The inability of Republicans
in the House to agree on a Speaker has halted the business of governing the
country. The media loves the uncertainty, the rumors, the up-and-down
candidacies as political theater. The deep politics is more disturbing.
The Speaker holds great
power in the House. The Speaker presides over debate, deciding who may
speak and controlling the flow of discussion. The Speaker rules on all points
of order, selects most of the members of the Rules Committee, and appoints
members of select committees and conference committees. The Speaker determines
which committee will consider new bills.
In 1792, the Second Congress
wrote rules about presidential elections and specified that the Senate
President pro tempore would become President in the absence of the elected
President and Vice President, with the Speaker of the House next in line. This line of succession
was changed in 1886, when cabinet members replaced Congressional leaders. After
Franklin Roosevelt died in office, a new Presidential Succession Act was passed
in 1947, which restored the Congressional leaders as next in line, but switched
their places, putting the Speaker next after the Vice President.
Congress believed that the
Speaker in such a national emergency could rise above the politics of his
district, of his region, of his party, and lead the whole nation. Speakers have
been men, and one woman, Nancy Pelosi, who developed leadership
during Congressional careers, faced national issues, and worked with
Presidents of both parties.
Now the so-called House
Freedom Caucus, representing the people who made his job so impossible that
Speaker John Boehner announced that he was quitting Congress, who were
uncertain that Kevin McCarthy of California was conservative enough, are
demanding a Speaker for themselves. The Freedom Caucus includes about 40
Republicans, enough to prevent any Republican they vote against from winning
the Speakership.
Who are these few dozen House
Republicans? They are nearly all men, who sit on the
far right in Congress. They include most of the most
conservative Republicans; their center is far to the right of Republicans
in the House. Their founding
members had belonged to the Republican Study Committee, which since 1973
has operated within the House as a “conservative watchdog” on the right side of
the Party. It now has 170 members, about 2/3 of the whole Republican caucus. That
was too
big a tent for the Freedom Caucus, who did not want to work with Republicans
more moderate than themselves. In January, they announced their split from the
Republican Study Committee in the midst of a House debate about funding the
Department of Homeland Security. The Freedom Caucus threatened to shut
down Homeland Security funding if their demands were not met.
Despite their defeat in that
contest, now they are after a bigger goal, the Speakership itself. They
prepared a questionnaire
for possible Speaker candidates. “Would you ensure that the House-passed
appropriations bills do not contain funding for Planned Parenthood,
unconstitutional amnesty, the Iran deal and ObamaCare?” was one question. The Freedom
Caucus insists on “full repeal of Obamacare” and impeachment of the IRS
Commissioner.
They insured that McCarthy
could not win the vote by endorsing
Daniel Webster of Florida on Oct. 7, who has been in Congress only 4 years.
His reelection is threatened, because a court says his district has been gerrymandered
to produce a safe Republican district and must
be redrawn.
What do other Republicans say
about these rebels of the right? During the DHS funding fight, Rep.
Peter King, a Republican from New York called them “this self-righteous
delusional wing of the party, which leads us over the cliff.” Republican
Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania repeated the term “self-delusion”. Trey Gowdy
from South Carolina, rated in the middle
of the Republican Party, said, “I think the House is bordering on ungovernable
right now.”
California Rep. Tom
McClintock, a Republican whom Heritage Action gives a 90 percent conservative
rating, much higher than the average Congressional Republican, recently quit
the Freedom Caucus. He characterized
their politics as “a willingness, indeed, an eagerness, to strip the House
Republican majority of its ability to set the House agenda.”
The so-called Freedom Caucus
represents the Republican voters who have put three people with no government
experience among them at the top of the polls. They don’t like government,
period. With a fervor unmatched in recent American history, they hate everything
that our government has done since Barack Obama was elected. They hate anyone
who plays any role in governing, even a conservative one.
Should we allow one of them
so near the White House?
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, October 20, 2015
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