Rules for Radicals

It won’t matter who the speaker of the House is if we don’t safeguard clear, impartial, and competent administration.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, and Rep. Jim Jordan are seen during a break in testimony at a hearing in Raybturn Building on Wednesday, September 20, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)

Americans are fed up with what is now literally a do-nothing Congress. Sixty-seven percent of respondents in a new poll taken before the latest maneuvers by House Republicans said that the chamber needs to elect a speaker “as soon as possible.”

And that’s with the shady prompt in one question of the poll by Suffolk University for USA Today: “I don’t care if Congress elects a speaker. Every day that goes by without a speaker means that Congress can’t waste more of our tax dollars.” Not only is that misleading, since government waste continues and, in theory, could be even worse without congressional oversight, but it’s also a prompt that is basically trolling for conservatives.

Even with that crummy wording, the poll could still scrape up only 25 percent of the electorate that wanted a speakerless House.

Yet, in the same poll, 61 percent of respondents expressed very little or no confidence “in the nation’s leaders to handle the major challenges the nation faces.” 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Rdpulfer

    I think the biggest problem is misconceptions of just what the government does - and how it works. Typically, Presidential candidates have always swung for the rafters with big promises, only to see them put through the meat grinder in Congress. For years, that was part of the dance, because checks and balances and federalism were understood to be a feature, not a bug.

    That's not the case any more, with candidates railing against the guard rails that is supposed to keep their powers in checking, and many of their social media followers not questioning . . . what it's going to look like when those guard rails are gone?

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  2. Bob Cherichella

    I don’t think I’m whistling past the graveyard. When it comes to pulling the handle on a voting machine, I think more Republicans will shy away from voting for Trump. I think he wins Iowa, closer than people think, gets beat by Haley in New Hampshire and then we’ll see what happens in SC.

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  3. DALE Nathan SWITZER

    Congress is not the worst issue the republicans have to deal with. Here is the majority view of the website that is still the considered the "conservative" movement - https://instapundit.com/613236/#disqus_thread .

    The thread is calling for Trump to institute firing squads and summary executions for democrats and "traitor" republicans. Note: this is not QAnon, this is Glenn Reynolds. It is his, personal, post.

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    1. Hikingguy

      I once was a huge fan of Instapundit. Amazing how blind one can be. I forget the exact post that-finally-inspired deep disgust. Not at Instapundit. At me. I had turned blind eyes to their authoritarian bent for years because I was a conservative and they were speaking for me, but once the scales fall off, they stay off. Firing squads, is it? Jesus wept. The Hitler fanboys always get there in the end.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Matthew Thirteen

    The R's forgot that they lost the last pres. election. They are taking orders from a loser. They are not listening to constituents, rather, to a loser. How pathetic. Why not just publicly ask the loser to pick the next speaker?Anyone can see that is what is happening anyway.
    On the other hand, I'm satisfied now that most voters will see that the Republicans have cratered and aren't a definable party any longer. If anything good comes from this nightmare it is that the two party system begins to lose its grip after the R's lose in the next election in true trump fashion.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Rajeev

    The Republicans have never wanted to govern. Not since the 1990s when even then they had major issues. If they were serious then they would approach Democrats and offer something as simple as an up or down vote on Ukraine aid. Democrats don't need much to support a competent speaker.

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  6. ErrantThoughts

    Radicals like to be against things. When you're against something you have the luxury of being able to be uncompromising. If you lose, you can still be against the thing. No lessons need be learned. Radicals don't actually need articulable goals other than stop the bad thing from being bad.

    Trump is a fantastic radical. So are his fellow opportunistic reality tv players masquerading as politicians.

    Highly technical gerrymandering and first past the post primary and election systems have allowed these radicals to metastasize into a sizable nihilistic faction of one of the two major parties. If the Republicans have more courage than I think they do they can take this opportunity to excise the disease and save themselves and their party from the ignominious humiliating death spiral they are in.

    Naw.

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  7. Moore.Mike99

    We’ll articulated thoughts held by many—a majority? Thanks Chris!

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  8. Avatar photo
    Donald E. L. Johnson, Florida

    What the House fiasco is showing is that no incumbent should run unchallenged in primaries nor in the general elections.

    2024 will be a great time to take on entrenched Members of the House and oust them.

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    1. Kelson924

      Isn’t this exactly the approach Chris is arguing against, focusing on switching players rather than how we play the game?

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  9. Avatar photo
    Donald E. L. Johnson, Florida

    I was hoping that after he won the Trump Party nomination to be speaker, Tom Emmers would lay down the law.

    He should have declared that anyone who didn't vote for him on the House Floor to become speaker would no longer be a considered a Republican and no longer would caucus with Republicans. He probably should have told the caucus that unless it supported his plan, he would drop out. Is that what happened?

    Further, he should have gone Gingrich on his caucus and announced that he would change the rule that allows one member to vacate the Speaker to require 50 members to force a vote on vacating the Speaker.

    And he should have announced that until the Trump Party has a solid majority, any member who didn't vote with the speaker would be thrown out of the party.

    Emmer didn't have the stomach for making new rules and taking on the radicals that are making the House ungovernable.

    Now what? Who are these characters still running for speaker. Are they Freedom Caucus and Trump apologist and supporters who are as corrupt and unfit for political office as he is?

    At what point will anti-Trump members become Democrats and help elect a Democrat Speaker? That's what they should do, but are their careers in the House so important to them that they won't do what they should do to serve America?

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    1. Avatar photo
      Azlefty

      No, apparently Trump announced his opposition to Emmer and he was toast in a couple of hours. Good times.

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  10. Brett F.

    The Republican party is the problem. Time to start voting Republicans out in large numbers.

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