Opinion With the House GOP in full meltdown, Democrats could offer a way out
With Republicans fractured and in need of saving, what should happen is that a few vulnerable members (such as those representing districts Joe Biden won in 2020) join Democrats in supporting Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), for the position. But that’s unlikely, because any Republicans who dare to do this would see their careers implode.
The next best thing, then, is a deal that both sides can accept. Republicans will have to offer meaningful concessions to Democrats to have any hope of getting their support for a consensus, relatively moderate GOP speaker.
At an absolute minimum, a compromise would tackle the core problem: That a few extreme members can propel the House into total meltdown, rendering it ungovernable. Several high-profile, non-MAGA Republicans, such as Reps. Mike D. Rogers (Ala.) and María Elvira Salazar (Fla.), have publicly called on Democrats to specify what they would need to throw the GOP a lifeline — and Democrats have several ideas in mind.
First, some Democrats want to reform the “motion to vacate” rule so that a single member can’t force a snap vote to remove the speaker on a whim, which is exactly how Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) dethroned Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). One idea Democrats are mulling, according to a House aide, is requiring a majority of the party in control of the House to support the motion to vacate before it can happen.
Second, Democrats are discussing the idea of a mechanism that would give them more leverage over what bills get a floor vote, even on things many Republicans oppose — such as continued Ukraine aid (likely coupled with aid to Israel), and bills funding the government at levels that many in both parties can accept.
“A real power-sharing agreement means shared control over what does and doesn’t come to the floor,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told me. One way to do this, Jayapal says, is by dividing power evenly on the House Rules Committee and thus over what reaches the floor.
Scrapping the current version of the motion to vacate, plus enabling votes on broadly supported goals, would wipe out the far right’s leverage. “Any mechanism that would guarantee votes on the floor for certain measures would break the veto power that now exists for the lunatic fringe,” congressional expert Norman Ornstein told me.
Vulnerable Republicans suffer politically from fringe members’ demands for extreme spending cuts, flirtation with government shutdowns and continued internal meltdowns over other governing matters. So you would think at least some of them could entertain reforms to render that bedlam less likely.
In fact, Democrats can reasonably demand still more for helping elect a Republican speaker: Why not a permanent repeal of the debt limit, which has been used as a weapon by far-right members in the past, leading to chaotic standoffs?
“Those are absolutely the kinds of ideas we should be talking about,” says Jayapal, though she declined to get ahead of Jeffries on the specifics of their demands. The core goal, she said, should be disabling the GOP’s “use of things that never used to be controversial to move their extreme agenda.”
Democrats could get really ambitious and insist that Republicans drop any efforts to defund the special counsel’s office prosecuting former president Donald Trump. As Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) told me over email: “It would seem to go without saying that if they want our help, they can’t use the spending power to try to defund federal prosecution of corrupt, insurrectionist, coup-plotting, classified-document-pilfering would-be dictators at-large.”
But Republicans remain in a quagmire of their own making. Even if preventing future chaos could help vulnerable GOP members in a general election, “working with Democrats imperils them in a primary,” said GOP lobbyist Liam Donovan. “Individual political incentives, even among vulnerable Republicans, are highly cross-pressured.”
If Republicans want to be saved from the dysfunction unleashed over and over again by the extremists in their ranks, they should do their part in protecting the rest of the system in the face of those same threats. Doing that would provide the basis for a reasonable power-sharing blueprint that both parties should be able to accept.
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