It'd be nice to think that outgoing House Speaker John Boehner was
cleaning up the barn as he promised when announcing his resignation, like by figuring out how to get all the must-pass end-of-year bills through his fractured conference. At the moment, he seems far more committed to
engineering the next leadership team, which appears to mean freezing current whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) out.
First, Boehner secretly met with Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to try to convince him to challenge Scalise and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) for majority leader. Scalise’s allies immediately dismissed Boehner’s meddling as useless, saying the speaker has a track record of unsuccessfully trying to recruit candidates for leadership.
Then this week, with Scalise’s team saying they were on the brink of securing the support to win the internal party contest for the No. 2 post, Boehner decided he would push back the vote on majority leader and whip by three weeks. Scalise’s top aides were less than pleased. Some conservatives plan to use the time to recruit another candidate into the race for majority leader. […]
Boehner’s team wants to ensure McCarthy a smooth path to the speaker’s chair. That’s why they tried to recruit Gowdy to run for majority leader; the speaker believed Gowdy in the No. 2 leadership job would insulate McCarthy from criticism on the right in a way Scalise couldn’t.
Scalise, for all his
pandering to white supremacists isn't actually the extremist choice for the leadership team, which is kind of a remarkable thing. So, while there will be a secret vote for the speaker's job this week,
Boehner has postponed voting on the remainder of the leadership jobs until after a floor vote on the speaker's job at the end of the month. That will give all the would-be candidates time to sort themselves out. Republicans are also going to be considering some rule changes over the next few weeks, determining whether candidates for these jobs can also keep their other positions including committee chairmanships.
Meanwhile, the Kevin McCarthy/Jason Chaffetz speaker's race will bubble along for a month, creating an extended fight that is likely to overshadow the actual work Congress should be doing. It's also likely to make actual critical governing even more complicated. Boehner's choice of successor—McCarthy—will probably win Thursday's secret vote, but then he's going to have to try to sustain that support for a month. If Boehner chooses to push through big legislation that takes hostages away from the extremists (the debt ceiling which has to be raised by November 5 and a long-term budget to replace the current stop-gap one which expires on December 11), McCarthy could lose support.
In other words, Boehner's barn is getting deeper in shit by the day.