Watching the Drama

It might be tempting for progressives, watching the drama unfold as Kevin McCarthy fights to maintain power and his speakership, to proverbially sit back with the popcorn and enjoy watching the Republicans slog it out amongst themselves.  But that would be a terrible mistake.  In fact, what has happened at the House of Representatives should be downright disturbing.  A tiny minority of people have successfully politically outmaneuvered a major party, and gotten their extreme and at times utterly bizarre agenda put forward.  They have proven to themselves and others that they are capable of grinding the business of government to a halt, and they have learned that the Republican party is willing to let them get away with it.  These now emboldened extremists have effectively shut down the government before they have even been sworn in.

The Republicans have developed a mindset that they can keep this small, vocal minority around and ignore them.  This is very foolhardy.  When it comes to people bent on obstructionism, it doesn’t take more than a few to sabotage the everyday business of a democratic government.  We now have seen that play out right in front of us as Republicans spent days just getting to the point where staffers could be assured of getting paid.  If this is a harbinger of things to come, this could be a long two years of getting nothing done.

What Republicans like McCarthy don’t understand is that there is a difference between having people with different points of view and people whose only point of view is refusing to find common ground with any other point of view.  The “Republican” holdouts on the far right of McCarthy’s party are not people with a differing ideology.  Ideological conflicts need to be, and can be, mediated. These members of McCarthy’s party exist solely to keep things from getting done.  Obstructionism is their ideology.  They believe in nothing else.  They will never be appeased.  Such people exist in every society at every time.  The trick is to keep them out of power.  Any society that fails to do that does so at its own peril.  

For the moment, McCarthy seems blind to the true motivations of the far right.  He has convinced himself that he can appease them for the meantime and that they will help him later.  He is sorely mistaken.  Like the plant from The Little Shop of Horrors, the alt-right’s demands are sure to grow.  

This fight is far from over.  Be it remembered that it was not people voting for McCarthy, but people voting “present” that got him the speakership.  Progressives now have to ask themselves what role they should play.  There is only one thing that we can do, and that is encourage McCarthy to see these members of his caucus for what they are, make it clear that we will not simply tolerate their attempts to undermine the most important aspect of any democracy–the day to day business of being a functional government.