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    Mike Johnson’s Rise to Speaker Cements Far-Right Takeover of GOP

    After their party was decimated in the 2008 elections, mainstream Republican leaders believed they could harness rising far-right populist forces. Instead, they were overrun by them.The roots of the Republican crackup this fall that paralyzed the House, fueled the unexpected rise of Speaker Mike Johnson and now threatens to force a government shutdown crisis early next year lie in a fateful choice the party made more than a decade ago that has come back to haunt its leaders.In early 2009, congressional Republicans were staring down a long exile in the political wilderness. Barack Obama was about to assume the presidency, and Democrats were within reach of a filibuster-proof, 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the largest House majority in more than 20 years after the economic crisis of 2008.But Republicans saw a glimmer of hope in the energized far-right populist movement that emerged out of a backlash to Mr. Obama — the first Black president — and his party’s aggressive economic and social agenda, which included a federal health care plan. Republicans seized on the Tea Party and associated groups, with their nativist leanings and vehemently anti-establishment impulses, as their ticket back to power.“We benefited from the anger that was generated against the one-way legislation of the Obama years,” said Eric Cantor, the former House leader from Virginia who became the No. 2 Republican after the 2010 midterm elections catapulted the party back into the majority. “It was my way or the highway.”Mr. Cantor and his fairly conventional leadership team of anti-tax, pro-business Republicans set out to harness that rage to achieve their party’s longstanding aims. But instead, the movement consumed them.Within four years, Mr. Cantor was knocked out in a shocking primary upset by a Tea Party-backed candidate who had campaigned as an anti-immigration hard-liner bent on toppling the political establishment. It was a sign of what was to come for more mainstream Republicans.“We decided the anger was going to be about fiscal discipline and transforming Medicare into a defined contribution program,” Mr. Cantor said recently. “But it turned out it was really just anger — anger toward Washington — and it wasn’t so policy-based.”The forces that toppled Mr. Cantor — and three successive Republican speakers — reached their inexorable conclusion last month with the election of Mr. Johnson as speaker, cementing a far-right takeover that began in those first months after Mr. Obama took office.Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and House majority leader, was defeated in a 2015 primary by David Brat, a member of the Tea Party.Gabriella Demczuk/The New York TimesMr. Johnson, who identifies as an archconservative, is the natural heir to the political tumult that began with the Tea Party before evolving into Trumpism. It is now embodied in its purest form by the Freedom Caucus, the uncompromising group of conservatives who have tied up the House with their demands for steep spending cuts. And the situation won’t get any easier when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving respite to confront its unsettled spending issues and what to do about assistance to Israel and Ukraine.The ranks of more traditional Republicans have been significantly thinned after the far right turned on them in successive election cycles. They have been driven out of Congress in frustration or knocked out in primaries, which have become the decisive contests in the nation’s heavily gerrymandered House districts.“They thought they could control it,” Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who has studied the House’s far-right progression, said of G.O.P. leaders. “But once you agree essentially that Democrats are satanic, there is no room in the party for someone who says we need to compromise with Democrats to accomplish what we need to get done.”The result, Mr. Podhorzer said, is a Republican majority that his research shows across various data points to be more extreme, more evangelical Christian and less experienced in governing than in the past. Those characteristics have been evident as House Republicans have spent much of the year in chaos.“It isn’t that they are really clever at how they crash the institution,” Mr. Podhorzer said. “They just don’t know how to drive.”From the start, members who were more rooted in the traditional G.O.P., which had managed to win back the House majority in 1994 after 40 years, struggled to mesh with the Tea Party movement, which was driven to upend the status quo. Many top Republicans had voted for the bank bailout of 2008, a disqualifying capital crime in the eyes of the far-right activists.Leading congressional Republicans were leery of the Tea Party’s thinly veiled racism, illustrated by insulting references to Mr. Obama and the questioning of his birthplace, though they said they saw the activists as mainly motivated by an anti-tax, anti-government fervor.Traditional Republicans appeared at Tea Party rallies where they were barely tolerated, while the far-right Representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Steve King of Iowa, then outliers in the party, were the stars. They tried to mollify activists with tough talk on taxes and beating back the Obama agenda, but saw mixed results.The Republican National Committee also sought to align itself with the Tea Party, encouraging angry voters to send virtual tea bags to Congress in a 2009 Tax Day protest. Tea Party activists rebuked the national party, saying it hadn’t earned the right to the tea bag message.But the Tea Party paid huge electoral benefits to the House G.O.P. in 2010, as it swept out Democrats and swept in scores of relatively unknown far-right conservatives, some of whom would scorn their own leaders as much as the Democrats. The steady march to the modern House Republican Conference had begun.“It truly was bottom up,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who was then the spokesman for the R.N.C. “Then how do you have control over that? When you have that big a win, you are going to have people who just aren’t on your radar screen, but if they were, you would have tried to prevent them from winning their primary.”In the Senate, the Tea Party was having a different effect. Far-right conservatives such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware managed to prevail in their primaries, only to lose in the general election. That cost Senate Republicans a chance to win a majority in that chamber. The extreme right has had less influence in the Senate than the House ever since.Speaker John A. Boehner resigned in 2015 amid opposition from hard-line conservatives.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe ramifications of the far-right bargain for congressional Republicans quickly became clear. Mr. Cantor was defeated in 2014, and Speaker John A. Boehner, dogged by hard-line conservatives he branded “knuckleheads,” resigned in 2015. In 2018, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Boehner’s successor and the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2012, had his fill of clashes with President Donald J. Trump — who aligned himself with the Tea Party in its early days — and chose not to run for re-election.Then Representative Kevin McCarthy — the last of a trio called the “Young Guns,” with Mr. Cantor and Mr. Ryan, that once seemed to be the future of the party — fell from the speakership in October. That ended the reign of House Republican speakers who had tried unsuccessfully to weaponize the ultraconservatives in their ranks while holding them at arm’s length.Mr. McCarthy’s ouster cleared the way for Mr. Johnson, who was chosen only after House Republicans rejected more established leaders, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who would have easily ascended in the previous era.Despite his unquestioned conservative bona fides, Mr. Johnson is already encountering difficulties in managing the most extreme element within his ranks.Last week, Freedom Caucus members blocked a spending measure in protest of Mr. Johnson’s decision to team with Democrats to push through a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown.The move underscored the far-right’s antipathy to compromise and the dominance it now enjoys in the House, and raised the prospect that Mr. Johnson could face another rebellion if he strays again. More

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    A Close Look at the Chaotic House Republican Majority

    C-SPAN video of the House speaker election in January. The tumult that broke out last month during the election of Kevin McCarthy for speaker illustrated the potential for profound dysfunction in the new House Republican majority. And the spectacle created by Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address showed the unruly behavior of […] More

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    To Understand Why Republicans Are Divided on the Debt Ceiling, Consider Dr. Seuss

    The Tea Party is over. Cultural issues seem to animate G.O.P. voters.“On Beyond Zebra!” is among the Dr. Seuss books that will no longer be published, a fact many Republicans are aware of. Scott Olson/Getty ImagesTo Understand Why Republicans Are Divided on the Debt Ceiling, Consider Dr. SeussOne of my favorite polling nuggets from the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency wasn’t about Afghanistan or inflation or classified documents.It was about Dr. Seuss.In early March 2021, a Morning Consult/Politico poll found that more Republicans said they had heard “a lot” about the news that the Seuss estate had decided to stop selling six books it deemed had offensive imagery than about the $1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package enacted into the law that very week.The result was a vivid marker of how much the Republican Party had changed over the Trump era. Just a dozen years earlier, a much smaller stimulus package sparked the Tea Party movement that helped propel Republicans to a landslide victory in the 2010 midterm election. But in 2021 the right was so consumed by the purported cancellation of Dr. Seuss that it could barely muster any outrage about big government spending.Whether issues like “On Beyond Zebra!” still arouse Republicans more than the national debt takes on renewed importance this year, as Washington seems to be hurtling toward another debt ceiling crisis. The answer will shape whether Republicans can unify around a debt ceiling fight, as they did a decade ago, or whether a fractious party will struggle to play a convincing game of chicken — with uncertain consequences.Unfortunately, our trusty Seuss-o-meter for gauging Republican interest in fiscal policy isn’t readily available today. But heading into the year, there were very few signs that the debt had reclaimed its Obama-era position at the top of the list of conservative policy priorities.Understand the U.S. Debt CeilingCard 1 of 5What is the debt ceiling? More

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    ‘You Don’t Negotiate With These Kinds of People’

    Over the past eight years, the Republican Party has been transformed from a generally staid institution representing the allure of low taxes, conservative social cultural policies and laissez-faire capitalism into a party of blatant chaos and disruption.The shift has been evident in many ways — at the presidential level, as the party nominated Donald Trump not once but twice and has been offered the chance to do so a third time; in Trump’s — and Trump’s allies’ — attempt to overturn the 2020 election results; in his spearheading of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol; and most recently in the brutal series of votes from Jan. 3 to Jan. 7 in the House of Representatives, where 20 hard-right members held Kevin McCarthy hostage until he cried uncle and was finally elected speaker.What drives the members of the Freedom Caucus, who have wielded the threat of dysfunction to gain a level of control within the House far in excess of their numbers? How has this group moved from the margins to the center of power in less than a decade?Since its founding in 2015, this cadre has acquired a well-earned reputation for using high-risk tactics to bring down two House speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan. During the five-day struggle over McCarthy’s potential speakership, similar pressure tactics wrested crucial agenda-setting authority from the Republican leadership in the House.“You don’t negotiate with these kinds of people,” Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, declared as the saga unfolded. “These are legislative terrorists.”“We have grifters in our midst,” Representative Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, told the Texas Liberty Alliance PAC.One of the key factors underlying the extremism among Republicans in the House and their election denialism — which has confounded American politics since it erupted in 2020 — is racial tension, not always explicit but nonetheless omnipresent, captured in part by the growing belief that white Americans will soon be in the minority.As Jack Balkin of Yale Law School noted, “The defenders of the old order have every incentive to resist the emergence of a new regime until the bitter end.”In his paper “Public Opinion Roots of Election Denialism,” published on Jan. 6, the second anniversary of the storming of the Capitol, Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at M.I.T., argues that “among Republicans, conspiracism has a potent effect on embracing election denialism, followed by racial resentment.”According to Stewart’s calculations, “a Republican at the 10th percentile of the conspiracism scale has a 55.7 percent probability of embracing election denialism, compared to a Republican at the 90th percentile, at 86.6 percent, over 30 points higher. A Republican at the 10th percentile on the racial resentment scale has a 59.4 percent probability of embracing denialism, compared to 83.2 percent for a Republican at the 90th percentile on the same scale.”In other words, the two most powerful factors driving Republicans who continue to believe that Trump actually won the 2020 election are receptivity to conspiracy thinking and racial resentment.“The most confirmed Republican denialists,” Stewart writes, “believe that large malevolent forces are at work in world events, racial minorities are given too much deference in society and America’s destiny is a Christian one.”Along parallel lines, Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke, argues in his 2021 article “The Trump Presidency, Racial Realignment and the Future of Constitutional Norms,” that Donald Trump “is more of an effect than a cause of larger racial and cultural changes in American society that are causing Republican voters and politicians to perceive an existential threat to their continued political and cultural power — and, relatedly, to deny the legitimacy of their political opponents.”In this climate, Siegel continues, “It is very unlikely that Republican politicians will respect constitutional norms when they deem so much to be at stake in each election and significant governmental decision.”These developments draw attention to some of the psychological factors driving politics and partisan competition.In a 2020 paper, “Dark Necessities? Candidates’ Aversive Personality Traits and Negative Campaigning in the 2018 American Midterms,” Alessandro Nai and Jürgen Maier, political scientists at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany, argue that the role of subclinical “psychopathy” is significant in the behavior of a growing number of elected officials:Psychopaths usually show “a cognitive bias towards perceiving hostile intent from others” and are impulsive, prone to callous social attitudes, and show a strong proclivity for interpersonal antagonism. Individuals high in psychopathy do not possess the ability to recognize or accept the existence of antisocial behaviors, and thus should be expected to more naturally adopt a more confrontational, antagonistic and aggressive style of political competition. Individuals high in psychopathy have been shown to have more successful trajectories in politics. They are furthermore often portrayed as risk-oriented agents. In this sense, we could expect individuals that score high in psychopathy to make a particularly strong use of attacks, regardless of the risk of backlash effects.Narcissism, Nai and Maier continue,has been shown to predict more successful political trajectories, also due to the prevalence of social dominance intrinsic in the trait. Narcissism is, furthermore, linked to overconfidence and deceit and hyper competitiveness, which could explain why narcissists are more likely to engage in angry/aggressive behaviors and general incivility in their workplace. Narcissism is furthermore linked to reckless behavior and risk-taking and thus individuals high in this trait are expected to disregard the risk of backlash effects.Nai and Maier also refer to a character trait they consider politically relevant, Machiavellianism, which they describe as havingan aggressive and malicious side. People high in Machiavellianism are “characterized by cynical and misanthropic beliefs, callousness, a striving for argentic goals (i.e., money, power, and status), and the use of calculating and cunning manipulation tactics,” and in general tend to display a malevolent behavior intended to “seek control over others.”In an email, Nai argued that structural and ideological shifts have opened the door to “a greater tolerance and preference for political aggressiveness.” First, there is the rise of populism, which “strongly relies on a very aggressive stance against established elites, with a more aggressive style and rhetoric.”“Populists,” Nai added, “are very peculiar political animals, happy to engage in more aggressive rhetoric to push the boundaries of normality. This helps them getting under the spotlight, and explains why they seem to have a much greater visibility (and perhaps power) than they numerically should.”Second, Nai contended thata case can be made that contemporary politics is the realm of politicians with a harsh and uncompromising personality (callousness, narcissism, and even Machiavellianism). Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, all share a rather “nasty” character, which seems indicative of a contemporary preference for uncompromising and aggressive leaders. Such political aggressiveness (populism, negativity, incivility, dark personality) is perfectly in character for a political system characterized with high polarization and extreme dislike for political opponents.Other scholars emphasize the importance of partisan polarization, anti-elitism and the rise of social media in creating a political environment in which extremists can thrive.“There are likely a few factors at play here,” Jay Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neural science at N.Y.U., wrote by email. “The first is that ideologically extreme people tend to be more dogmatic — especially people who are on the far right.”He cited a 2021 national survey that he and Elizabeth Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted that “found that conservatism and ideological extremity both contributed to an unwillingness to compromise.”The members of the Freedom Caucus, Van Bavel noted,tend to be ideologically extreme conservatives which makes them very good candidates for this type of rigid and extreme thinking. We also found that politically extreme individuals were more likely to have a sense of belief superiority. These traits help explain why this group is very unwilling to cooperate or strike a political compromise.Three years ago, I wrote a column for The Times about a segment of the electorate — and a faction of elected officials — driven by “a need for chaos,” based on the work of Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen, political scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark, and Kevin Arceneaux, a political scientist at Sciences Po in Paris. Since then, the three, joined by Timothy B. Gravelle, Jason Reifler and Thomas J. Scotto, have updated their work in a 2021 paper, “Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn: The Prevalence, Psychology and Politics of the ‘Need for Chaos.’”In their new paper, they argue:Some people may be motivated to seek out chaos because they want to rebuild society, while others enjoy destruction for its own sake. We demonstrate that chaos-seekers are not a unified political group but a divergent set of malcontents. Multiple pathways can lead individuals to “want to watch the world burn.”The distinction between those seeking chaos to fulfill destructive impulses and those seeking chaos in order to rebuild the system is crucial, according to the authors:The finding that thwarted status-desires drive a Need for Chaos, which then activates support for political protest and violence, suggests that a Need for Chaos may be a key driver of societal change, both currently and historically. While some simply want to “watch the world burn,” others want to the see a new world rebuilt from the ashes.There are, the authors continue,both nihilists and those who have a purpose. Nonetheless, owing to the destructive force of a high Need for Chaos, one of the key challenges of contemporary societies is indeed to meet, recognize and, to the extent possible, alleviate the frustrations of these individuals. The alternative is a trail of nihilistic destruction.In a more recent paper, published last year, “The ‘Need for Chaos’ and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors,” Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux found that the need for chaos “is significantly higher among participants who readily take risks to obtain status and among participants who feel lonely.” At the extreme, the need surpasses partisanship: “For chaos-seekers, political sympathies toward political parties appear to matter little for sharing decisions; instead, what matters is that rumors can be used as an instrument to mobilize against the entire political establishment.”The authors found that “the need for chaos is most strongly associated with worries about losing one’s own position in the social hierarchy and — to a lesser, but still significant extent — the perception that one is personally being kept back from climbing the social status ladder,” noting that “white men react more aggressively than any other group to perceived status challenges.”Van Bavel wrote by email that instead of focusing on a need for chaos, he believes “it might be simpler to assume that they are simply indifferent to chaos in the service of dogmatism. You see some of this on the far left — but we found that it simply doesn’t reach the same extremes as the far right.”Van Bavel pointed to the structural aspects of the contemporary political system that reward the adoption of extreme stances:In the immediate political context, where there is extremely high polarization driven by partisan animosity, there are strong social media incentives to take extreme stances, and an unwillingness for moderate Republicans to break ranks and strike a compromise with Democrats. In this context, the Freedom Caucus can get away with dogmatic behavior without many serious consequences. Indeed, it might even benefit their national profile, election prospects, and fund-raising success.Along similar lines, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U., stressedthe rapid change in audience and incentives that social media has engineered for congresspeople. The case of Ted Cruz, caught checking his mentions as he sat down from giving a speech on the Senate floor, is illustrative. Why is he making himself so responsive to strangers on Twitter, rather than to his constituents, or to his colleagues in the Senate?Haidt wrote by email that he agrees with Yuval Levin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, that:Social media has contributed to the conversion of our major institutions from formative (they shape character) to performative (they are platforms on which influencers can perform to please and grow their audiences). When we add in the “primary problem” — that few congressional races are competitive, so all that matters is the primary, which gives outsized influence to politically extreme voters — we have both a road into Congress for social media influencers and the ultimate platform for their performances.Plus, Haidt added:The influence economy may give them financial and career independence; once they are famous, they don’t need to please their party’s leadership. They’ll have opportunities for money and further influence even if they leave Congress.Leanne ten Brinke, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, wrote by email:My research on power and politics focuses on the role of psychopathic personality traits, which is characterized by callousness, manipulation/coercion, impulsivity, and a desire for dominance. When people think of psychopathy they often think of criminals or serial killers, but these traits exist on a continuum, so people can be “high” in these traits without meeting any kind of clinical cutoff, and it will impact the way they move through the world. People with high levels of these traits tend to gravitate toward powerful roles in society to fulfill that desire for dominance and to bully others when in these roles.Brinke noted that she has “no data on the personalities of those in the House Freedom Caucus,” but in “previous research we actually found that U.S. senators who display behaviors consistent with psychopathy were more likely to get elected (they are great competitors!) but are less likely to garner co-sponsors on their bills (they are terrible cooperators!).” In addition, Brinke continued, “they enjoy having power over others, but don’t use it to make legislative progress. They tend to be more self-interested than other-interested.”In a separate 2020 paper, “Light and Dark Trait Subtypes of Human Personality,” by Craig S. Neumann, Scott Barry Kaufman, David Bryce Yaden, Elizabeth Hyde, Eli Tsukayama and Brinke, the authors find:The light subtype evidenced affiliative interpersonal functioning and greater trust in others, as well as higher life satisfaction and positive self-image. The dark subtype reflected interpersonal dominance, competitiveness, and aggression. In both general population samples, the dark trait subtype was the least prevalent. However, in a third sample of U.S. senators (N =143), based on observational data, the dark subtype was most prevalent and associated with longer tenure in political office, though less legislative success.In a separate 2019 paper, “The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality: Contrasting Two Very Different Profiles of Human Nature,” Kaufman, Yaden, Hyde and Tsukayama wrote that dark personalities are “not associated with exclusively adverse and transgressive psychosocial outcomes” and may, instead, “be considered adaptive.”Those with the more forbidding personal characteristics “showed positive correlations with a variety of variables that could facilitate one’s more agentic-related goals” and they “positively correlated with utilitarian moral judgment and creativity, bravery, and leadership, as well as assertiveness, in addition to motives for power, achievement, and self-enhancement.”In contrast, more sunny and cooperative dispositions were “correlated with greater ‘reaction formation,’ which consisted of the following items: ‘If someone mugged me and stole my money, I’d rather he be helped than punished’ and ‘I often find myself being very nice to people who by all rights I should be angry at.’ While having such ‘lovingkindness’ even for one’s enemies is conducive to one’s own well-being, these attitudes” could potentially make these people “more open to exploitation and emotional manipulation.”In March 2022, Richard Pildes, a law professor at N.Y.U., warned in “Political Fragmentation in Democracies of the West”:The decline of effective government throughout most Western democracies poses one of the greatest challenges democracy currently confronts. The importance of effective government receives too little attention in democratic and legal theory, yet the inability to deliver effective government can lead citizens to alienation, distrust, and withdrawal from participation, and worse, to endorse authoritarian leaders who promise to cut through the dysfunctions of democratic governments.For the Republican Party, the empowerment of the Freedom Caucus will face its first major test of viability this month. According to Janet Yellen, secretary of the Treasury, the United States will hit the $31.4 trillion statutory debt limit on Jan. 19. The Treasury, she continued, would then be forced to adopt stringent cash-management procedures that could put off default until June.At the moment, House Republicans, under pressure from the Freedom Caucus, are demanding that legislation raising the debt ceiling be accompanied by sharp spending cuts. That puts them at loggerheads with the Biden administration and many members of the Senate Democratic majority, raising the possibility of a government shutdown.In other words, the takeover of the Republican Party by politicians either participating in or acceding to tribalism and chaos has the clear potential in coming weeks to put the entire nation at risk.Looking past the debt ceiling to the 2024 elections, Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at U.C.L.A., writes in the April 2022 Harvard Law Review:The United States faces a serious risk that the 2024 presidential election, and other future U.S. elections, will not be conducted fairly and that the candidates taking office will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under previously announced election rules. The potential mechanisms by which election losers may be declared election winners are: (1) usurpation of voter choices for president by state legislatures purporting to exercise constitutional authority, possibly with the blessing of a partisan Supreme Court and the acquiescence of Republicans in Congress; (2) fraudulent or suppressive election administration or vote counting by law- or norm-breaking election officials; and (3) violent or disruptive private action that prevents voting, interferes with the counting of votes, or interrupts the assumption of power by the actual winning candidate.What, one has to ask, does this constant brinkmanship and playing to the gallery do to democracy generally?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    How Far Right Are the 20 Republicans Who Voted Against McCarthy

    The Republicans who blocked Representative Kevin McCarthy of California from becoming speaker on Tuesday include some of the most hard-right lawmakers in the House; most denied the 2020 election, are members of the Freedom Caucus, or both. Here’s a closer look at the 20 lawmakers. Re-elected representatives Newly elected Andy Biggs Ariz. 5th Dan Bishop […] More

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    House Republicans Face a Triple Threat

    In the new year, Republicans will hold a majority in the House of Representatives. They will have the opportunity to set the chamber’s agenda, conduct oversight of the White House and amplify their platform in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.That’s the good news for the G.O.P. The bad news is that Democrats will still hold the presidency and control of the Senate. Also, with the new Congress in January, there will be no more than 222 Republicans in the chamber, just four more than a bare majority.A narrow majority is not in itself sufficient to cripple a majority party. In the past two years, Democrats in the House and Senate proved that.But House Republicans face low odds of success because of a triple threat: a fragile majority, factional divisions and untested leadership. Still, there are steps that party leaders should take to improve their chances of avoiding a partisan circus and perhaps even preside over a productive two years in power — and real risks if they defer instead to extremists in their ranks.The House Freedom Caucus, an assertive faction of 40-odd lawmakers, includes the likes of Jim Jordan of Ohio, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Generally, the caucus embraces confrontation over compromise, is disdainful of party loyalty — which extends to the selection of its leaders — and has a track record of killing its party’s own bills. In a slim majority, it holds greater leverage over any legislation.Kevin McCarthy has made assiduous efforts to court the caucus over the past few years to become speaker, yet the caucus members’ skepticism of him in that role remains: In a recent vote for the party’s nominee for speaker, over 30 Republicans voted against him, and at least five conservatives have said that they will oppose him when the full House votes for its next speaker in January. That is more than enough to deny him the speakership, since the nominee must get a majority of the entire House, and no Democrat is expected to vote for Mr. McCarthy.This makes Mr. McCarthy vulnerable. Freedom Caucus members are making demands that could ultimately be fatal to any hope of Republican success in the House. They want rules changes that, among other things, would weaken the speakership by making bipartisan coalitions harder to build, allowing only bills supported by a majority of the G.O.P. to come to the floor. Such a rule would constrain the speaker’s agenda-setting power and make it extremely hard to pass much-needed legislation unpopular with Republicans, like raising the debt ceiling.Mr. McCarthy should not empower the Freedom Caucus at the expense of his own influence. Yes, he has to navigate a delicate path. But if he is elected speaker but gives away the store in the process, it will be a Pyrrhic victory.At the moment, he seems inclined to give away the store. By not refusing caucus demands, he has most likely put himself along a troubled path similar to those of his predecessors Newt Gingrich and John Boehner. Mr. McCarthy has vowed to block an increase in the debt limit unless Democrats agree to spending cuts and suggested that the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, could face impeachment.These ill-conceived pledges create false hopes among Republican lawmakers and voters of what the party can accomplish. It’s true that in seeking the speakership, Mr. McCarthy cannot simply ignore the Freedom Caucus, since it commands more than enough votes to torpedo his quest for speaker and any partisan Republican bill in the next Congress.But political power comes in part from perceptions. If Mr. McCarthy surrenders too much to the caucus, it will reinforce the impression that he is less a leader than a follower and erode the clout he will need to lobby lawmakers on tough votes.Furthermore, if as speaker he consistently defers to the Freedom Caucus, he risks alienating more moderate or swing-district Republicans (or both). Only a handful of these lawmakers would need to cross party lines in order for the minority party to get its way.Republicans have made it clear that we should expect a buzz of activity in oversight hearings and committee-led investigations — possibly of elements of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department and a heavy dose of Hunter Biden.Republican leaders can avoid making Congress look like a space exclusively for partisan show trials by being flexible in their agenda and seeking out majorities wherever they can find them. That could include partisan measures from the party’s Commitment to America platform, like funding for the police as well as some symbolic, non-consequential legislation that will please the party’s base. (Think resolutions that declare lawmaker opposition to “woke” teaching and illegal immigration.)The G.O.P. might also try to pursue bipartisan legislation in areas like health or family care, since securing the votes of minority-party members on bills can make up for any defections within their own ranks. Bipartisan bills also have at least a plausible chance of getting the approval of the Democratic-led Senate and White House that they will need to become law.When it comes to bills that the House must pass, like appropriations and an increase in the debt ceiling, Mr. McCarthy might have to follow in the footsteps of Speaker Boehner, who let party conservatives resist the passage of such measures until, facing economic catastrophe, he deferred to Republican moderates to pass them with Democrats.None of these strategies is a guarantee of success. And with such a slim majority, there is also the possibility, if remote, that the Republican Party loses power altogether because a few of its members resign or die in office or one or more members leave the party. In 1930, enough of the G.O.P.’s lawmakers passed away and were replaced by Democrats in special elections that the party was robbed of its majority.In 2001, Senate Republicans failed to heed the warnings of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont that he would leave the Republican Party. When he did, control of the Senate flipped to Democrats.Even if Republicans don’t lose power this way, the conditions are far from ideal for House Republicans to take advantage of being a governing party. Don’t be surprised if the next two years in the House of Representatives are more soap opera than substance.But if the party remains in charge in the House and can assuage its right flank, its leaders should take steps to temper expectations, protect their authority and be open to working with Democrats if they hope to build a record of legislative success in what will be a challenging political environment.Matthew N. Green is a professor of politics at Catholic University, a co-author of “Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur” and the author of “Legislative Hardball.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Why a Narrow, Hard-Right Republican House Majority Could Spell Chaos

    Josh Brecheen, an ardent Republican who is virtually assured of victory in November to represent an overwhelmingly red House seat in eastern Oklahoma, has a message that is geared as much toward G.O.P. leaders in Washington as it is toward his party’s voters: He’s not going to the Capitol to make friends.“Whomever is elected to this seat will be groomed for conformity into moderate positions and debt spending by the Republican establishment,” he proclaims on his campaign website. “Only a rare few won’t feast at the buffet of compromise.”Mr. Brecheen assures voters he won’t be tempted.As the general election season begins in earnest, the House Republican conference appears destined for a more conservative, fractious future no matter which party wins a majority, thanks to the candidates chosen by voters in the most solidly G.O.P. districts.Numerous Republican contenders in battleground districts have taken fringe positions or espoused conspiracy theories. Democrats have trained their sights on these candidates, hoping to block a wave of extremism. But the number of open seats in solidly Republican districts means that the G.O.P. is still favored to secure a narrow majority.That could spell trouble for Republican leaders like Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the man who would be speaker, and their ability to govern.It could also mean that the government will struggle to perform such mundane tasks as keeping itself from defaulting on its debt and plunging the global financial system into chaos. At the same time, a Republican-led stream of impeachments, as some lawmakers have promised for the attorney general, the homeland security secretary, the education secretary and the president, could serve as an endless string of distractions for the executive branch.“I will operate in kindness and love, and at the same time take hard stands,” Mr. Brecheen said in an interview, vowing, for instance, never to vote to raise the government’s borrowing limit, despite the risk of undermining the world’s faith in federal bond sales. “At some point, we have to draw a line in the sand.”Josh Brecheen, a Republican who is all but certain to win his House race in Oklahoma, has vowed never to vote to raise the government’s borrowing limit, despite the worldwide financial risks.Nate Billings, The Oklahoman, via USA Today NetworkOther candidates have emerged who could revive a corps of conservatives who bedeviled past G.O.P. speakers as they tried to raise Washington’s statutory borrowing limit, keep the government funded and operating, and approve annual military and intelligence policy bills. Such prospects seem so harrowing that one former Republican leadership aide, who insisted on anonymity, said he hoped Democratic leaders would raise the debt ceiling in the lame-duck session of Congress this winter rather than risk the first-ever default on United States government debt.“I think it’ll be very difficult,” said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst with the nonpartisan publication Inside Elections, a political forecaster. “It’s been remarkable to see Nancy Pelosi handle a narrow majority. So it is possible to pass bills with only a couple of votes to spare.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to former President Donald J. Trump or to adjust their stances on abortion.But, he added, “Kevin McCarthy is not Nancy Pelosi.”Since Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” of 1994, compromise in some corners of the party has been a dirty word, and those corners have grown, first with the Tea Party movement of 2010, then with the “America First” wave of Donald J. Trump’s era.The former president’s hold on the party has added an element of uncertainty: The self-described America First Caucus, a small group of House members whose loyalty to him appears to eclipse all else, is likely to grow next year. And the group could break with the Republican House leadership at any time if Mr. Trump orders it to do so.“If Trump endorses McCarthy and stays with him, these folks will stay with him,” said Doug Heye, a Republican leadership aide during the Obama-era G.O.P. majorities. “But,” he added, “all bets are off if Trump pulls away.”It is not hard to discern where the pressure points will develop.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and other House Republicans loyal to former President Donald J. Trump have formed what they call the America First Caucus.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Paul Gosar of Arizona have already formed the core of a House caucus that is loyal to Mr. Trump and further to the right than the House Freedom Caucus and its predecessors, groups of conservatives who tormented the two most recent Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul D. Ryan. The House Republicans’ right flank forced the shutdown of much of the federal government several times, and nearly prompted a default on government debt.Joe Kent, a retired Green Beret who defeated Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington State last month with Mr. Trump’s blessing, has made it clear he intends to make waves in the Capitol. On a recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, he promised those who sympathize with the Capitol rioters, “We hear you, we’re going to go back, we’re going to look at the election of 2020.” He added, “We’re going to disclose to the American people once and for all what actually happened — release all the footage.”Andy Ogles, who is heavily favored to win a newly drawn seat in Tennessee that was designed to wipe out a Democratic district in Nashville, called for his state attorney general to join other Republican attorneys general seeking to overturn Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in Pennsylvania..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I would hope that he’d be a thorn in the side of leadership,” said James Garrett, the chairman of the Republican Party of Davidson County, the district’s base.Max Miller, a former White House aide to Mr. Trump and the Republican nominee for a G.O.P.-leaning district in Ohio, has made loyalty to the former president his calling card.Eric Burlison, a shoo-in to represent an open district in southwestern Missouri, has pushed legislation in the Missouri State Senate that would grant blanket immunity to anyone “who uses or threatens to use physical or deadly force in self-defense” unless the violence was against a law enforcement officer. Not even the conservative state legislature would pass it. Mike Collins, who is nearly certain to win an open seat in Georgia, pressed for a “forensic audit” of Georgia’s 2020 ballots, even though they were counted, then recounted by hand to confirm Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. He has promised voters, “I am your pro-Trump, ‘Give Me Back My America First’ agenda candidate.”And Keith Self, who faces only nominal Democratic opposition before he wins a seat in Texas’ Third Congressional District, could also fortify the flank on the leadership’s right.None of the candidates besides Mr. Brecheen responded to requests for comment.For some far-right House candidates, victory is not guaranteed. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, lost a special election last week to fill the remainder of the term vacated by Alaska’s longtime representative, Don Young, who died in office in March. But she will try again in November, this time for a full term and a chance to resume her role as a leading conservative scene-stealer.“It’s a real political full-circle moment to see her re-emerge on the national stage,” Mr. Rubashkin said. “Politics have moved so much in her direction since her exit, it’s kind of poetic.”J.R. Majewski, the surprise victor in an Ohio Republican primary in May, has flirted with the QAnon conspiracy theory, fulminated against what he has called “a fake pandemic organized by a fake government to hijack a fake election,” and was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The new lines of Ohio’s Ninth District were drawn by Republican state legislators to try to end the career of Representative Marcy Kaptur, one of the Buckeye State’s last Democrats in Congress, and the race is considered a tossup.In Nevada, Sam Peters, who is locked in a close contest to unseat Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat, has used a QAnon hashtag on social media and once declared that Mr. Trump could not have lost Wisconsin in 2020 because he had the backing of Brett Favre, the former Green Bay Packers star.Then there are the Trump-aligned candidates with tough roads ahead but clear shots at victory, like Bo Hines, a 27-year-old who is running for a swing seat in North Carolina as the state’s next brash young conservative, now that Representative Madison Cawthorn has lost his re-election bid. Sandy Smith, also in North Carolina, and Brandon Williams in upstate New York could win as well in a good Republican year. Both have strong Trump credentials.Bo Hines, a Trump-aligned House candidate, is running for a swing seat in North Carolina.Veasey Conway for The New York TimesWhen Republicans were predicting a seismic sweep in November, the influence of the far-right caucus was less worrying for leadership. A strong Republican majority would give Mr. McCarthy room to maneuver — and to lose support from some far-right Republicans on raising the debt ceiling and funding the government. Now, however, as political winds shift toward the Democrats, prognosticators like David Wasserman, a House analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, see a narrow 10-to-20-seat Republican majority and trouble ahead.Even with leverage, the Trump wing would have to know how to use it. Brendan Buck, who served as a top aide to Mr. Ryan when he was speaker, said that the House Freedom Caucus had never been clear on its policy aims, but that its members understood parliamentary procedures — how to threaten the tenure of a speaker — and how to use their unity and membership totals to wreak havoc.The Greene-Boebert-Gaetz wing has never shown such acumen, Mr. Buck said, but it has something that Freedom Caucus leaders in the past and present have never had — a loyal, large following.“At this point, they are way ahead of where the Freedom Caucus was in terms of outside strength,” Mr. Buck said. “They have huge profiles. They can get people animated more than the Freedom Caucus ever could.” More