J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., leaves the House floor after the House voted to adjourn for the evening as the House met for a third day to try to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.
Friday, Jan. 6, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Don’t believe the lies or the rhetoric. When the 118th Congress began at noon Tuesday with a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, their first order of business was to shut down the House. It is a continuation of the GOP’s now decadeslong attack on the institutions of democracy that culminated two years ago today with the orchestrated attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After accomplishing quite literally nothing on Day One of the new Congress, Republican congressional members adjourned and returned to the bargaining table to negotiate a compromise with themselves. Of course, they didn’t stop paying themselves or their staff for the gargantuan waste of time, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for their incompetent power grabs and childlike temper tantrums.
By Wednesday afternoon and after another day of accomplishing nothing, they took to the microphone to try and spin their failure as good for democracy. This madness continued Thursday as this ruined party that has refused to cooperate or govern turned on its own in the same way they have turned on the nation itself.
We shouldn’t listen to their spin.
Their chaos speaks louder than their words, and they can’t blame their failures on Democrats.
It doesn’t require a single Democratic vote for Republicans to elect a House speaker, swear in newly elected members, establish rules, expel Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., for his bald-faced lies to his constituents, or propose or discuss legislation. Yet even with months to prepare and negotiate — Republicans have known they would be in the majority since mid-November — they failed. It is the first time in 100 years that the majority party failed to elect a speaker on the first day of the session.
While Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and the self-titled “House Freedom Caucus” deserve a lion’s share of the blame, none of the other Republicans nominated to serve as speaker had their elephants in a row either.
They have no policy; all they have is trolling and anger. A mere 20 people have paralyzed Congress and stopped the legislative branch of government in its tracks because they want unreasonable power.
Of course, Republican inability to govern shouldn’t be surprising. The GOP, and especially the House Freedom Caucus, isn’t interested in governance. In fact, they know little about government and they’re generally ignorant on the systems that sustain our democracy and have kept this country moving forward. They’d rather tear down institutions of democracy by inventing unfounded conspiracy theories; honoring insurrectionists who kill police, smash windows and hang nooses at the Capitol; filing frivolous lawsuits that even conservative judges find laughable; and threatening the safety of anyone who dares to speak out against them.
Collectively, the 20 Republicans who are preventing Congress from conducting any business represent about 15.5 million people. That’s less than 5% of the population of the United States. Yet they believe they should be given extra special snowflake status in Congress.
They want their bills to receive special treatment and consideration. They want members of their caucus to have control over all of the major policy committees. If any one of them disagrees with the elected leader of the House, they want the power to single-handedly call for the leader’s removal, setting up a replay of this week’s chaos. It’s eerily reminiscent of actions usually reserved for the parties of authoritarian dictators in Third World countries.
But that is also par for the course. The Freedom Caucus members holding Congress hostage openly supported the unfounded conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from twice-impeached former President Donald Trump. A majority of them also supported the attack on the U.S. Capitol two years ago today that resulted in the deaths of multiple police officers. They are in fact the party of a dictatorial authoritarian who refused to surrender power peacefully at the end of his term and has already announced his intent to seek the highest office yet again.
By Thursday afternoon, one member of Congress even voted for Trump to become the next speaker. Never mind that he hasn’t been elected to any public office in more than six years, has never won the popular vote in a general election and is facing multiple criminal investigations. Democracy and the will of the people isn’t important to the House Freedom Caucus. Its members only care about gaining power by sowing chaos.
Even worse, all of this is playing out on live television for the entire world to see.
Republicans talk a big game when it comes to national security and creating safer communities. But the dysfunction playing out on the floor of the U.S. House only weakens our nation and emboldens the enemies of America.
If members of the majority party in the U.S. House can’t even agree on who their own leader should be, why should Vladimir Putin believe they will agree on continuing support for Ukraine? Why should Xi Jinping believe they will agree on strict policy measures to protect America’s economy and American workers? Why should the leaders of drug cartels believe they will agree on immigration and border-control policies that help protect America’s children from fentanyl and other drugs?
Most important of all, why should American citizens trust the Republican Party to govern in any manner other than one of anger and performative grudges?
We’re less than a week into Republican leadership in the House and they have already failed.
