A Sliver of Bipartisan Light?
My apologies. I didn’t mean to put up another post so soon, but, my word, how can one NOT write about what’s going on?
Kevin McCarthy went out the way he came in—with petty, unctuous, self-serving duplicity. Still, there will be those who rue his departure, none more so than Representatives Michelle Steel, Young Kim, Mike Garcia, David Valadao, and John Duarte. Each of them is a swing district California Republican who was elected to Congress in 2022 despite Joe Biden’s carrying their district in 2020.
For them, McCarthy was an irreplaceable asset—a prodigious fundraiser who could use the power of the speakership to direct patronage to their constituents and lend the prestige of his office to what promises to be extremely difficult campaigns for re-election. Without McCarthy running interference for them, some, if not all, of the five are likely to lose in 2024.
Although lacking the California connection, there are at least a dozen other Republicans, such as New York’s Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, and Brandon Williams, who were already facing daunting re-election campaigns and for whom the chaos and enmity within the Republican caucus might well seal their defeat. Aware that Matt Gaetz may have handed their districts to Democrats, some of these vulnerable Republicans, especially Lawler, have been outspoken in condemning their Florida media-hound colleague.
It is a fair assumption that none of these eight, nor any of the other endangered Republicans, is anxious to lose his or her seat in the House and return to what is euphemistically called “the real world.” But with McCarthy’s departure, that is increasingly likely, since whoever is anointed as the new Speaker, be it Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, or a player to be named later, he—or she, if Elise Stefanik runs—will surely not have campaigned on the need for bipartisanship, something much of the nation craves and hard-right Republicans openly loathe.
One other assumption is that Democrats would be willing to pay a reasonably steep, although not outrageous, price to gain control of the House before the new Republican leadership burns it down, which at this point is only metaphoric, but after their shrugging off January 6, who knows what the future holds?
Democrats are not totally desperate, however. Even without the recent tragic farce, Republicans were already underdogs in the fight to control the House in 2024. George Santos’s seat will almost certainly flip, and after Allen v Milligan, there might be as many as four new black majority seats in the coming elections. Thus, even if some of the Biden-district Republicans survive, it will be as minority backbenchers.
But that could change.
Some of the Republicans most under threat might, just might, be able to be persuaded to either change parties or caucus with the Democrats, if the offer were properly presented. They would, of course, need to be promised choice committee assignments. Democratic leaders could then ask them if they would rather be an influential member of a party that actually wants to govern or a non-entity in one that does not?
To give this scenario even a glimmer of a chance of success, however, Democrats have to go into the negotiations in good faith.
That would first involve acknowledging that, on a couple of key issues, Republicans were right and Democrats were wrong: the crisis at the southern border and China.
While putting children in cages, separating families, or any other of the heartless Trump policies are unacceptable in managing the current influx of migrants from South and Central America, the United States does need to find a means to deal with the thousands upon thousands who would pour across the border, both legally and illegally. Any successful plan must provide the means to integrate migrants into American society while also protecting government and civil institutions from being overwhelmed. In this, reasonable Republicans can and should have input.
As to China, while engagement is always preferable to antagonism, China’s recent tilt toward authoritarianism and confrontation with the United States has created an atmosphere in which America must proceed with extreme caution. Although China’s economic woes have created an opening for negotiation that has been seized on by the Biden administration, Republicans’ admonitions to treat Xi Jinping’s regime with more than a modicum of suspicion have proved correct.
Finally, while many Republicans were consummate hypocrites on controlling federal spending, giving Donald Trump a blank check, any of their delegation willing to provide the margin of control in the House would need to have their qualms about vast increases in the federal budget taken seriously.
For progressives in particular, all this might be very painful to swallow. But it is difficult to see how those who preach bipartisanship are unaware that it involves concession and conciliation by all parties involved.
Pluralist democracy, as described by James Madison in Federalist 10, is built on such compromise and the recognition that no group or faction will achieve everything it wants, and each will be forced to moderate its most fervent passions to accommodate other points of view. And surely progressives would prefer a Congress in which some of their needs are met to one that is paralyzed by destructive hyperpartisanship. (With an extremely challenging Senate map, that situation might not change in 2024, even if Democrats take back the House.)
It is certainly possible that some, maybe all, of the targeted Republicans will choose to remain with their party and go down with the Gaetz Titanic.
But it would be both good politics and good policy to offer them a lifeline first.