What the obstructionism over Kevin McCarthy portends for Congress
If the new House Republican can't do something as procedural as elect as speaker, how can we expect them to pass a budget?
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Summary: Potential Gridlock and the inability to respond to national security crises are in the near future based on the obstructionism in Congress over electing Kevin McCarthy.
Happy new year and welcome to the new McCarthy era! It's different from the 1950s, but also involves members of Congress acting badly. Instead of a time when Congress subpoenaed everyone under the sun to pressure them into ratting out alleged Communists, we have a deadlocked Republican majority unable to elect their leader as House speaker.
I try to avoid writing about the churning of the eternal sea of politics in this newsletter and focus more on institutional decline. But let's face it: A Congress unable to elect a leader (after 11 ballots at the time this posting and more planned into the next day) is an example of decline and portends institutionalist deadlock in the U.S. government in the near term.
If House Republicans can't do something as procedural as elect a speaker, how can we expect them to come to an agreement with a Democratic White House and Senate to pass a budget to keep the government in operation? McCarthy, if somehow he ends up becoming speaker, would likely have to make a deal with congressional Democrats for votes to keep things in operation. Arguably, he should just get it over with now and start making concessions to win over Democratic votes for his speakership. I don’t know if he’ll do that. It would just prove his opponents right over not being reliable for the conservative cause.
The situation isn’t a good look for democracy and could rise to a national security issue. China is not keeping a secret its renewed interest in reclaiming Taiwan and may well be looking for a good opportunity for an invasion. A stalemate in one chamber of Congress, which would hinder the authorization of force from the U.S. military, would seem to fit into that category of opportunity.
Many observers are blaming the deadlock on the narrow House majority after the underwhelming performance of Republicans in the mid-term election. Donald Trump, in a rare post-presidential moment of coherence, said this week the narrow House majority was the result of the pro-life movement not having a strategy after its win against abortion at the Supreme Court. Elon Musk weighed in on the observation as "mostly accurate tbh."
But it's more than the narrow majority. McCarthy continues to hover around north of 200 votes in his bid for speaker, which is well short of the simple majority needed to win election, or 218 votes if every House member is present. In the 2020 election, it would have been a stretch for Republicans to have won the nearly 20 additional seats for McCarthy to have gotten those additional votes out of hand. That outcome, additionally, assumes each of those additional members would have voted for McCarthy and not joined the faction obstructing his speakership.
Instead, the obstruction is more about two things: 1) The growing nihilism in the Republican Party stoked during the 1990s by Newt Gingrich when he made shutdowns a mainstream component of government management, and 2) The descent of Congress into a body of preening starlets exploiting our systems of online communication to win attention. If you haven't guessed, Matt Gaetz falls into that second category, although his approach to governance as a lawmaker has elements of the first.
Pundits are making all sorts of predictions about where the stalemate will end up. There's a widespread presumption the House will eventually settle on someone as speaker, even if it's not McCarthy. But there's no path to get there at the moment, so Congress may have to limp along with one chamber in operation. That’s totally consistent with the decline of a branch of government once thought of the world’s greatest deliberative body.
With that unhappy thought, here's other non McCarthy-related stories in the past week that got my attention:
OBAMA POINTS TO GLOBALIZATION AS DISRUPTIVE FOR SOCIETIES: Former President Obama, making an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in one of the hosts final appearance, pointed to globalization as key factor in destabilizing traditional societies:
The topic of globalization came up when Obama was asked the cause of the rise of autocracies throughout the world:
From Fox News:
Noah then asked, "One, why do you think the world has gotten there?" and asked a second question: "What can we do, or why should we then try to get back to this democracy?"
…
He replied, "Globalization, the global economy disrupted a lot of traditional societies." When asked what he meant by "disrupted," he replied, "Well, uh, the global supply chain eliminates industries, eliminates jobs, increases the wealth gap not only between countries but within countries."
He also acknowledged "modernity" being at odds with those societies’ traditional beliefs. He claimed, "And then modernity challenges people’s traditional notions of religion and family and gender roles. And you’ve got these culture clashes, right?"
It’s important to point out Obama wasn’t intending to outright repudiate globalization with those comments. Later, he said political leaders needed to do a better job over the selling the change:
He added, "But I think we have to also find a language and a story — a way of telling the story about how we can get together that does not threaten people who are aren’t as comfortable with change as much. And that’s gonna be different for different countries."
U.S. COMPANIES LOOK TO MEXICO FOR TRADE AMID CHINA TENSIONS: The New York Times has an article about how U.S. companies, amid new tensions with China, are looking not across the Pacific but below the border for production in a globalized economy.
From the New York Times:
During the first 10 months of last year, Mexico exported $382 billion of goods to the United States, an increase of more than 20 percent over the same period in 2021, according to U.S. census data. Since 2019, American imports of Mexican goods have swelled by more than one-fourth.
In 2021, American investors put more money into Mexico — buying companies and financing projects — than into China, according to an analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute.
China will almost certainly remain a central component of manufacturing for years to come, say trade experts. But the shift toward Mexico represents a marginal reapportionment of the world’s manufacturing capacity amid recognition of volatile hazards — from geopolitical realignments to the intensifying challenges of climate change.
In a way, the development strikes me as what is old is new again. The United States has had a free trade agreement with Mexico since at the ratification of NAFTA in 1993, while China has only had permanent “most favored nation” status with the United States since 2001.
I imagine the job placement in Mexico would sit as well with the American public as the perception of the exodus of jobs to China. The discontent over the trade relationship has already had an impact. Trump had a great line he delivered in Michigan during the 2016 election: "It used to be, cars were made in Flint and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico. Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you cannot drink the water in Flint. that's not good.” Maybe Ron DeSantis will come up with something similar in 2024.
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