When it comes to Capitol Hill, it is so much easier to be in the minority.
You can propose all kinds of bills that your base will love but which have no chance of passing. You can denounce the majority party around the clock without consequences. You can put all the country’s ills at the doorstep of the president of the other party.
When you win the majority, as Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans just did, you’re expected to produce, and suddenly you have to move beyond rhetoric and put together a governing coalition, which isn’t easy. It doesn’t help when you have a razor-thin majority.
So now the pressure is on the Republicans to produce. Of course, they’ve only been in charge for six weeks, so an early report card seems rather premature. But the situation underscores McCarthy’s dilemma as he tries to hold his party together.
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Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., left, and Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., right, speak with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in the House chamber as the House meets for a second day to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The classic example of talk being easier than action came when House GOP members passed dozens of resolutions vowing to repeal ObamaCare, but were unable to do it when Donald Trump helped sweep them into power. There were three attempts, the final one ending with a late-night no vote from John McCain. Suddenly the Republicans had to worry about millions of people losing their health insurance and couldn’t agree on the details of what would replace ObamaCare.
The same thing happened to the Democrats when President Biden couldn’t pass his zillion-dollar Build Back Better bill, before finally getting Joe Manchin to agree to a drastically slimmed-down version passed on a party-line vote.
The New York Times says House Republicans "have found themselves paralyzed on some of the biggest issues they promised to address as they pressed to win control of the House last year, amid internal policy disputes that have made it difficult to unify their tiny yet ideologically diverse majority."
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If there is one signature issue that Republicans were expected to coalesce around, it’s the southern border, where illegal crossings have soared since Biden took over.
But McCarthy had to delay a vote after he couldn’t cobble together a majority. Members from Florida and New York had their own concerns, and more moderate Republicans worried the measure would end asylum in the U.S., which sponsor Chip Roy of Texas denies.
McCarthy told the Times, "When we deal with immigration, a lot of members have a lot of different positions."
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed back against attacks on Republicans denying election results on CBS' "Face the Nation." (CBS)
This reminds me of Nancy Pelosi having to hold off demands by the "Squad" and others in the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, trying to protect her more moderate members for the midterms.
The national media dutifully cover the legislative process, but it’s a slog. The negotiations are often like watching paint dry. And many bills end up dying.
What the press really loves is covering campaigns, which is why the 2024 contest is getting so much attention a year before anyone actually votes. Plus, that story has Trump at the center. And when campaign travel takes off, they get to fly around the country and pontificate about the contenders.
The press also brings a campaign-style mentality to covering government, if only to liven things up with leaks and infighting rather than substance of issues.
McCarthy, R, speaks with Reps. Jim Jordan, L, and Chip Roy, M. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Ron Klain, who just stepped down as White House chief of staff, told the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos that he often felt like he was working for a sports team:
"A lot of this is sports radio, where everyone’s, like, ‘Oh, you should have called that play. You should have called that play. Fire the damn coach!’ Every week, it’s ‘Fire the coach,’ right?...
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"Part of experience and maturity is tuning out all that noise and believing in the strategy, and the plan we had, and the team we had, and the people we had, and continuing to execute."
Klain also notes that nobody was pushed out, recalling there was "a big push that I should get fired after the Build Back Better thing blew up," but Biden stuck with his team.
McCarthy, who also has plenty of experience – he’s been a California congressman for 15 years and served in the state Assembly before that – knows what he’s up against. He’s leading a delegation to the border on Thursday to focus the media spotlight on that issue. But he also knows how to count, and that holding together a raucous caucus is decidedly difficult.
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Keep in mind that Paul Ryan and John Boehner, the last two GOP speakers, quit in frustration when they couldn’t control their troops.
The challenge for McCarthy will be to show they can get a few things done, dull as that process might be, rather than just launching a bunch of investigations and yelling at the president.
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