What the Speaker Fight Says about the Republican Party

On the menu today: The fight over whether Kevin McCarthy becomes the next speaker of the House continues, and after three failed votes yesterday, his prospects don’t look great. The notion that 19 or 20 Republicans could force this protracted battle in order to get McCarthy’s longtime ally and right-hand man, Steve Scalise, into the speaker’s chair feels like we’re witnessing what Shakespeare called “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But it does raise the question of whether certain House Republicans prefer the comfort of being in the minority and raging impotently, rather than facing the hard work and difficult compromises that are a requirement of operating in a governing majority. Meanwhile, over in that big Washington publication, I contend that almost all of our political problems can be traced back to MTV’s “Rock the Vote” in the early 1990s.

Some Republicans Don’t Want to Be in the Majority

I’m less interested in whether Kevin McCarthy becomes the next speaker of the House than in what the current fight says about the Republican Party as 2023 dawns.