“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like.”
By Sarah Ellison, The Washington PostRep. Kevin McCarthy leaves a news conference after being ousted as speaker Tuesday. on Tuesday, it was the first such removal in American history, a vivid rebuke of his leadership and an escalation of the civil strife within the Republican Party.
Congress arrived at this point for myriad reasons, all of which build on one another, scholars say: Social media and cable news incentivized politicians to perform for the camera, not for their constituents. Aggressive gerrymandering created deeply partisan districts where representation is decided in primary contests, not general elections. Weakened political parties became captive to their loudest and most extreme members.
“We are watching a very small number of folks from the House Republican conference have an outsize role in promoting a lot of congressional dysfunction and fiscal dysfunction,” said Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. “This is a move for volatility and not a move to pass legislation.”
Tuesday’s debate — and the conversations that preceded it — were unusual for the willingness of McCarthy allies to openly scold their own GOP counterparts for deepening the dysfunction in the chamber. “My fear is the institution fell today because you can’t do the job if … you have 94% or 96% of your entire conference, but eight people can partner with the whole other side,” he said Tuesday evening. “How do you govern?”“If American democracy is already suffering and weak from various maladies, this unruly crisis in the House is just going to kick it a little further in that direction,” said Alex Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The House Republicans who objected to the budget and to McCarthy’s speakership may have had legitimate concerns about spending and deficits, Postell said. But “now they are no longer incentivized to bargain with one another,” he said. “They are incentivized to remain in conflict.” Political backlash against the rise of a multicultural democracy has stoked the country’s divisions, academics agree. So has the tendency for people to sort themselves into urban and rural divides, as well as the way congressional districts are organized by partisan state legislatures — many of which are controlled by Republicans.
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