Office Hours: The 118th Congress is already a mess and it hasn't even begun

Will the few Republican moderates now join with Democrats and elect a moderate Republican speaker?

Friends,

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, failed again today to cobble together the 218 votes he needs to gain the speaker’s post. As I write this, the House has adjourned until 8 p.m.

The House of Representatives is not functioning. Without a Speaker, it cannot swear in members. Without sworn-in members, it is unable to perform any of its Constitutional responsibilities.

Twenty extreme MAGAs refuse to budge.

The question now is whether this deadlock might propel the few Republican “moderates” to join with Democrats to elect a Speaker who’s not beholden to the extreme MAGAs. Or will McCarthy — or whomever emerges as acceptable to the extreme right MAGA Republicans — be so trapped by their nihilism that he or she will be unable to function?

There is still time for a deal between the few anti-MAGA Republicans and the Democrats. Conceivably, that could generate a Speaker who connected moderates in both parties, and led to a House that was more positively productive than any of us now fear.

After all, the 118th Congress is one of the most diverse in history. It includes  a record number of 149 women, Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, Hakeem Jeffries, the first Black party leader, and Robert Garcia, the first out LGBTQ+ immigrant in Congress.

But, of course, this Congress also includes more than 150 Republican election deniers, including several who have been implicated in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and George Santos, whose campaign appears to have been based almost completely on lies and is now under criminal investigation.

Added thoughts: Many of you are understandably pessimistic that anything good — perhaps anything at all — will come out of this Republican-controlled House. House Republicans must reject the MAGA extremists. They must support the Justice Department in busting the ones who were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Easy to say. Comforting to lecture them. But what ultimately happens will come down to the current power struggle now occurring inside the Republican House and inside the GOP.

January 6 provided a huge exit ramp for Republican lawmakers who wanted to get off the Trump highway. Almost none took it. The midterm elections of 2022 provided another exit ramp, when Republicans saw voters reject the MAGA extremists. Some Republicans have quietly taken it.

The chaos surrounding electing of a new Speaker provides a third exit ramp. By my count, there are some 40 Republican Representatives — many from purple districts — who would be willing to vote with Democrats in selecting a Speaker. They won't go so far as to vote for a Democrat, of course, but they could get behind one of their own (which is why I keep pushing David Joyce, for example).

I hesitate to call them Republican "moderates," for the obvious reason that they're still far to the right of most of America. But they are anti-Trump and anti-MAGA. And for that reason, they hold the future of the Republican Party, as well as the future of the 118 Congress, in their hands.