Matt Gaetz can’t count and other Republican absurdities while ousting a Speaker heading into an election year

If there is one rule in politics, it might be summarized:  Never be seen to be losing, do not pick fights you cannot win, instead focus on changing the political kaleidoscope until you can win.  Republicans, or rather a handful of extreme Republicans, have somehow managed to pick two such fights in barely a month.

Let me begin by saying that I have no love for former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.  He has always struck me as too corporatist rather than conservative, and I did not see him as the sort of inspiring, charismatic, creative leader the House GOP needed in this era of extreme challenges coupled with rabid partisanship.  He came into the Speakership after a record number of votes and was ousted in record time, or rather his ousting was itself a record, completing a trifecta that no one wants to complete.  Further, I tend to sympathize with the concerns of the Freedom Caucus in general, believing that establishment Republicans are far too addicted to spending, too unwilling to use the tools at their disposal to enact meaningful changes to our country’s deteriorating finances and ever-growing government, and at times, little different than their Democrat counterparts.  If the world worked according to my wishes, we would have prevailed in the recent showdowns over the debt ceiling and the overall federal budget would be much more in line with demands of the Freedom Caucus.  Reality, whether political or otherwise, cannot simply be wished into being, however, and the cold reality of the political situation right now can be reduced to insurmountable mathematics favoring the center left establishment.  Putting this another way, Matt Gaetz, who spearheaded Speaker McCarthy’s removal, and his seven Republican colleagues simply can’t count.  The numbers are obvious and irrevocable.  In our system of government, both houses of Congress and the Presidency are required to pass any spending bill.  Republicans, not necessarily conservatives, control a mere third of that process, and that third they control by the slimmest of margins, nine votes, meaning as few as five defections will doom any bill.  To date, the Freedom Caucus has not even been able to secure all the Republican votes for their priorities, meaning the bills they propose cannot even pass in the one chamber of Congress under GOP control.  The math controlling the Senate only gets more brutal from there, where Democrats hold a slim majority and a conservative bill coming from the House will not even be voted on.  It will die without so much as a whimper, much less garner the 60 votes required for passage.  Democrats, of course, hold the Presidency as well and Joe Biden has the power to veto any conservative bill that should miraculously emerge, putting the number of votes required to pass such a bill at 66 in the Senate to override a veto.  The odds of this happening are essentially zero, requiring a true miracle if ever there were one.

Politics has been described as the art of the possible.  Congressman Gaetz and his colleagues are instead asking for the impossible.  This does not mean they shouldn’t have their voices heard, shouldn’t fight to include as much of their preferred policies as possible in any bill passing out of the House, or shouldn’t pressure both Republicans and Democrats to recognize their concerns.  It does not even mean they shouldn’t engage in any political brinkmanship, exercising their power in creative ways to force the issues they most care about.  It does, however, mean there is a well-defined limit on what the Republicans can accomplish even when they are fully united behind a conservative policy or piece of legislation.  Governing in the minority requires a recognition of this limit and an acknowledgement that it can only be changed after an election.  That is, changing what is possible in politics today is only possible if the Republicans prevail in 2024, winning the Presidency, taking control of the Senate, and increasing their majority in the House.  This is the only path to more conservative governance and anyone interested in conservative ideals, must remain focused on achieving victory in 2024 above all else.  Anything counter productive to that goal, any stunt that threatens Republican prospects, or any political maneuver that risks success in 2024 can only be seen as detrimental to the cause, even if only as a distraction that takes our eyes off the prize.  In this case, there are few things more detrimental than ousting a Speaker of the House for the first time in history, throwing the only elected body of government the Republicans control into chaos and exacerbating schisms within the party, making them plain for all the world to see and pick at like a fresh, bloody wound.  That this was done with no clear plan for the next Speaker, no Republican majority in support of the next Speaker, with the aid of every Democrat and against the will of every Republican in the chamber except the eight who voted along with their opposition, makes it near suicidal – especially when political trends are moving in a conservative direction if recent polls are any indication, more on that in a moment.

Contrary to what frequently passes for conventional wisdom, principles and politics rarely mix, nor should we expect them to.  We should seek politicians we believe are principled people, but political battles are not won based on principle.  They are, instead, won based on taking maximum advantage of any given situation, exploiting any opportunity for political gain.  This includes knowing which battles to fight and when, and only picking these battles when it is clear they can be won outright.  In politics, there is no prize for second place.  There is no runner up.  There is only the winner and the loser, however noble the fight, and losing is (almost) always detrimental to the cause.  No matter how hard you might have tried, a political loss likely means the opposition gets what it wants and your own preferences are undermined, perhaps permanently.  History is filled with examples of canny politicians desperate to advance some policy they truly believed in, but wise enough to wait until they knew they could succeed, knowing that if they didn’t, the opposite outcome would be achieved.  Abraham Lincoln, for example, conceived the Emancipation Proclamation long before he actually enacted it, going so far as to deny freeing the slaves was actually part of his plan in the first place even as he was planning to do exactly that.  On August 22, 1862, he responded to an open letter from Republican Horace Greeley who had demanded the slaves be freed as soon as possible, writing “If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”  Technically, Lincoln was lying at worst or obfuscating at best.  In truth, he had already drafted the proclamation itself, but he denied it here and in other forums because he was waiting on the right moment, which he conceived as a massive Union victory in the war.  This moment proved to be Antietam, but even then he proceeded with a preliminary proclamation freeing Confederate slaves on Union soil.  It was several months before Lincoln issued the full proclamation.  Lincoln, of course, ultimately prevailed, winning the war and securing freedom for all of the slaves after his assassination, but his prevarications have led some to believe that freeing the slaves wasn’t part of his plan and that he did not see freedom as a core principle.  Politics being the art of the possible and Lincoln being the Great Emancipator makes all of that irrelevant, of course.  The only reality that matters is that Lincoln won when a less canny politician might well have lost.

The reality that matters right now is much more straightforward and should, in principle at least, be much easier to navigate:  The current President and presumed 2024 Democrat candidate, Joe Biden, is plummeting in the polls.  The current Real Clear Politics average places him at a measly 41.1% approval rating, far from an ideal place to be heading into an election year, but many surveys have him much worse.  IBD/TIPP puts his approval at 36%, Monmouth has it at 39%, ABC News and The Washington Post at 37%.  Whatever the precise number, it is clear that President Biden is rapidly becoming deeply unpopular with a majority of the electorate, especially when he performs even worse issue by issue.  Gallup recently found the Republican Party in general outperforms the Democrats on key issues, concluding that “Fifty-three percent of Americans believe the Republican Party will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous over the next few years, whereas 39% choose the Democratic Party” and a “slightly larger majority, 57%, have greater faith in the Republican Party to protect the country from international terrorism and military threats, while 35% favor the Democrats.”  To put these numbers into historical context, Gallup also noted, “Republicans’ 14-percentage-point lead in public preferences for keeping the country prosperous is up from a 10-point margin last year and is its widest advantage on this measure since mid-1991. That followed a period from the mid- to late 1980s when Republicans performed unusually well on this measure, historically. However, in the past three decades, the parties have been more closely matched in perceptions of which can better maintain the nation’s economic health or the Democratic Party has led by a solid margin.”  Republicans also lead on a general “most important problem facing the country question.”  “The recent poll also finds the Republican Party leading the Democrats as the party more Americans choose as better able to handle whatever problem they name as the most important facing the country. Forty-four percent say the Republican Party is better, while 36% name the Democratic Party and the rest say the parties are the same or have no preference. This is at a time when the economy, government/poor leadership and immigration lead Americans’ open-ended responses when asked to name the most important problem facing the country.”  As a result, Republican front runner and former President Donald Trump is performing better in head to head polls against President Biden than ever before.  President Trump leads President Biden in six of the last fourteen major polls, in one by as much as 10%.  The current President, in contrast, leads in only three, resulting in a 1.1% average lead for President Trump, a complete upending of the polls in 2020.

To me at least, this is not surprising, nor is it likely to change unless something unexpected alters events.  Beneath the surface, President Biden currently has two things working against him that he has only limited control over, inflation and his own deteriorating image.  Republicans had hoped that inflation would propel them to victory in 2022, but in retrospect were probably premature in gauging the impact.  The numbers in a purely economic sense were stark heading into the midterms, but interest rates had yet to rise substantially and the average person probably believed increased costs they were seeing at the grocery store and elsewhere were temporary, willing to give the President and his party the benefit of the doubt.  A year later, however, the reality that inflation is not abating and high prices are likely to continue is setting in.  In addition, more and more people have found themselves in the market for a house or a car, undoubtedly shocked to learn what inflation means for their payment.  Knowing interest rates are high is one thing, finding out they will cost you $100 per month on a new car or up to $1,000 a month on a house is quite another, and as more people go through this process over the next year, more will sour on the economy given the Federal Reserve has no plans to reduce rates in the near future.  On the image front, Republicans have been steadily making the case that “Scranton Joe” or “Amtrak Joe,” the honest, affable, hardworking public servant is a complete and total fiction as shady deals with foreign powers and his family members reveal millions of dollars funneled through shell companies to sell access to the Vice Presidency.  Whether or not the President committed any crime, it is difficult to see how he recovers his image as an upright politician.  To be sure, close observers of President Biden’s career have been aware of the truth behind his facade for years, but the public is now catching on as well, better late than never as they say, so long as it is in time for the 2024 election.  The same image problem is not likely to plague his probable opponent, however.  Love Trump or hate him, his image is already so cemented in people’s minds it will not change further save at the farthest margins.  This is a man twice impeached and four times indicted, who still leads the Republican Party and some polls against Biden, prompting even Democrat friendly Politico to remark last week, “A group of Republicans will march onto the debate stage Wednesday night to argue that each of them could stave off another Donald Trump defeat against President Joe Biden.  Polling increasingly shows it’s not true.  Far from being an electoral liability, the former president is starting to lead — or at the very least tie — Biden in general election polling.”

Under these increasingly favorable circumstances, it makes absolutely no political sense to alter the trajectory of events.  Speaker McCarthy’s term would have been up in barely a year anyway, when a new Speaker would be elected as part of the incoming Congress.  Installing a new Speaker now is likely to produce little, if any benefit along with a whole lot of political risk, feeding into the notion that Republicans cannot be trusted to govern and shifting Teddy Roosevelt’s political kaleidoscope in ways that are impossible to predict.  Incredibly, the move to oust Speaker McCarthy comes almost immediately after Republicans have already chosen to upend the political world by initiating impeachment proceedings that have no chance of removing President Biden from office.  If there is one rule in politics that has defined our most successful Presidents of either party, it might be summarized:  Never be seen to be losing, do not pick fights you cannot win, instead focus on changing the kaleidoscope until you can win.  Republicans, or rather a handful of extreme Republicans, which only makes it worse, have somehow managed to pick two such fights in barely a month.  Taken together, it’s almost – almost – like they want to lose, but in reality, they’re simply not that politically astute or talented.