https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/22/gaetz-mccarthy-shutdown-house-gop-deadlock/
Opinion In a leaderless House, the ‘clowns’ stumble toward a shutdown
By Dana Milbank
Columnist|
Follow September 22, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) talks to reporters as he leaves a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Martin Luther nailed his theses to a church door. Matt Gaetz displayed his in the men’s room.
Specifically, the congressman (or somebody) left a draft of his “Motion to Vacate” on a baby changing table in a restroom downstairs from the House chamber, where it was found by journalist Matt Laslo. “H. Res. __,” it began. “Resolved, that the Office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.”
But Gaetz (R-Fla.) doesn’t need a resolution to “vacate the chair,” as a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker is called. For all practical purposes, the chair is already vacant.
It should have been obvious to all this week, if it wasn’t already, that McCarthy (R-Calif.) is speaker in name only, as his leaderless Republican caucus stumbles toward a government shutdown. Review some of the labels House Republicans hurled at each other over the last few days:
Amid the epithets, Republicans brought the House to another standstill. For the second time in as many weeks, hard-liners blocked the House from even considering a bill to fund the troops. Two days later, they blocked it for a third time. They also forced party leaders to pull from the floor their plan to avert a shutdown — a plan that would do nothing to avert a shutdown even if it passed.
Walking into yet another grievance-airing session among House Republicans this week in the House basement, first-term Rep. Richard McCormick (Ga.) remarked to a colleague: “I think we should call this the Dance of the Dragons.” That was a “Game of Thrones” reference to a civil war in which (spoiler alert) both of the aspirants to the Targaryen throne died, along with several of their children and most of the dragons. McCormick later developed the metaphor for me: “We have a lot of powerful people in one room who are ferocious,” he explained in part, and “it’s going to get even uglier.”
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McCarthy allies put their best gloss on the chaos in their caucus. “It’s a bottom-up approach,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.) explained to a group of reporters. “It’s messy from time to time, out in the public a lot. That’s what this Congress has shown us.”
The speaker tried to resolve the latest standoff with another of his trademark surrenders to the far right’s demands — accepting spending levels that renege on the deal he negotiated with President Biden just months ago while also blocking disaster relief funds and military aid to Ukraine. Even if this somehow clears the House, the Senate would, on a bipartisan basis, restore spending to the previously agreed levels while adding the disaster and Ukraine funds.
House Republicans would then again be deadlocked, just days before an Oct. 1 shutdown. At that point, McCarthy would face a choice: Cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government running — and thereby risk a motion to vacate the chair. Or give the far-right saboteurs the shutdown they desire — and thereby prove beyond a doubt that the speakership is already vacant.
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Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) spoke of McCarthy with pity: “We’re pulling for the speaker and hoping we can move forward.”
The week began with hopes that a compromise brokered by far-right and moderate Republicans (McCarthy, with his “bottom-up” leadership style, sat out the negotiations). But that deal, announced on Sunday night, was dead by Tuesday morning, after several hard-liners rejected it.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) took direct aim at the “weak speaker,” posting on social media: “Unfortunately, real leadership takes courage and willingness to fight for the country, not for power and a picture on the wall.”
McCarthy offered a petty response, criticizing Spartz for “quitting” and not seeking reelection.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to go personal like that,” Spartz told a few of us, joking that she might change her mind about retiring to spite McCarthy.
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Gaetz condemned McCarthy’s “disgraceful” remark about Spartz, saying, “Kevin would never understand subjugating ambition for anything, or anyone.”
Asked by reporters about Gaetz’s attacks, McCarthy responded with ridicule: “Oh my God, I’m going to lose the speakership because somebody tweeted about me.”
Outside the Republican caucus meeting on Tuesday, right-wingers were squabbling with one another.
Gaetz said he was building “a large enough coalition to defeat the Donalds continuing resolution,” a bid by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) to keep the government open at a reduced spending level — but not reduced enough for Gaetz.
Donalds, who like Gaetz is considering a 2026 run for Florida governor, responded, “I don’t care about that foolishness.”
Gaetz said his “friend” Donalds was “terribly misguided” and called the Donalds plan a “surrender” to Biden.
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After one of Gaetz’s (many) hallway news conferences, reporters asked Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), from a competitive district, to say a few words. “You want me to follow that clown show?” he said of Gaetz.
“These folks don’t have a plan,” Lawler told us. “They don’t know how to take ‘yes’ for an answer. They don’t know what it is to work as a team. They don’t know how to define a win.”
In a separate interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Lawler said of his “clown show” colleagues: “This is stupidity. ... You keep running lunatics, you’re going to be in this position.”
Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), for his part, accused the holdouts of “holding disaster victims hostage.”
And McCarthy bumbled on. “We’re going to try to put the CR on the floor,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate ally of the speaker, told us. Within two hours, they had pulled the continuing resolution from the floor.
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Asked about pulling the ballyhooed compromise bill, McCarthy replied, “No, no. I’m just re-circling it.”
Re-circling?
Republican lawmakers crowded into the office of Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) to try to redraw the legislation. Holdouts enumerated their ransom demands. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) showed up with a printout of six amendments she was insisting on.
“It feels like Festivus, the airing of the grievances, in there,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told NBC News.
“There’s yelling, there’s screaming, there’s crying, there’s venting,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) told The Post.
On the House floor, meanwhile, a rebellion by five far-right lawmakers blocked the House from taking up the annual Defense Department appropriations bill, a measure that normally passes with large bipartisan majorities. McCarthy’s team seemed caught off guard by the revolt, even though a similar rebellion had blocked the same spending bill a week earlier. For 14 extra minutes, Republican leaders held open the vote on the rule that would allow the debate to begin as they tried to strong-arm the holdouts on the floor. Yet as soon as they got Spartz to switch her vote to an “aye,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) switched his vote to a “no.”
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“The dysfunction caucus at work,” Bacon said to reporters.
As though to illustrate that point, former GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn (the one who accused his then-colleagues of having cocaine-fueled orgies) returned to the House floor for a visit — where he was warmly received by serial liar George Santos (R-N.Y.).
“They just handed a win to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) said of the rebels.
House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told Politico that “we’ve got five clowns that don’t know what they want except attention.”
To Raju, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) said the failed vote “showed just how broken we are.”
Besieged by reporters after the vote, McCarthy was asked by Fox News’s Chad Pergram whether this was “another blow” to his leadership.
McCarthy snapped at the genial newsman. “I assume when something hard happens in your life, you quit,” he said. “I don’t quit.”
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He wasn’t quitting, but neither was he leading. On Wednesday, with the legislative agenda snarled, the House took up minor matters such as increasing the number of judges on the Court of Appeals for Veterans’ Claims. (It passed, 423-0.) During the vote, McCarthy, rather than buttonholing lawmakers, sat for much of the time with Greene and Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.), yukking it up.
Later, Republicans again retired to the Capitol basement for another caucus meeting. This one stretched to 2½ hours as they haggled. About 100 journalists crowded the hallway outside. “Holy crap!” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said when he saw the throng. (The journalists had no interest in Van Orden, however, who described himself to a Capitol maintenance worker as “chairman of the not-important-enough-to-talk-to committee.”)
Midway through the caucus meeting, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) emerged. How was it going? “Greeaaat!” he said with sarcasm. Then: “I’m going to the men’s room. I’m going to do something productive.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) tried to be optimistic. “That’s how the democratic process is supposed to work,” he said. “It’s not pretty.”
Republican leaders thought McCarthy’s latest capitulation to the far right had, at the very least, flipped the two votes he needed to end the blockade of the Pentagon spending bill.
On the floor on Thursday, two of the holdouts — Buck and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — did switch their votes to yes. But two other hard-liners, Greene and Elijah Crane (Ariz.), switched their votes to no — and the vote failed again. Defeating “the rule,” as this is called, had been unheard of for years; in McCarthy’s House, it’s becoming routine. “Obviously, they can’t count,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said of GOP leadership as he acknowledged the obvious: “We are very dysfunctional right now.”
McCarthy, defeated again, said as he left the chamber: “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down.”
Now that he has had this belated realization, maybe the speaker will finally stop appeasing them.
Though the federal government might be about to turn off the lights, certain vital functions of government must continue — particularly the investigations into Hunter Biden.
The House Judiciary Committee this week held a hearing, featuring testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland titled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice.” It would have been more accurately titled “Oversight of the President’s Son.”
A transcript of the proceedings reveals that the name “Hunter” was invoked 78 times. By comparison, there were three total mentions of foreign terrorists. “So, Hunter Biden is selling art to pay for his $15,000 a month rent in Malibu,” Gaetz informed the attorney general. “How can you guarantee that the people buying that aren’t doing so to gain favor with the president?”
Things were off from the start. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) began with a chaotic Pledge of Allegiance when he told people in the room full of flags to “please face whichever flag is most appropriate for your direction.”
Ruth Marcus: Republicans, Merrick Garland is not the attorney general of Hunter Biden
It only got more confusing from there. “The fix is in!” Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) yelled at the beginning of his opening statement, and he didn’t stop shouting for the rest of the hearing. Among the complaints from Republicans on the panel:
They were mad at Garland because he “slow-walked” the investigation of Hunter Biden — even though it has been handled by a Trump-appointed prosecutor, David Weiss. They were mad at him for the “sweetheart deal” offered to Biden — even though the Trump-appointed prosecutor had full charging authority. And they were mad that, at Weiss’s request, Garland granted him special-counsel status last month — even though Republicans had long clamored for Garland to appoint a special counsel.
Buck, who is skeptical of his fellow Republicans’ rush to impeach Biden over the behavior of his son, pointed out to his colleagues that Garland was in a no-win situation. They would have accused Garland of “obstructing the Hunter Biden investigation,” Buck said, if Garland had fired Weiss when he became attorney general, or when Weiss seemed to be moving too slowly, or when Weiss asked for special-counsel status.
“Far from slow-walking, really once the Trump administration decided that [Weiss] was the person leading the investigation, your hands were tied,” Buck told Garland.
Luckily, Republicans on the panel had other things to blame Garland for.
Spartz treated him to a rambling speech about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which she said involved police “throwing the smoke bombs into the crowd with strollers with kids.”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) condemned Garland “because you didn’t file those charges” against people “who were involved in the 2020 summer riots.”
It didn’t seem to matter to either lawmaker that both of those events happened during the Trump administration.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested that Garland viewed “Catholics that go to church” as “violent extremists.”
Garland, who had family members killed during the Holocaust, responded, “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd.”
But not as absurd as Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who demanded answers from the attorney general on ... naked bicycling. “There was a World Naked Bike Ride in Madison, Wis., just a couple of months ago,” Tiffany said, “and I sent you a letter two months ago asking if you had a problem with that because it exposed a 10-year-old girl, by the race organizer, the bike organizers, to pedaling around Madison, Wis., naked. Do you think that’s a problem?”
“It sounds like you’re asking about a question about state and local law enforcement,” Garland observed.
Not so fast, Mr. Attorney General. Can you prove that Hunter Biden hasn’t gone on a naked bike ride?
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