Guest Opinion Writer John Lawrence offers perspective on former Speaker Pelosi’s decision to run for her 20th term. Mr. Lawrence served 38 years as a senior staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives, the last eight as Chief of Staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
House Republicans have made history, mainly with the votes of House Democrats, by ousting a sitting speaker, ostensibly because he committed the heresy of worshipping at the forbidden altar of compromise. Only 4 percent of Republicans voted to oust Kevin McCarthy (CA) for violating the terms under which they warily granted him the gavel in January, but that was enough, in combination with every voting Democrat, to send the movers into the Speaker’s office.
McCarthy’s fate was sealed when Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) advised his Democratic colleagues that they should leave the onus of determining the speaker’s fate to his own members. After all, Democrats had their own candidate for speaker, Mr. Jeffries himself. Selecting the speaker is the exclusive purview of the House majority, and that is the Republicans. Don’t mess around in the other guy’s sandbox.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, McCarthy had proven an unreliable ally over the past nine months, walking away from negotiated agreements like the debt ceiling spending caps and the promise to secure a House vote before launching an impeachment investigation of President Biden (which exploded on the launch pad last week). McCarthy is moving quickly to rewrite history to make himself look better than the record warrants; at his post-deposal press conference, he dared a reporter to name any examples of his having misled colleagues. The press obligingly recalled his walking away from the debt ceiling agreement and the impeachment pledge.
History suggests the process of replacing him will be painful. One need only look back to the anguish of John Boehner (OH) as he relinquished the gavel after having been savaged for several years by the Tea Party faction of his own conference. Paul Ryan (WI), the choice of most House Republicans, shied away from the honor of replacing Boehner, knowing he would face the same unrealistic demands from the conference’s extremist wing that drove his predecessor into retirement. “All of this crap swirling around was going to make it tough for me to cut any deals with Obama as the new House Speaker,” Boehner recalled. His task was immeasurably complicated by the “lunatics,” “anarchists,” and “legislative terrorists” he described as populating the GOP conference.
Using procedures developed after 9/11 to ensure the continuity of government, McCarthy designated Patrick McHenry (NC) as Speaker Pro Tem to keep the House functioning. But that is a short-term solution while everyone sorts out what comes next. The Constitution is very clear that “the House” chooses the speaker, not the outgoing speaker, so this arrangement will only be in place while the Republicans figure out whom to offer up as a candidate. The odds are overwhelming that the successor will suffer the same fate that Boehner and his successor, Ryan, did: dysfunctional management of the House that resulted in a Democratic victory.
If the new speaker wins Republican support – and they would need nearly all those eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy – they doubtless would have promised to take a hard line against compromising with Democrats, which is what did in McCarthy and Boehner. But refusal to negotiate assures inaction on pending appropriations bills while edging closer to the shutdown precipice in November; ultimately, in divided government, you have no choice but to engage with the other party. McCarthy tried to explain that reality to his hardliners, and tonight, he is the former speaker.
If Gaetz has an alternative strategy, other than shutting down the government until January, 2025, this would probably be the time to share it with his Republican colleagues. But don’t bother talking to Democrats; as today’s votes demonstrated, Hakeem Jeffries has no intention of saving Republicans from themselves.