The real reason the chaos in the House should scare us

Despite the chaos currently engulfing Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker of the House, the chamber’s Republicans will probably, eventually end up united around a GOP speaker candidate.

After that is when things might get really scary.

The core problem is that the House eventually needs to do some things — things that are more substantively important and more complicated than just picking a leader. Specifically, the House needs to fund the federal government, and it needs to raise the debt ceiling to prevent a potentially catastrophic default on the national debt.

Reaching an agreement with Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden is necessary for both. Yet the GOP House majority is quite narrow — they have 222 members, when 218 are necessary for a House majority. So to pass anything at all, Republican leaders have to either win over nearly all of the quarrelsome members on the party’s right flank (something that this week’s events show will be extremely difficult) or win over Democrats (something that could alienate the right and land the party right back into another contested speaker election).

The 20 House Republicans who opposed McCarthy’s speakership at some point Tuesday, denying him the majority of votes he needed to win, differ in which issues seem to move them most. Some, like Chip Roy (TX) and Scott Perry (PA), are anti-government spending ideologues. Others, like Paul Gosar (AZ) and Lauren Boebert (CO), are conspiratorial cranks. Some, like Matt Gaetz (FL), may just be mischief-making malcontents.