By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April
24, 2024
There’s no record of Edmund Burke—the great Irish-born
British statesman and father of modern conservatism — actually saying what is
often attributed to him: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing.” But it does capture his worldview well
enough.
It also captures a renewed, possibly short-lived triumph
of courage and wisdom within the Republican Party.
Amid threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson for
allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas captured the
party’s own divide between the good and the rest in colorful terms on
CNN Sunday. “It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress,” he said, “but
I serve with some real scumbags.”
Gonzales was taking aim at Reps. Matt Gaetz and Bob Good,
but he could have included quite a few others.
For the last few years, congressional Republicans have
been split into factions that are not ideological in the traditional sense.
Pick nearly any standard domestic policy issue—abortion, gun rights, taxes,
immigration—and you won’t see much evidence of the schism. Even (public)
support for Donald Trump doesn’t delineate the divide.
No, the difference is largely over tactics, rhetoric, and
psychology. One faction, comprising an overwhelming majority of the House GOP
caucus, is interested in accomplishing the possible. The other is more
interested in aiming for the impossible and then complaining about falling
short.
Of course, members of the latter group don’t admit to the
impossibility of their goals; that would ruin the con. They insist that with
enough willpower, particularly among their leaders, they could impose their
will on the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House. They make that case
on television, on social media, and in floor speeches. And when they inevitably
fail, they whine that they were “betrayed” by Republican quislings who
collaborated with the Democrats, all while raising money off the notion that
they’re courageous warriors who are willing to lose on principle.
The success of their schtick has depended on a number of
factors. One is that the Republicans’ narrow House majority empowers the
fringe.
To become speaker last year, Kevin McCarthy agreed to a
change in the rules that makes it possible for a single representative to move
to “vacate the chair”—that is, trigger a vote on whether to depose the speaker.
That’s what happened last year after McCarthy avoided a default on the
national debt, kept the government open, and committed other alleged
outrages.
Gaetz and seven other Republicans, representing less
than 2 percent of the country, were enough to oust McCarthy against
the wishes of 95 percent of the Republican caucus, with Democrats uniformly
hewing to the bipartisan tradition of refusing to support a speaker of the
opposite party. In other words, the Republican firebrands, who think the worst
sin imaginable is to work with Democrats, voted with Democrats to oust their
leader.
McCarthy’s successor, Johnson, brought four bills to the
House floor Saturday — three to provide vital military aid to Ukraine, Israel,
and Taiwan, and one to force Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok or cease
operating in the United States. The bills passed overwhelmingly, with all but
the Ukraine bill winning a majority of Republicans’ votes.
Now Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, and Thomas
Massie want to oust Johnson for his “betrayal”—not
of the caucus, country, or Congress but of the tiny fringe faction that thinks
it should call the shots.
They’ll probably fail, for several reasons. First, few
Republicans—including some who oppose Johnson—want to be seen following the
lead of the House’s most notorious cranks and bigots. Second, Trump doesn’t
want the Republican caucus to turn into an embarrassing circular firing squad
while he is running for president. (It’s remarkable that Trump is worried
that other Republicans will make him look bad.) Third,
Democrats have signaled that they will help Johnson keep his job after he
courageously did the right thing. And finally, no one appears to want Johnson’s
job who could also get the job.
The most important development for the party in all of
this is that the rest of the caucus has realized
that going along with the arsonists—all of whom have safe seats and would be
happy to throw their bombs from the House minority—amounts to politically
suicidal appeasement.
“The majority of the majority—the vast majority of the
majority—is sick and tired of these high school antics,” Rep. Derrick Van
Orden said last
week. He also noted that “the only way to stop a bully is to push back hard.”
One can only hope that realization sticks.
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