The House Endgame

Today on TAP: The path to a majority coalition of Democrats and Republicans serious about governing

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After 11 failed votes to elect a House Speaker, breaking the previous high for the last century of nine ballots in 1923, we can imagine one of several possible endgames. Kevin McCarthy’s endgame has always been to wait out the far-right holdouts, offer increasing concessions, and hope that these concessions plus the impatience of the rest of the GOP caucus will lead to a deal.

However, McCarthy’s game keeps infuriating both the far-right ultras and the Republican moderates. A politician who will give away the store in a bargain before he gets any commitments in return doesn’t seem a great candidate for party leader.

Though leaks to The Washington Post, presumably from the McCarthy camp, suggest progress toward a deal with the far right, 218 votes for McCarthy don’t seem on the near horizon. If McCarthy did start picking up votes, Republican moderates, who have been backing him so far, could defect from a craven capitulation to the Taliban Twenty.

A second scenario would have McCarthy finally stand aside in favor of some consensus candidate. The problem with that plan is that the bargaining would begin with the capitulations to the nihilists that McCarthy has already made. It is hard to imagine anyone getting the votes of both the far right and the moderates.

More from Robert Kuttner

The best scenario, politically and for constitutional government, is one that has been floated by one of the few moderates to suggest it publicly, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska: Democrats make a deal with the Republican moderates to vote for one of their number as Speaker.

This seemed vanishingly unlikely earlier in the week, but it now seems plausible. While Nancy Pelosi explicitly ruled out a deal to give McCarthy the necessary votes, she did not rule out a deal with the Republican moderates. It’s hard to believe that there haven’t already been back-channel conversations.

There are 19 Republican members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that worked to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law and other cross-party achievements. That’s probably the outside number of moderates who might vote for such a deal.

How would this work? All 212 Democrats would need to vote for a Republican moderate, for example, Don Bacon. This would create a fusion leadership of the House—Democrats plus Republicans interested in governing.

As part of the deal, the Republican moderates would have to give the Democrats something, for example, half of the committee assignments and chairs, and an agreement not to support some of the things that the Republican crazies have been pushing, such as shutting down the government by refusing to increase the debt ceiling, defunding the IRS, pursuing impeachments, and using committee investigations for various fishing expeditions.

This would result in a constitutional coalition of serious legislators becoming the de facto majority party in the House. It would humiliate both the Republican far right and the McCarthy Republican “mainstream” that has shown no interest in governing. Democrats would still lose some important legislative goals, but this arrangement would be vastly preferable to a House led by McCarthy or by another Republican in thrall to a far right that would be obstructionist and nihilist across the board.

Outraged Republicans would very likely expel the moderates from their caucus. That’s another plus.

In 2024, these expelled Republicans would likely be primaried. But they could make a counter-move by running as independents—the Kyrsten Sinema maneuver in reverse.

In their delusions about what the country needs, both Kevin McCarthy and the far-right Republican House members have set themselves up to be displaced by a fusion leadership that would turn them back into the House minority—and accelerate the Republican crack-up and the restoration of constitutional government. Let’s hope it happens.

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