It’s called the tyranny of the minority.
Watching Congressman Kevin McCarthy trying to appease an unwilling minority in his party so he could realize his dream of becoming Speaker of the House was agonizing last week. But for those of us who follow Missouri politics it as not an unfamiliar experience.
Remember the 2021 legislative session when an ultra-conservative segment of Senate Republicans held the entire chamber hostage when they couldn’t get their way on a congressional redistricting map? Day after day they refused to let any other business be done until they could get their way. On a few occasions the remaining Republicans got some support from minority Democrats to move something—a relationship that really steamed the tyrannical minority.
In Washington last week we watched Kevin McCarthy come about as close to making the Speakership a figurehead position in his effort to get enough of his hard right party members to let him have the job.
As the process wore on, we wondered if it occurred to McCarthy that he had to protect the Speakership, not just his own personal ambitions. Neutering the Speakership sews the seeds of anarchy in the House.
We saw in the Missouri Senate last year the dangers of deadlock caused by those who replaced public service with political power. To see the same scenario played out on a national scale is disastrous for those who have some faith in our system.
McCarthy was finally picked on the 15th ballot when Congressman Matt Gaetz, who had proclaimed himself a never-Kevin vote switched to “present.”
So now the House of Representative can get down to business. But the narrowness of the Republican majority and the divisions within the party are likely to prove hazardous to McCarthy’s House leadership.
And don’t forget that a favorite punching bag of the Republicans, President Biden, holds a veto pen and there appears to be zero chance that the House can get a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto, assuming it can get its legislation through the Senate and to the president’s desk..
The spectacle has not ended with McCarthy’s selection as Speaker.
Politics is an imperfect science but we never have seen such a time as when good will seems so unachievable. Did any of us elect any of them to think that there is nothing more important than who sits in what office in one building in Washington, D.C.?
Today we mourn the (temporary, we hope) passing of the ideal of majority rule. A tyrannical minority can be put in its place if the two major factions would recognize they must create the majority—and in the creation of a bipartisan majority, return sanity to our system.
We still have the hope that somebody will be unafraid to scale the wall separating the parties and produce enough unity to overcome the tail that thinks it can wag the congressional dog.
The Speakership is more important than any individual that aspires for it. If protecting the office and its responsibility and its power means reaching across the partisan wall, let the reaching begin. We need to know that the tyrannical minority is not in charge.
But frankly, we’re not sure it won’t be.