For many generations, the American Republican Party has been the most successful conservative movement on earth, bar none. There is a reason, after all, why the US is the one major western country where the private ownership of most weapons is legal, where abortion is mostly banned in large swathes of the country, where healthcare is largely provided by private companies rather than the state, where fuel prices are about a third of what they are in Ireland, and where absolute freedom of speech is still a constitutional right. Say what you want about America, good or bad, but it is an outlier from the rest of the democratic world on a whole range of issues almost entirely because of the influence of the Republican Party, which has frustrated Joe Biden’s Democratic Party for almost all of the President’s 50 year political career.
But that may be changing, and the damage is largely self-inflicted.
At the last congressional elections, held a year ago next week, the Republicans managed to win – as was widely expected – a majority in the powerful House of Representatives. This gave the party almost full control over Government spending, an effective veto over almost every Biden initiative, and the power to investigate Biden and his administration over various claims of corruption and malfeasance, which have centred mainly around the activities of Biden’s son, Hunter.
That majority, while expected, ended up being very small – which was not expected. At least in part, polling experts say, because of the Republicans continued associations with, and divisions over, Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, that Congressional Majority has imploded. About a month ago, a gang of rebel Republican Congressmen, in conjunction with the Democratic Minority, voted the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, out of office. For Democrats, Mr. McCarthy’s crime was simply being a Republican. For the rebel Republicans, his crime was not fighting Joe Biden hard enough – as they saw it – on issues like funding for the Ukraine war, which many Republicans would like to see cut, and over spending cuts more generally.
A month later, the Speaker’s chair remained empty, because Republicans have been unable to agree upon a candidate to fill it – at least until yesterday, when it was finally occupied by a relatively unknown Republican from Louisiana called Mike Johnson, whose main appeal seems to have been that nobody knew enough about him to object to his appointment.
The problems are not hard to understand: 217 votes are needed to elect a Speaker of the House. Republicans have 222 members. But the problem is that while the vast majority of those 222 Congresspeople would elect a donkey speaker, if it had an R after its name, on both extremes of the party there is huge resistance to electing somebody who does not align with their view of the world.
On the right flank are those who deposed the last speaker: These representatives want somebody fully aligned with Donald Trump, who will attempt to do things not necessarily in the power of Congress, such as defunding the various prosecutors taking cases against Trump over the 2020 election denial saga. They also signal that they abhor any compromise with Biden over Ukraine, or wider Government funding, and are prepared to contemplate a so-called “Government shutdown” if they do not get their way. This is when the money to run the Government runs out, and Congress refuses to pass a law to authorise more spending.
On the party’s left flank are those who consider that kind of approach to be destructive and bad for the country – many of whom also come from competitive seats that might conceivably be won by a Democrat at the next election. These representatives want somebody much more independent of Donald Trump, who is inclined to negotiate with Biden for smaller spending cuts, and who have no difficulty with continued funding of Ukraine.
Between them, these two factions have prevented Republicans from electing a Speaker of the House for a month, meaning that Congress has essentially been in limbo for that period. Candidates from both wings of the party have been nominated, only to be voted down by a rump on either flank of the party. Meanwhile, Democrats are simply enjoying the show.
All of this is sub-optimal for Republicans, with the Presidential election due to happen a year from next week. Joe Biden is a weak President, and some polling shows Trump (as presumptive nominee) running neck and neck with him. But Biden has vastly more money, and vastly fewer legal troubles. He now also has the added advantage of Trump’s own party looking more and more like a clown show because of its inability to fulfil the basic task for which it was elected: Running the House of Representatives.
Republicans still have time to get their acts in gear – and perhaps the new, unknown, speaker will be a revelation, but that time is running short. As one of them said this week, sarcastically referencing Trump’s 2016 promise: “I’ll be honest with you, I really am starting to get tired of all the winning”.