a tool Republicans plan to use to counter Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into the January 6, 2020 mob insurrection at the US Capitol in which top Republican leaders, including former President Donald Trump, are said to be involved.
Besides the formal changes, McCarthy’s understanding with the extreme wing of his party has also seen members of the Far-Right take up seats in key legislative committees, including the crucial House Rules Committee. Republicans are also set to obstruct an extension or rise in the US government’s debt ceiling limit later this year, possibly creating an unprecedented economic crisis with global implications.
The nature of McCarthy’s election and now the new House rules both reflect the divisions and dysfunctionality in today’s Republican Party and broader American politics — and will deepen it further.
The politics of McCarthy’s election
In the mid-term elections in November, Republicans narrowly got a majority in the House, winning 222 out of the 435 seats. McCarthy, a Republican representative from California who was the minority leader in the last House, was considered the obvious candidate for the Speaker post.
From safe Republican seats, their politics revolves around projecting Washington DC and the way business is conducted in the capital as the core problem and their stated objective is to overturn it. They seek decentralised decision-making in the House, taking power away from party bosses. And they wish they to outcompete the rest of the party in showing that they are the ones most opposed to Democrats and President Joe Biden.
This is because, on paper, Trump supported McCarthy’s elevation and even called on his loyalists to back him for Speaker. But McCarthy, for a brief period after January 6, had opposed Trump. To show to the party that he still called the shots and make McCarthy entirely dependent on him, Trump may well have been encouraging the Far-Right obstructionists to hold out till the very end — even though some of those who opposed McCarthy till the end have claimed Trump played no role in the process.
But irrespective of whether the election showed Trump’s power or the limits of his power, the entire process, which played out in full public view on C-Span, showed the Republicans to be entirely fragmented and in chaos. The party’s moderate wing — and moderate is a relative term, for the party as a whole has veered to different shades of the Right at the moment — was frustrated with Trump’s role during the midterms where he and his favoured candidates alienated independent voters, particularly in the suburbs. The Speaker’s election only aggravated their concerns that the Far-Right could jeopardise their prospects in the next election, especially in seats where the margins with Democrats are thin.
The creation of a dysfunctional House
But while the political dynamics in the House will affect the future of the Republican Party, the greater concern for the American polity at the moment is how it has set the ground for an entirely dysfunctional legislature and weakened American democracy.
In order to counter investigations on January 6, McCarthy has agreed to the formation of a committee that challenges the autonomy of DOJ processes — this will erode faith in the rule of law and make every investigation, conducted either by the House or by DOJ, be seen as a partisan process. And in order to meet the extreme faction’s demand for more power over legislations, McCarthy has, in effect, made all appropriations bills subject to individual veto.
On Friday, treasury secretary Janet Yellen notified the Congress that the US will reach its debt ceiling on January 19 and will have to resort to “extraordinary measures” so that it doesn’t default — but these measures are expected to be exhausted by June. “Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” Yellen noted.
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