The Devil We Know

It’s a close call, but on balance House Democrats are better off voting to keep Kevin McCarthy as Speaker than joining the hard-right Republicans to oust him.

To be sure, McCarthy is no bargain. He has reneged on a spending deal, supported a goofy impeachment of Pres. Biden after he indicated he wouldn’t, attacked Democrats for the near-miss shutdown on the morning after they saved his hide on that very thing, and opposed aid to Ukraine, among other things. Democrats don’t like or trust him and there’s no reason to start now.

But here’s the thing. If not McCarthy than who? The Republicans are sure as heck not going to replace him with anybody better. In fact, they will almost certainly replace him with a new Speaker who will never come to any debt limit or budget agreements with Democrats and who will double down on the bogus impeachment investigation. If you think it’s all out war now, this will just look like a little skirmish.

By providing the votes to keep McCarthy in power (or just voting “present” to achieve the same thing) Democrats will accomplish three things. They’ll avoid the elevation of someone even worse (and the Republicans are well stocked with those who are even worse), they’ll establish themselves as (junior) governing partners and they’ll deal a massive blow to the hard-right.

They won’t be able to achieve this by pushing too hard for demands that McCarthy can never deliver on. But there are things McCarthy has done that he only did under pressure from the craziest part of his caucus. Freed from them, he might be more reasonable — though certainly still very conservative — for the rest of what I hope will be his brief tenure in his job.

As an aside, what does this say about the state of the Republican Party? McCarthy will be challenged for his job because he committed the crime of governing, of reaching out and working with the other side. This is the same party that is rewarding Donald Trump with higher approval numbers as his indictments pile up.

There is only one responsible governing party in America right now plus the remnants of another one. What’s most important is that they come together and put the hard-right in its place, and its place should be oblivion.