Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) arrives for a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol, October 19, 2023.
Today, nine separate candidates for Speaker of the House, none of whom have a clear or even a reasonably plausible path to the 217 votes necessary to get elected, will try to win the support of the House Republican Caucus, in one of the most pointless elections in modern American history. It is almost not worth writing anything about today’s front-runner, because there’s simply no expectation that he will be tomorrow’s front-runner. Unless you write up 218 separate profiles for everyone in the Republican Caucus save Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Jim Jordan, you’re just chasing your own tail.
Still, the media must preserve the illusion of a horse race, rather than the grim procession of broken-down broncos to the glue factory that we’re currently cursed to witness. They have decided that the majority whip, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), is best positioned to emerge as nominee, mainly by virtue of the fact that he’s won a leadership election before and served as the head of the Republican campaign arm when the Republicans took back the House last year. Of course, they overlook the next point: that he’s only positioned to be another nominee who loses on the House floor. Why anyone would actively strive to earn the right to be humiliated before the nation is beyond me, but I suppose somebody has to be the latest whipping boy, so why not the majority whip.
Emmer’s sticking point for unifying the caucus is that he voted to certify the 2020 presidential election on the night of January 6th. Granted, before that, he did sign on to a Texas lawsuit that sought to throw out virtually all swing-state tallies and redo the election. But in today’s GOP, that certification vote might as well be a vote to establish Britain’s National Health Service inside the U.S. That’s especially true for the party’s standard-bearer, four-time indicted former president Donald Trump, who has voiced his displeasure with Emmer’s bid.
Emmer isn’t so stupid about the potential impact of the certification on his chances. He spoke with Trump over the weekend in an attempt to neutralize his opposition. In general, he is as much of a Trump loyalist as anyone in Congress. He supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, and his office is adorned with virtually an entire wall of pictures of Trump. He was even once cited by the Matt Gaetz brigade as a potential replacement Speaker before McCarthy was dumped.
But the problem for Emmer—and you can extend this to every other potential Speaker nominee—is that he’s fallen victim to just about the only political skill that Republicans really have left in politics: the ratfuck. By winning the leadership election late last year, he gained a cohort of political enemies, who are hyping up his alleged anti-Trump sentiment and even
circulating a 216-page oppo research binder that includes information about an old Emmer DUI. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who lost that whip race, was fingered by Politico as the person who “activated Trump world against Emmer.” This goes back to some other whisper campaign during the whip race, involving Banks hiring Tucker Carlson’s son to get the conservative media star’s support. Banks thinks Emmer started that; Emmer denies it.
Far too often, the most amoral and brazen rise to the top. Now, the amorality and brazenness has paralyzed Congress.
This is the fundamental problem as Republicans have tried to organize themselves over the past three weeks. Yes, there are some alleged policy differences among the factions of the party. But what prompted Gaetz to oust McCarthy, according to credible reports, was the fact that McCarthy didn’t stop a House Ethics Committee investigation that Gaetz has called a smear job, which he says has been used to discipline him. When Jordan attempted a Speaker run, his neglect of reports of wrestlers being assaulted when he was a coach at Ohio State University came up. It’s beyond clear that these campaigns are being waged in the media by personal foes of the various players.
Which House Republican hasn’t pissed off some other House Republican at some point in their career? And given the penchant for weaponizing these spats, which member could seek the Speaker nomination and not see some oppo dump to damage their chances, in an extension of that personal fight?
This “oppo über alles” ethos is how Republicans are taught from an early age to engage in politics. It’s also a long-established tradition. This year is actually the 50th anniversary of the 1973 College Republican summer convention at Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, which featured a race for national chairman between Robert Edgeworth and a University of Maryland dropout named Karl Rove. For five months, Rove campaigned for the position across the country after rejecting a power-sharing agreement from Edgeworth; Lee Atwater was one of Rove’s top aides.
Rove spent the run-up to the convention getting Edgeworth delegates unseated for technical and procedural reasons, using pretexts like a modified version of the Midwestern College Republicans’ constitution. That meant there were rival slates of delegates running around the Lake of the Ozarks. At the credentials committee, Rove forces challenged virtually everybody, and on the floor, there were two votes held, by two different convention chairs, one of which picked Rove and one Edgeworth. Each of them gave an acceptance speech.
The Republican National Committee, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, had to resolve the dispute. While that was ongoing, Edgeworth’s vice-chair candidate leaked to The Washington Post a recording from Rove and some colleagues where they recounted stories about going through the garbage cans of their opponents and engaging in dirty tricks. This actually ended Edgeworth’s campaign, as Bush, angered by the leak to the Post, ruled in favor of Rove.
Bush later gave Rove a full-time job at the RNC. And Rovian dirty tricks have become the hallmark of the party ever since. Despite Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment (Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican), those tricks are frequently used in internecine warfare; flyers in South Carolina in 2000 claiming that John McCain had a Black child is the most high-profile example. (Rove denied any involvement, though it benefited his candidate, George W. Bush.)
Now you have an entire Republican Caucus trained in the dark art of knife fights, ready to go after anyone they dislike, and unwilling to give up a grudge. That’s made it impossible to perform the rather mundane task of electing a consensus Speaker candidate.
This is a poetic justice that’s all too rare in politics. Far too often, the most amoral and brazen rise to the top. Now, the amorality and brazenness has paralyzed Congress. Because the margins are so tight, if you’re a Republican who’s pissed off five colleagues, you can’t become Speaker. And every Republican has pissed off five colleagues, at least.
Weep not for poor Tom Emmer. Last year, he led the “Blockchain Eight,” as we called them, in attempting to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to stop an investigation into crypto firms, including the exchange FTX, whose CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is now on trial for fraud. Just as Jim Jordan was in the hip pocket of Big Tech, so too Emmer and crypto. The only difference among the so-called “establishment” and “conservative” wings of the Republican Party appears to be which particular industries they serve. But each wing is vigorous in its lust for power, which is why this ping-pong match of failed Speaker elections continues.
