Kevin McCarthy is using a desperate tactic to excuse the GOP’s speaker dysfunction

Amid the doom loop that has been GOP efforts to elect a House speaker, Republicans have landed on one especially desperate tactic to deflect responsibility: blaming the Democrats for their own dysfunction.

As Rep. Jim Jordan struggled — and ultimately failed — to win over his colleagues, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy attempted to distract and deflect from yet another GOP humiliation. “We wouldn’t be here if every single Democrat didn’t vote with eight Republicans to shut this place down,” he said last week, with a straight face. The clearly salty former speaker doubled down a few days later, claiming in a news conference that “every single Democrat made a choice to bring chaos. Every single Democrat decided that this was the best way forward.” McCarthy’s comments were echoed by colleague Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, who said, “208 Democrats voted with eight Republicans to put us here.”

The suggestion here is that because more Democrats than Republicans voted to oust McCarthy as speaker at the beginning of the month, they should shoulder all of the blame. Because “personal responsibility,” or something.

I want to make sure I’m being perfectly clear: It is not the Democrats’ responsibility to vote for a Republican speaker, nor is it ever the minority party’s responsibility to vote for the majority party’s speaker. It is the Republicans who have a majority in the House. And so instead of relying on the Democrats to do their job for them, perhaps the Republicans should use the majority that they campaigned for and that they currently enjoy to elect a leader of their own party. 

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Consider, too, that the Democrats had essentially the same sized majority in the last Congress as the Republicans have now. And yet, instead of whining about Republicans voting against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (which they all did, by the way), the Democrats acted like the adults that they are, coalesced around their speaker candidate, voted for her, and got on with the business of governing. The issue here isn’t that the minority party didn’t come rescue the majority; the issue is the majority party’s fundamental inability and unwillingness to govern.

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‘A self-cannibalizing party’: House GOP uses ‘alarming’ threats of violence during Speaker chaos October 21, 2023 / 12:43

And finally, regarding the Republican talking point that the vote to oust McCarthy was composed of mostly Democrats and only a handful of Republicans, and therefore is the fault of the Democrats, remember that the rule allowing a single congressman to force a vote to oust the speaker was adopted by Republicans. In fact, the Democrats were adamantly opposed to it. But the House Freedom Caucus insisted, and because McCarthy was just that desperate for the speaker’s gavel, he acquiesced. In the end, this was a massive miscalculation, as just a year later chaos agent Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida used that same rule to oust McCarthy as punishment for finally doing the right thing and working to keep the government funded — at least for now. In other words, despite the rule being demanded by a Republican, agreed to and implemented by a Republican, and then used by a Republican, it’s still somehow the fault of the Democrats. Got it.

Granted, I understand why Republicans are trying to pin the blame on Democrats: They need something to distract from their party’s dysfunction. But rather than parking themselves in front of the cameras and blaming the Democrats for their own incompetence, conservative lawmakers would be better served by figuring out how to take the most basic steps toward a return to governing. We’re not talking about rewriting the tax code here; at this point, I’d be impressed if the Republicans just figured out how to propose legislation again.

And yet therein lies the problem, because ultimately, many Republicans seemingly don’t want the House to function in the same way that they don’t want any of the government to function. They point to the chaos of their own making as a justification to shrink the government, all the while ignoring the fact that they themselves are the root cause of that chaos. Government works only when we elect people who want it to work. To that end, it will break if the party in power breaks it. The GOP dysfunction isn’t an accident, it is a choice — one that they own, no matter how much they point fingers at the left.