The Last of the Young Guns
We won't have Kevin to kick around any more.
So, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost a primary to a Tea Party challenger in 2014. This would lead to him resigning his seat before his term was up.
In 2018, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he would not run for re-election.
And now, via WaPo: Former speaker Kevin McCarthy will retire from Congress at end of year.
Add in that in 2015 Speaker of the House John Boehner resigned from the Speakership and his seat as well as the many, many votes to elect McCarthy as Speaker, his subsequent ouster, and the many, many votes needed to then elect Johnson as Speaker.
I don’t have time for a deep analysis at the moment, but all of this is indicative of a party that is in utter crisis and undergoing a significant transformation but in a weird slow-motion kind of way. But I would hasten to note, not surprisingly to regular readers, that while in other representative democracies such a crisis would likely have led to a fracturing of the party, which would have included challenges at the ballot, the US system helps keep the party afloat.
Specifically, the fact that there is no centralized control of party labels means that the party can maintain a huge chunk of voter support no matter what else happens, the same way sports fans are ultimately rooting for the laundry, as players, coaches, and whole philosophies of the game change for their team over time.
I am not saying that there aren’t GOP voters who support this evolution; clearly, there are. I am simply noting that this kind of ongoing turnover within a party, and its clear shift from Paul Ryan objectivism light to Mike John Christan nationalism (or even just MTG chaos) has come about subtlety and not in a way that most voters understand. And if they don’t understand it, then party labels are not performing their prime function in a representative democracy, which is to send clear signals to the voters.
Again, simply as a matter of fact, there are clear factions of the GOP that would make more sense, both in terms of internal logic, and democratic representation, as more than one party. At a bare minimum, its clear inability to select and maintain leadership underscores this fact.
This is not a healthy party and it is a party that would be facing more pressure from the electorate if the system (primaries, a too-small House, single-seat districts, over-representation of small states in the Senate, and the Electoral College) did not artificially prop them up. Democratic competition should lead to adaptation by power-seekers to better align with voter preference and it should also force power-seekers to use the voters to address their internal fights. Neither of those things are happening in the US at the moment and that is to the detriment of good governance (see, e.g., the fact that we are operating, yet again, on a stop-gap spending measure, not to mention our ongoing inability to address real problems facing the country, both in the shot and long terms).
Side note on McCarthy, I think he goes down in history for this photo, and the fact that despite evidence that he knew better, he was willing to prostrate himself before Trump in the hopes of getting power, which he only briefly did.
McCarthy is also another in a long line of politicians who thought they could harness Trump and emerge unscathed. But Icarus is on the line and he has a few words about flying too close to orange objects.
Agreed on all counts. I will also note, since you remind us to always look to structural factors in addition to agentive ones, that the Young Guns agenda helped ultimately create the conditions for their demise.
Things like their attack on “earmark culture” within the Republican party meant that they worked to discourage, if not eliminate, many of the traditional tools used to help maintain party cohesion.
@mattbernius: “Our unilateral disarmament has not necessarily worked out in our favor.”
Maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but according to Liz Cheney‘s book promotion tour, McCarthy kissed the ring for Trump‘s fundraising connections. Money is power (yada, yada, yada), but I find this characterization of Kevin‘s motives a more pointed illustration of the former Speaker‘s willingness to be a whore.
The Party can not fail, it can only be failed. It ever was thus.
While on the Dem side, fissures are occurring over, of all things, support for Israel or Palestine.
Young Guns, that was some amusing republican branding back in the day.
I must say I am surprised to see Steven L. Taylor so openly and unashamedly call for the elimination of “majority-minority” Congressional districts. The boundaries of such districts are intentionally drawn to ensure the population is primarily of one particular racial group, thereby making virtually certain the person elected to Congress from that district is part of that racial group.
After all, there is no more nakedly egregious example of the system being rigged to benefit one group over others, is there? If Idaho doesn’t deserve the same representation in the U.S. Senate as New York, why should a racial minority be virtually guaranteed a certain number of seats in the U.S. House?
Bravo, James! You are a braver man than I.
@TheRyGuy: Your post is riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations. I’m sure Steven can, if he cares to, defend himself, and point them all out. I’m not sure where the reference to James comes in, since he hasn’t posted here yet.
The thing I wonder about is why you bother to come here and post this at all. Do you imagine it will change people’s minds?
I once heard a story about Christian missionaries in China who would take crates of Bibles, make sure they were watertight and floating, and dump them in the river. Because you never know, someone might read it and Gods will be done. (I seem to recall that the Bibles were an English translation, but I could be wrong about that).
That kind of seems similar to what you are doing here, except that I have a lot more respect for the Bible, than for the sort of thing you wrote here.
@TheRyGuy: Rather than misrepresent Dr. Taylor, you could’ve just written “I hate black people” instead.
But you didn’t because, as you noted, you’re a coward. As well as a fabulist bigot, apparently. In other words, a standard-issue modern Republican voter, an avatar of why y’all keep losing elections. And Speakers.
R.I.P. Kevin McCarthy (R-QAnon)
@TheRyGuy:
What does James, presumably James Joyner, have to do with any of this?
@TheRyGuy: Shorter RyGuy: Only white people deserve representation in Congress.
@TheRyGuy: Are you drunk?
Looking at that photo reminded me of what a punchable face Eric Cantor had. (Probably still has).
And that was presumably the best photo of a large set of photos taken that day.
To be clear, it would be wrong to punch Eric Cantor in the face, but isn’t it also wrong for him to have a face that so invites punching?
We live in an era with cosmetic surgery, and he’s a wealthy white man so he could clearly fix that. I think it is something his parents should have done for him, just like parents often get their kid braces.
There should be a charity to help poor people with punchable faces. Or covered by Medicaid. Really, all insurance — a billing code for “punchable face syndrome”.
Yes, the system we have in the US results in a completely unhealthy outcome of a need to preserve the party, rather than a “fracture, split, regroup” into a healthier, less-crazy party.
However, it can also be argued that upon recognizing this, true patriots would not stick with the clearly problematic path and would instead switch parties, break the hold the nutjobs have by forcing them into the wilderness for a while, and then regroup.
The three pictured were too enamored with themselves to realize how bad things have become, and have been so FOR A WHILE NOW. As I have repeatedly stated, it was clear to me where things were headed when I was working in Republican politics in the mid-90s. Newt Gingrich was the absolute worst person (and a very early sign that Republicans talk about family values but DNGAF, as Newt left not just one but two of his wives when they got ill).
“Icarus is on the line…..” great comment.
@TheRyGuy: I won’t try to disentangle the weird mess that is your comment, save to say that I would gladly get rid of all single-seat districts tomorrow and replace our system of electing the House in particular with one of several variations of proportional representation.
But, of course, my position on this is easy to see should one be inclined to know it.
@mattbernius: Don’t get me wrong–I do not absolve the past leadership of the party for culpability of where we have ended up.
Indeed, as @Jen notes, Gingrich has a lot to answer for.
It is a subtle thing, but I really do think that there are clear factions (with obvious overlap, as is often the case with factions) within the GOP and that the differences are enough to have caused either fracture or adaptation under a different set of institutional parameters.
Heck, the fact that the MAGA faction is dominant is a direct function of the rules, not of a conscious strategic choices by the party.
Kevin only ends up the bottom picture because of primaries (as enhanced by the GOP allocation rules) and the EC.
@Cville Rooster: Thanks. I was pretty fond of it 😉
Cites facts not in evidence.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Oh, I didn’t think you were for a sec. I was more interested in calling attention to the Young Guns almost Shakespearian decision to pursue policies that ultimately undercut their ability to govren and helped lead to their own defeats.
@TheRyGuy:
This argument might carry more weight if we didn’t see gerrymandering efforts to crack and stack congressional districts to defuse minority votes top typically ensure disproportionate White (Republican) representation.
Though the overall problem like Steven pointed out is that he has been long on record about more proportional representation models, which would eliminate the issues around gerrymandering in the first place.