The Beclowning of Congressional Republicans
They did not have the best day. It's funny, but not funny ha-ha.
The GOP currently controls the U.S. House of Representatives. Wait, let me rephrase that: the GOP currently holds a working majority of the House of Representatives. Wait, let me rephrase that rephrase: there are (barely) more Republicans than Democrats in the lower chamber of the United States Congress.
The reason one must be precise in one’s language on this topic is that under Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s leadership, the House did not have a terribly productive day. The New York Times’ Catie Edmondson summed it up pretty well:
To recap what has happened on Capitol Hill today: Republicans torpedoed a bipartisan border deal they demanded, leaving the fate of aid to Ukraine and Israel in peril. House Republicans tried to pre-empt that deal by proposing a standalone aid bill to Israel but were unable to pass it, with opposition from Democrats and their hard-right flank. And, finally, they failed to impeach the homeland security secretary after promising to do so for months.
Over on the Senate side, things were not going much better for the GOP. As discussed yesterday in this space, Republicans went from demanding that any aid to Ukraine be linked to a border deal. After getting precisely that, even Senate Republicans started backing away from the legislation on Monday. The New York Times’ Annie Karni provided real-time coverage of the collapse in GOP support:
Republicans in Congress who have spent months demanding that any aid to Ukraine be paired with a crackdown against migration into the United States got what they asked for when a bipartisan group of senators released a $118.3 billion agreement that would provide both.
On Monday, many of them rejected it anyway….
By Monday evening, Mr. McConnell was privately acknowledging that the measure had hemorrhaged support among Republicans, and recommending they move to block it unless Democrats agreed to debate it further and allow them to propose changes….
In an unusual turn that underscored the Republican divide, a Senate G.O.P. leadership aide who insisted on anonymity circulated a point-by-point rebuttal on Monday evening to House Republican leaders’ statement criticizing the bill….
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, who served as the lead Republican negotiator on the border deal, could not mask his frustration with his own party as he sought to explain the final product that was released after more than three months of daily negotiations. The same Republicans who complained that they needed more time to read through the bill, Mr. Lankford vented, were rushing to denounce it on social media.
By Tuesday, McConnell was acknowledging, “we have no real chance here to make a law.”
Josh Chafetz summed up the day’s events on BlueSky:
So, tonight’s headlines:
House GOP fails to impeach Mayorkas House
GOP Standalone Israel Aid Package Fails
Biden Attacks GOP For Caving to Trump on Border Bill
DC Circuit Rules Trump Not Immune From Prosecution
RNC Chair Steps Down
There is also the organizational and fiscal dysfunction of both the Republican National Committee as well as the state-level parties.
This is all ridiculously embarrassing for a political party that aspires to govern. It reminds the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World about the multiple beclownings of the executive branch under the Trump administration.
And yet, while this kind of comedy of errors might have been amusing even five years ago, it’s less so now, for three reasons. The first is, as noted yesterday, that the GOP’s congressional dysfunction is preventing urgent foreign and domestic policy priorities from being addressed. That is a big problem.
The second is that there are times when observable GOP incompetence unintentionally minimizes concerns about GOP malevolence. This was a running debate during the Trump administration: did Trump’s witless incompetence undercut policies that could have been far, far worse?
Full disclosure: this was my position for most of 2017. Only as Trump started figuring out how to use the levers of power did some of his more malevolent policies — useless trade wars, putting children in cages, pretending like the pandemic was unimportant — come to the fore. But there are still commentators who find it easy to wave off the GOP’s more illiberal aims by claiming that they are too incompetent to do anything truly abhorrent.
But even the GOP fails listed above, while entertaining for now, are somewhat temporary. For example, Republicans may well be able to impeach Mayorkas once Steve Scalise is able to return to the Capitol. For another example, the probable replacement for GOP party chair Ronna McDaniel will be Michael Whatley, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. Why is he Trump’s choice? According to the New York Times:
Mr. Trump likes Mr. Whatley for one overwhelming reason, according to people who have discussed him with the former president: He is “a stop the steal guy,” as one of the people described him. He endorses Mr. Trump’s false claims about mass voter fraud and Mr. Trump believes he did a good job delivering North Carolina, a 2020 swing state, to him.
Mr. Whatley has baselessly claimed that election security efforts from Republicans in North Carolina stopped Democrats from cheating. He is also currently the general counsel at the Republican National Committee and has endorsed efforts to develop new voting laws.
The third reason is the most worrying. Despite all this GOP dysfunction there are polls showing that Americans believe Donald Trump will be more competent than Joe Biden at running the country. NBC News’ Mark Murray wrote about one such NBC poll this weekend:
Biden trails GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on major policy and personal comparisons, including by more than 20 points on which candidate would better handle the economy. And Biden’s deficit versus Trump on handling immigration and the border is greater than 30 points.
The poll also shows Trump holding a 16-point advantage over Biden on being competent and effective, a reversal from 2020, when Biden was ahead of Trump on this quality by 9 points before defeating him in that election….
Also in the poll, Trump has the edge on securing the border and controlling immigration (35 points over Biden), on having the necessary mental and physical health to be president (+23), on dealing with crime and violence (+21), on being competent and effective (+16), and on improving America’s standing in the world (+11).
Biden holds advantages over Trump on dealing with abortion (+12) and protecting immigrant rights (+17).
The two men are essentially tied on the issue of protecting democracy, with 43% of voters preferring Biden and 41% picking Trump.
Beclowning used to be a funny word. None of this is funny.
A wonderful screed, Dan; but I disagree on one minor point: you write “This is all ridiculously embarrassing for a political party that aspires to govern.” I don’t think the current GOP has any aspirations to govern. Their only aspiration is the acquisition and maintenance of power, which is a different thing altogether.
Although I know it's entirely improbable, I would favor abolishing polling until a month or so before the election. It obscures the issues and focuses everybody on the "horse race."