(Dobbs) Tyranny of the Minority: The United States Congress
When the going gets tough.... they go home.
When the Founding Fathers created the Constitution, they designed the Senate and the Electoral College to ensure that the less populated states had as much say in the political process as the more populated states. Of course with two of our past three presidents put in place by the Electoral College even though they won only a minority of the popular vote, these days those smaller states have an outsized say.
But the Founders had a righteous purpose: to prevent tyranny by the majority.
Right now though, in the United States Capitol, the problem isn’t tyranny by the majority. It is tyranny by the minority.
— Courtesy David Henderson
And it comes with a twist. Although the House minority in this session of Congress is the Democrats, they’re not the source of the tyranny. That would be the minority within the Republican Party. So while in theory, Speaker Kevin McCarthy commands the majority, theory is not reality. The reality is, all he presides over is a cat fight, all within his own party. It’s a cat fight between a majority of sometimes pragmatic Republicans and a minority of never-take-prisoners Republicans. And the minority right now has sharper claws.
The immediate issue is funding the government and, for the moment, funding it beyond Friday of next week. Otherwise, while essential government services will stay afloat, others will shut down. This doesn’t just mean our national parks have to close their gates. It means small business loans might not get disbursed, the FDA’s health and safety inspections might not get conducted, tax refunds might not get calculated, air traffic controllers might not get paid.
If the experience of the 35 day shutdown four years ago— the longest shutdown in modern history— is any guide, some workers who miss their paychecks won’t be able to pay their mortgages, maybe not their utilities either, or their monthly lease on a car. The hardship of a government shutdown does trickle down.
And the economy itself will suffer, not to mention the stock market. Only last month, after intractable fights over the debt limit led the world to lose confidence in America’s financial stability, credit agencies actually downgraded the credit of the United States Government— only the second time in history that it has happened. Now, with a looming government shutdown, stocks are suffering again and what the world sees for the second time in a single season is a nation polarized and paralyzed. I can only imagine that they’re smiling in Moscow and Beijing.
But the minority is willing to let it happen. What’s almost unbelievable is, because the Republicans hold only a slim edge over the Democrats in the House, it’s a hard core of about a dozen members, twenty at the most, who hold all the cards. If they tell McCarthy to jump, he has to jump because if he doesn’t, then by teaming with the Democrats, they can vote him out.
That’s why he has unleashed three different committees to investigate Hunter Biden, even if the president’s son is no threat to the security of this nation. That’s why he has opened the door to impeaching Joe Biden, even if they haven’t found a hint of high crimes or misdemeanors. The best they can do to rationalize the impeachment inquiry is to say, as Representative Michael McCaul told Fox News, “We don’t have the evidence now, but we may find it later.” The hearings are due to start in a week.
The cat fight began when McCarthy was desperately trying back in early January to win the Speaker’s gavel. And he did. But to win it, he had to sell his soul (although after flying down to Mar-a-Lago to genuflect before Donald Trump after the January 6th insurrection, it wasn’t his first time). McCarthy met virtually every demand made by the hard right Republican flank— the Freedom Caucus— from committee chairmanships to House rules to how he himself would be vulnerable to a right-wing palace coup.
It came back to haunt him when the House returned this month from a summer break and the firebrand from Florida, Representative Matt Gaetz, made demands on the House floor, extorting the Speaker, “Do these things or face a motion to vacate the chair.” Infamously, an infuriated McCarthy responded, “Move the f***ing motion.”
And now, although in good conscience McCarthy is trying to avoid a government shutdown, his right flank yet again has voted him down, even on a bill that would continue to fund the Department of Defense, a bill that their own party wrote. Continuing to help fund the war in Ukraine to beat back Russia, which has implications for the security of the entire West? Although it’s the clear will of the majority of Congress, these myopic misfits won’t even consider it. Marjorie Taylor Greene speciously called Ukraine funding “blood money.”
So what does the Speaker do when he can’t come to terms with his own party and there’s a government shutdown looming with ominous consequences foreign and domestic? He puts his head in the sand and sends everyone home for the weekend.
What it comes down to is, the majority party in the House of Representatives is dysfunctional. How badly? New York representative Mike Lawyer says of the faction that’s holding everything up, “This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity.” Chip Roy of Texas, himself a member of the Freedom Caucus, told a radio interviewer, “I’ve got a lot of conservative friends who like to beat their chests and thump around going, ‘Oh, this isn’t pure enough’.” Two fellow Republicans were especially caustic about Matt Gaetz. Florida’s Byron Donalds asked him on social media, “What’s your plan?… You’ll need more than tweets and hot takes!!” Ohio’s Dave Joyce asked what Gaetz has ever accomplished “other than running his mouth?”
Little comes from the mouth of Kevin McCarthy with which I ever agree, but he was right on Thursday when he said that the unyielding hardliners in the House “just want to burn the whole place down.” These people are arsonists, and the victims who get caught in the flames are innocent Americans.
They are taking the tyranny of the minority to a whole new level. They are obstructing the will of the majority. It could not possibly be what the Founders intended.
-- Courtesy David Henderson
It’s one thing to fight for your policies fair and square. But these people don’t know what that means. They take hostages, including the Speaker of the House. True, he brought it upon himself, but it’s not a fair fight.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Best piece I’ve read on the topic. (No surprise there.)
excellent piece Greg, thanks. The "freedom caucus" are true, ideological conservatives who fervently believe in limited power for the federal government. To that end, since they've --throughout US history--been on the losing side, they're using their limited power to withhold to try to force their conviction....no work for the federal gov't outside of defense (couldn't prove that from their actions this week--or Tuberville's holds) and foreign affairs....all else should go away....to force that, starve the Treasury...don't tax the rich....what a mess.