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**JANUARY 6, 2023**

Kuttner on TAP

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**** The House Endgame

The path to a majority coalition of Democrats and Republicans serious
about governing

After 11 failed votes to elect a House Speaker, breaking the previous
high for the last century of nine ballots in 1923, we can imagine one of
several possible endgames. Kevin McCarthy's endgame has always been to
wait out the far-right holdouts, offer increasing concessions, and hope
that these concessions plus the impatience of the rest of the GOP caucus
will lead to a deal.

However, McCarthy's game keeps infuriating both the far-right ultras
and the Republican moderates. A politician who will give away the store
in a bargain before he gets any commitments in return doesn't seem a
great candidate for party leader.

Though leaks to

**The Washington Post**
<[link removed]>,
presumably from the McCarthy camp, suggest progress toward a deal with
the far right, 218 votes for McCarthy don't seem on the near horizon.
If McCarthy did start picking up votes, Republican moderates, who have
been backing him so far, could defect from a craven capitulation to the
Taliban Twenty.

A second scenario would have McCarthy finally stand aside in favor of
some consensus candidate. The problem with that plan is that the
bargaining would begin with the capitulations to the nihilists that
McCarthy has already made. It is hard to imagine anyone getting the
votes of both the far right and the moderates.

The best scenario, politically and for constitutional government, is one
that has been floated by one of the few moderates to suggest it
publicly, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska: Democrats make a deal with the
Republican moderates to vote for one of their number as Speaker.

This seemed vanishingly unlikely earlier in the week, but it now seems
plausible. While Nancy Pelosi explicitly ruled out a deal to give
McCarthy the necessary votes, she did not rule out a deal with the
Republican moderates. It's hard to believe that there haven't
already been back-channel conversations.

There are 19 Republican members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus
<[link removed]> that worked to pass the
bipartisan infrastructure law and other cross-party achievements.
That's probably the outside number of moderates who might vote for
such a deal.

How would this work? All 212 Democrats would need to vote for a
Republican moderate, for example, Don Bacon. This would create a fusion
leadership of the House-Democrats plus Republicans interested in
governing.

As part of the deal, the Republican moderates would have to give the
Democrats something, for example, half of the committee assignments and
chairs, and an agreement not to support some of the things that the
Republican crazies have been pushing, such as shutting down the
government by refusing to increase the debt ceiling, defunding the IRS,
pursuing impeachments, and using committee investigations for various
fishing expeditions.

This would result in a constitutional coalition of serious legislators
becoming the de facto majority party in the House. It would humiliate
both the Republican far right and the McCarthy Republican "mainstream"
that has shown no interest in governing. Democrats would still lose some
important legislative goals, but this arrangement would be vastly
preferable to a House led by McCarthy or by another Republican in thrall
to a far right that would be obstructionist and nihilist across the
board.

Outraged Republicans would very likely expel the moderates from their
caucus. That's another plus.

In 2024, these expelled Republicans would likely be primaried. But they
could make a counter-move by running as independents-the Kyrsten
Sinema maneuver in reverse.

In their delusions about what the country needs, both Kevin McCarthy and
the far-right Republican House members have set themselves up to be
displaced by a fusion leadership that would turn them back into the
House minority-and accelerate the Republican crack-up and the
restoration of constitutional government. Let's hope it happens.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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<[link removed]>
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