Alan Zendell, September 30, 2023

It wasn’t too many years ago that politicians ran for office promising to work across the aisle. They believed it would put them above the partisan fray, and voters rewarded them for it. But so far in the twenty-first century, the culture of divisiveness spawned by extremists at both ends of the political spectrum seems to have convinced voters that compromise is weakness.

Both parties practice extreme politics, although Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fight hard for what they believe, but they have never attempted to take over their conference. In the end, their priorities are doing the job they were elected to do – governing. Egged on by Donald Trump, however, right-wing extremists led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz believe a leader’s job is to fight relentlessly for what he wants and never give in.

Gaetz attempted to hijack the Republican caucus in the House and hold the entire Congress hostage. The opposition party always tries to prevent the party in power from achieving all its goals, but the MAGA movement wants to control everything. There are twenty-one MAGA members in the House, less than five percent of the total, yet this small, rabid minority nearly brought our government to a halt this week, regardless of the consequences to our economy and military.

Their extreme views on cutting taxes to benefit the wealthy, restricting women’s health, immigration, the federal safety net of social programs, and cutting support for Ukraine against Russian aggression are not popular with American voters. The MAGA crowd knows they’ll never achieve a majority to pass their programs, so instead, they resorted to extortion. I can’t fault their tactics – they knew Kevin McCarthy desperately wanted to be speaker, and they forced him to eat crow to get their votes, including accepting a rule that allows Gaetz to initiate a vote of no confidence by himself.

No one knew how far the MAGA crowd would go, but early on it seemed that McCarthy’s appetite for public humiliation was limitless. They obstructed all of his attempts to move legislation, and it was easy to accuse him of caring more about his personal power than doing his job. Gaetz, who has never accomplished anything significant in Congress, was drunk on power. As long as McCarthy kept caving to him, nothing would get done. Any reasonable observer could see that the only solution to the debt ceiling and budget crises forced by Gaetz was cooperating with Democrats on a bipartisan bill, but the Republican Caucus had a majority of only four seats, and they were determined to retain control of the House.

Because I care deeply about our country, I choose to believe that McCarthy’s strategy all along was to give Gaetz enough rope to hang himself and then crush him. Working quietly behind the scenes with the White House and his Democratic counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, McCarthy offered Gaetz every possible attempt to behave reasonably, but like his idol, Trump, Gaetz continued to ridicule and belittle the Speaker from the House floor.

McCarthy deserves a heap of praise for the way he handled the situation. He held out until that last possible moment. Then, armed with assurances from Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and President Biden, he brought a bipartisan continuing resolution up for a vote. The resolution, which keeps the government operating until November 14th, received 209 Democratic votes and 126 Republican votes, while 90 Republicans and one Democrat voted “No.”

There’s one glitch, however, and McCarthy still has to prove that he can keep promises he makes when he negotiates with Democrats. The one concession to the MAGA right was withholding additional funding for Ukraine in the CR, but we’re told McCarthy assured the president it would be in the final budget. That promise should be easy to keep, as a significant majority of House members and voters want to support Ukraine.

Gaetz and MAGA lost, and everyone else – the rest of the Congress, the White House, and the entire country won today. We’ll have to wait and see whether Gaetz puts on another show over the final budget and Ukraine funding. People like Gaetz and Trump are shameless narcissists whose behavior is hard to predict. But for now, I applaud McCarthy’s mastery of the situation. I care more about his support for a bipartisan solution to avoid a shutdown than the specifics of his politics.

I’ve often said that Donald Trump is the most dangerous person in America. It’s people like Geatz and his MAGA mob that make Trump so dangerous. They’re the potential Brownshirts in Trump’s fantasy of being America’s first dictator. I believe Kevin McCarthy has neutralized them. They’ll still obstruct everything they can, but we learned two things, today. McCarthy’s strategy worked, and bipartisanship is alive and well at crunch time.

Finally, Hakeem Jeffries deserves as much praise as McCarthy. He avoided harsh rhetoric as Gaetz was trashing McCarthy and the Democrats, and when the CR passed, he was gracious in praising the bulk of his Republican colleagues.