With so much at stake this spring, congressional Democrats need to be more forceful in stopping the insane obstructionism imposed by current House Speaker Johnson. They can do so by teaming with a small, even a tiny number of Republicans to choose a better Republican Speaker.
What's the urgency?
- A lack of timely aid to Ukraine is allowing Russian forces to advance their front line while injuring and killing Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. The future of global order requires that Russia be defeated there and now.
- Having Johnson as Speaker almost guarantees there will be a government shutdown in coming weeks. In addition to the potential for actual economic damage, this is occurring just as stock markets are looking very toppy. A bear market would further sour voter sentiment against Biden, which is something we cannot afford.
- If our current state of paralysis continues, Congress will be unable to address any new exigency that comes along. I imagine there will be some of those this year.
- It will soon be harder to get things done in the Senate. With the shift in power implied by Minority Leader McConnell's choice to step down from leadership, there is no reason to expect that he will continue serving in that role through the rest of the session. The next Minority Leader will be MAGA. He/she could be installed at any time and be ready to initiate new methods of obstruction in that chamber.
Democrats can sidestep some of these risks by forming a temporary coalition with just a few Republicans.
Any single member of Congress, and in particular any Republican can file a Motion to Vacate the speakership. By my reading of the procedure (please feel free correct me in the comments), the vote will be held promptly as long as a bare majority in the House is able to fend off attempts to table the motion or send it to committee. A new Speaker can be chosen with the backing of the Democratic Caucus plus a handful (or more) of Republicans who want to stop the madness.
Democrats are just a few votes shy of a bare majority in the House. They only need to gather support from a tiny group of Republicans, possibly as few as four, in order to form a coalition in support of a different Republican Speaker.
How can D's persuade a small number of R's to go along with it?
- Several R's are planning to resign at the end of the current term. Perhaps some of them are willing to show that support for national and international security is part of their personal brand going forward.
- There are 17 House Republicans who represent districts that Biden carried in 2020. Surely some of them want to show constituents that they are moderates, not MAGA.
- There are all sorts of ways that the Biden administration can horsetrade by bestowing favors upon a Republican's district or accommodating the priorities of that congressperson's patrons and lobbyists.
- Hell, the DCCC could even offer to give a few congressional R's a virtually unopposed race in November, pulling support from any D challenger. (I know this is painful to contemplate, but the situation is dire.)
Democrats treated the previous attempts to vacate the speakership as a chance to make Republicans look disorganized, relying on the assumption that this kind of "optics" still matters. That approach got us less than nothing. Instead we need to see Democrats using the weight of their coalition to exert real political power. Call it the Sanity Coalition.
Also, having the whole bloc of Dems vote in support of a sane Republican speaker makes the Dems look bipartisan AF.
On a broader scale, it's clear that the lines of social and political division are changing in this country. Although that trend is going to produce a lot of challenges in coming years, there will also be times when the shifting political boundaries offer new opportunities to build coalitions. This is one such time.
-—
Thanks for reading. I look forward to learning from the comments all the ways this plan is impossible :)