Commentary: Ouster of US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy highlights deeper dysfunction in the Republican Party

DYSFUNCTION IS GETTING WORSE

Observers have been calling House Republicans dysfunctional since before McCarthy was elected to Congress in 2006. And the dysfunction is getting worse, regardless of how the speaker fight plays out.

For example, while only a handful of Republicans joined Gaetz in trying to bring McCarthy down, 21 Republicans refused to vote for his ill-fated measure to keep the government running last week – and 90 of them voted against McCarthy’s last-minute successful attempt to avert a shutdown.

Perhaps symbolic of that is that while only eight Republicans ultimately voted against McCarthy, 11 voted against an earlier motion to kill Gaetz’s manoeuvre without a final vote. Normally, one would expect members to stick with their party on procedural votes. But not these Republicans.

Last week Republicans managed to bring an agriculture spending Bill to the House floor, but it failed badly. Even the spending Bills that they’ve managed to pass are still dead on arrival in the Senate and no House Republicans have a plan for reaching a deal because so many of them are suspicious of just the idea of cutting deals.

We don’t know who might replace McCarthy. Nor do we know how long this particular fight will last. What we do know is that the larger dysfunction in the House Republican conference will continue.