In all that’s being said and written about the current debacle in DC, one essential truth is missing: the Republicans don’t have a majority in the House. That’s the reason why they haven’t been able to elect a Speaker.
After six ballots, the 222 members, elected as Republicans, failed to elect a Speaker, even though their number gives them a majority of the 434 seats, currently occupied. They took a recess, presumably to unite around a backroom deal, but the seventh and eighth ballots, on Thursday, produced the same result, again. Twenty Republicans voted against Kevin McCarthy. One voted “Present.”
Right now, it’s hard to envision who the next Speaker will be. We know that the 20 holdouts don’t want McCarthy but, so far, they haven’t proposed a viable alternative who can win, either. In fact, it’s possible that there is no single individual who would be acceptable to a sufficient number of Republicans to be elected Speaker. Americans haven’t seen a situation like this in a hundred years. What are we to make of this spectacle?
The two-party system is baked into US politics. There’s no need for multiple parties to form a coalition to achieve a parliamentary majority, because, by definition, one party always has a majority. In some ways, the Democrats, and, to a lesser degree, the Republicans, function as semi-permanent coalitions of competing interests who have some core values in common. The various factions within a party usually manage to come together for the sake of their own self-interest. But, sometimes, these broad coalitions crumble at the edges, if not entirely, once in a great while.
So why aren’t the Republicans able to unite, at this time, over the most basic of functions, choosing a Speaker? In some multi-party democracies, the 20 right-wing hardliners would face pressure to leave the Republican party voluntarily, or they would be expelled because their votes for Speaker show that they stand apart from the party. If they form a cohesive group, they would be obligated to define themselves and their proposals, in their own party manifesto. That’s how their purpose and goals would become plain and transparent.
But there’s no such clarity in US politics and, consequently, the public is left with a murky picture. Of course, if the 20 right-wing hardliners left the party, the Republicans would no longer have a majority, and they’d lose their majority privileges. That may be the only thing holding them together. For now, they remain with the party because it provides their only possible access to power.