For How Long?
As Republicans backslap and celebrate finally electing a Speaker of the House on the 15th round of voting, the rest of us are left to contemplate the damage they’ve done to our nation.
Today, Joe Biden, speaking about the January 6 anniversary, recounted his experience at the G7 summit last March when he told his fellow leaders, “America is back,” and one of them responded, “For how long?”
America needs to be back, for the good of the world as well as the nation. Putin may be fighting on Ukrainian soil, but the risk reaches much farther. It is a time when we need our allies and they need to have confidence in us. But the Republican Party—all dysfunction, no vision—is intent on doing everything it can to exacerbate concerns about our stability. “For how long?”
Perception has a way of becoming reality, and the high-schoolish display in the House this week demonstrates just how fragile our institutions remain. Institutions are, in many ways, only as stable as the people who run them. There is little stability in today’s Republican Party, which is now in control, barely, of the House of Representatives. The concern, both in our country and the rest of the world, is whether, in 2024, a party so lacking in a moral compass will acquire greater control of government. “For how long?”
As much as there are international concerns, there are obviously national ones too. We still live in a moment of enduring concern over whether those responsible at the highest levels for the insurrection will be held accountable. That concern is very real, especially when you see the self-satisfied looks on the faces of some of the representatives-elect, who, far from being horrified by the effort to interfere with the election that took place just two years ago, welcomed it and even encouraged it.
There are more basic concerns too. Concerns about whether the party that put its full measure of inadequacy on display in the House this week is capable of governing. During the campaign, Republicans talked about inflation and immigration. But fixing those issues for the betterment of the American people do not seem to be at the top of their agenda. Instead, there was reporting yesterday that votes for the new Speaker were traded for an agreement to fund a Church Committee-style investigation into the FBI and the intelligence community. In other words, they’re still executing Trump’s agenda. Instead of leaving Hunter Biden and his laptop to the Trump-appointed United States Attorney who has been permitted to remain in office in Delaware to conduct that investigation, all we can expect is more politicization.
It is an unfortunate state of affairs. We need two grown-up, responsible parties if we are going to fully recover from January 6. We are not there yet.
In the spring, I teach a seminar on Democratic Institutions, and one of the analogies I like to use with my students, as a springboard for helping us think about the stability of our institutions, is a game of cards. My husband and I play Hearts, which, like Bridge, is a long-running game made up of multiple hands. If a player is so intent on winning one particular hand that they’re willing to cheat and violate the rules to get there, they blow up the entire game. Our republic is only strong if both parties are committed to continuing the game together. But what we’ve seen over these past months and years is one party that is desperate to win at all costs. So desperate to win one hand that they came close to ruining the entire game. That’s not a formula for making America strong.
This week, the world saw that our country is still fragile. The Republican Party, elected to lead the House of Representatives, was unable to elect a Speaker and had a week without a properly constituted government. A week where, had the unthinkable happened, Congress would have been unable to issue a declaration of war or pass emergency funding measures. A week that gave our friends and foes in the world alike reason to ask themselves, “For how long?”
I have to be honest and say I enjoyed seeing Kevin McCarthy lose in the first round of voting. But after that, despite some of the truly delightful memes that were circulating, it became more and more concerning. It was apparent that we are still truly at risk. In his speech early Saturday, McCarthy vowed that his responsibility was not to his party but to his country. We’ve not seen much to give credence to those words. He quickly resorted to political rhetoric and tired tropes. He made promises he will not deliver on.
But perhaps his most telling comment, the one that revealed what we can expect from him as Speaker, came when he called for a return to a country “where law enforcement is respected and criminals are prosecuted.” He had no trace of shame as he said those words. He did not acknowledge that his own party has shown disregard for the police officers who protected them on January 6. He did not call for prosecution of the criminals most responsible for the attack. The fact that the hypocrisy of his own remarks was either lost on the new Speaker or that he simply did not care does not bode well for what’s ahead. At a time when we need true leadership on the Republican side of the aisle, we got empty words.
Just after midnight, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement: “Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s dream job could turn into a nightmare for the American people. To get the votes, he surrendered to demands of a fringe element of the Republican party. Kevin McCarthy’s concessions to the extremists in his party make it far more likely that the MAGA Republican controlled House will cause a government shutdown or a default with devastating consequences to our country.”
Tough times ahead, friends.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
I’m glad this community exists. I have a feeling we’re gonna need each other a ton for the next little while. I’m glad to be here with y’all.
"THEY GOT IN, AFTER ALL."
Watching mccarthy pick up the Speaker's gavel, and listening to his first words, I had that sudden, chilling realization: "They got in, after all!" The insurrectionists who invaded the People's House two years ago, have now taken over the House. The coup happened. In the exact same place where they forced a delay in the vote of the Electoral College, the Capitol building; on the exact same date, January 7th; and at the exact same time, the wee hours of the morning -- here we are precisely two years later with 150 repugnicant election-deniers sitting in our House, and cheering for the corrupt mr. mccarthy. I am sick at heart.