Cathy McMorris Rodgers: "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"
With the radical nihilists of the House Freedom Caucus gleefully turning Capitol Hill into a hostage-shooting gallery (first John Boehner, then Kevin McCarthy), a terrified GOP establishment has taken a break from begging Paul Ryan to sacrifice his career as a con artist and instead has begun trying to placate the crazies. And oh boy is this not a good idea.
Here's the rub: Two Republican leaders, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Luke Messer, just sent a letter to their so-called colleagues, promising to reform the House's rules (a key demand of the nutters) and even asking members to stuff their ideas into the suggestion box.
But like a moderator at a Star Trek convention, you've got to be really careful before you open up the floor to just anyone. To wit: Tops on the the berserkers' list, as the letter acknowledges, is an insistence that the House follow "regular order." This is where the true danger lies.
"Regular order" is typically something that members of the minority party demand of the majority: generally speaking, the right to offer amendments and participate in the legislative process without getting treated like the kid picked last in gym class. But here you have members of the majority hollering for their own party to stop ignoring them, damnit!
And that's because, in order to get anything done—like, you know, not shutting down the government or defaulting on our debt obligations—Boehner's had to run roughshod over the maniacs and partner with Democrats. The whackadoodles hate that, of course, so they want a speaker with less power and a greater say for themselves in the legislative process.
But these are not people you want to give any kind of greater say to. Paul Waldman nailed it:
They seem to want to ensure not only that the next Speaker is someone disinclined to make compromises with the Senate or the White House, but that he won’t be able to even if he wanted to.
Yet that's exactly what McMorris Rodgers and Messer are courting. A weakened speakership is an empowered Freedom Caucus. These people want to lead us to a thousand years of darkness, and the GOP establishment seems ready to let them. What a world.