Republican institutionalists again affirmed an incentive structure that has hamstrung leaders.
Shortly before Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was elected speaker after more than three weeks of a House in limbo, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) did something that would seem both ungracious and unhelpful: He went on Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast and declared victory. He said the effort he had led to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a move that earned him extensive derision from many colleagues, was paying off.
“If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz was just stating facts. The hard right won the day.
But the fact that the ringleader of the effort felt comfortable rubbing that in his colleagues’ faces without fear — shortly before the House Republican Conference went on to vote unanimously for his favored outcome — reinforces how the party has allowed the incentive structure to fester, leading to this mess.
It’s true that the more institutionalist wing of the party didn’t keel over immediately. Last week, it stood strong against repeated efforts to install a man with even more history of aligning with the hard right, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). This wing’s denizens even made an important show of calling out threats that Jordan’s allies unleashed — a largely unprecedented and significant development given the apparent impact of intimidation in today’s GOP.
But in the end, that wing took its win in a momentary battle and decided to wave the white flag in the larger war.
In the new speaker, the hard right got a leader of efforts to overturn the 2020 election based on false claims of malfeasance.
