What Do The Republican Renegades Want?

If the answer is "victory" then how can McCarthy survive?

As of this writing, would-be Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is in the process of losing his fifth vote. So far, he has lost votes with every ballot—which doesn’t mean he can’t win eventually; the last time this happened, in 1923, Republican Frederick H. Gillett lost ground twice over the course of eight ballots before winning on the ninth. But that contest was resolved by giving the progressive La Follette Republican insurgents what they wanted: a hearing to discuss liberalizing the House rules. What do the current insurgents want?

It’s really not clear. The fact that Majorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan are strongly backing McCarthy while Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz are in stalwart opposition suggests that this is not, at heart, an ideological fight so much as the playing out of different strategies for accumulating personal power. For whatever reason, those far-right members who have stuck with McCarthy have decided they would rather he owe them, and those who have opposed him have decided they would rather have the acclaim for having destroyed him.

If this isn’t a fight about principle, though, I don’t see how McCarthy survives, because I can’t see what he could give them the insurgents that would be of comparable value to his scalp. If this were about policy matters, or committee assignments, or anything else within McCarthy’s gift, there would be a negotiation. But if what they want to prove is that they can veto a choice they don’t approve of, what can he possibly give them?

Of course, that’s precisely why the bulk of the party has to stick with McCarthy rather than moving on to some compromise candidate. At the moment they do that, they’ve effectively put the insurgents in charge. But unless there is some new leverage they can bring to bear, those insurgents are in charge right now. They’ve established a willingness to ignore the demands of their party leadership and the former president. If McCarthy can’t entice them and can’t threaten them and can’t compromise with them, then eventually his mainstream backers will abandon him.

Unfortunately for him, the only threat he can make is the one he has already made: the suggestion that the Democrats will somehow get involved in the race if Republicans don’t unite. The only way that would happen is if Democrats decided to support McCarthy for Speaker as a way of getting the House back to work and giving the insurgents a black eye. But that’s no threat at all, because in terms of their personal power it would be a massive gift to the insurgents. What could better demonstrate the perfidy of the GOP leadership than making any kind of deal with the devil-worshipping Democrats? In fact, the only reason I could imagine the Democrats doing such a thing would be because it would help those very insurgents, on the same principle that governed their spending on ads in GOP primary contests in 2022 to support more extreme candidates. I don’t see why that would be more valuable to them than allowing the House GOP caucus to continue its descent into chaos, though, so I don’t see it happening.

Finally, notwithstanding Matt Yglesias’s joke, McCarthy would have a problem even under a parliamentary system.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

McCarthy should dissolve the House and call a snap election.

In a parliamentary system, the insurgents would be in their own party, and there would be coalition negotiations. Could a center-right major party form a coalition with a small right-wing party that demanded the prime minister’s office? Or a veto on all legislation? I don’t think so. So they’d go looking for other partners—but if the other major party was center-left and was also stonewalling them, what could they do? Israel went through multiple elections that ended in deadlock before Yair Lapid was able to cobble together his crazy quilt coalition, whose entire identity was “not Netanyahu.” That coalition lasted a little while—and when it collapsed, it ushered in an election that gave us a Netanyahu government profoundly beholden to the extreme right.

So how exactly would McCarthy calling a snap election (actually, McCarthy couldn’t do that in a parliamentary system if he hadn’t yet been made Prime Minister, but we’ll let that slide) help him? Are Republican fortunes looking better now than they were in November? Would running on “give me a big enough majority that I can form a government without the extreme right” work? If it would, why didn’t the party think of that before 2022?

This is the problem with a political movement without any real content. If your political identity is based on opposition, then by definition you cannot govern. It’s not even clear that the insurgents are motivated by the need to win reelection. Lauren Boebert barely won her last election, and clearly that brush with defeat has done nothing to convince her that she should focus on delivering for her constituents. That’s not where her power comes from, and she knows it. How do you negotiate with that?