A House Divide, Red Party Undecided

Dylan Buehner Staff Writer

The US House of Representatives has always been a divisive place. It is the melting pot of our political system. Many different types of people from all across the nation with contrasting viewpoints left, right, and center. Like many institutions in America, it has its fair share of flaws. The 2022 House Leader Election has put those flaws on full display.

Democrats lost nine seats in the House of Representatives during the 2022 midterms (a surprisingly low number compared to past midterm results). Republicans took the majority and the responsibility to elect a new house leader. Both sides get to nominate and vote on a house leader, but in most cases, the majority party easily elects their leader to the position. Things were different this time around. Twenty far-right Republicans bucked the process, holding up the election by nominating a series of different people.

The first vote was spread out among a variety of candidates, with nineteen republicans voting for five different people.

The second, third, and fourth votes had twenty dissenting Republicans line-up behind Jim Jordans, the leader of the freedom caucus, a far-right collective that’s a few bad tweets away from being a hate-speech union. During this time, Jim Jordans himself gave a speech saying not to vote for him, and to vote for McCarthy. They did not.

The fifth and sixth votes had only nineteen Republicans vote against McCarthy. But, this time they turned to a different member of the Freedom Caucus, Byron Donalds.

In the seventh vote, the dissenting representatives scattered their support. Seventeen reps were split between Bryan Donalds and Kevin Hern, another Freedom Caucus member. One vote was cast for former President Donald Trump, who as many pointed out, is not a member of the House of Representatives.

By the twelfth vote, the dissenting count was down to six. Finally, on the fifteenth vote, McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House.

This ordeal gave us a good look at the modern-day standings within the US House. There is a growing part of the Republican party that is willing to hold up Congress with performative shenanigans just to get their way. They spent 5 whole days on nothing but voting, holding up the legislative process the entire time.

McCarthy gave up a lot of power to the 20 most extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress, making him a Speaker with little power.

Now, any solo member of the house can call a vote to oust the house leader.

In closed door deals, Freedom Caucus members traded their votes for committee seats and sometimes committee leadership positions including the House Rules Committee. The ethics committee was effectively disbanded by having it scope reduced to trivial matters.

In a gambit to reduce America’s debt, the Freedom Caucus forced McCarthy to use the nation’s debt ceiling as a hostage negotiation. Either the US reduces spending on entitlements, or the entire global economic order will be up-ended by the US defaulting on debt payments. Basically, the American’s credit card bill will not get paid because Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare while continuing to lower taxes on the wealthiest Amiercans, all the while spending abhorrent large amounts on the military.

A host of other concessions were made to slow the House in carrying out its duties. What McCarth gave to the Freedom Caucus shows just how strong the far-right MAGA representatives truly are in today’s politics.

At the same time, Democrats held firm through all this. All 213 Democratic members of the House voted for Hakeem Jefferies over fifteen separate votes. They didn’t ask for concessions, nor vote for people who weren’t in the house. They stuck to their man through and through. One of the main reasons 20 Republicans were able to stall the election process was because the Democrats had a plurality within the House; They had more votes in eleven out of the fifteen votes.

Overall, this one-in-a-lifetime government event weakened our systems of power, all because radical republicans pitched a fit over not being allowed to control everything. But the worst thing is, they still got their way. And as the debt ceiling looms overhead, our government safety net is about to be given the old Elephant Squeeze as Republicans continue to cut, cut, cut…