A Schiff In the GOP’s Fortunes?
A failed motion to censure Rep. Adam Schiff reveals widening cracks in the GOP
Yesterday, I wrote about how the GOP was in increasing disarray over the Trump indictments and the mutiny of the far-right “Freedom Caucus.” The digital ink on that piece had barely been saved to this site when another embarrassing House vote on Wednesday afternoon took place. It highlighted how Speaker Kevin McCarthy really seems to have lost all meaningful control of his caucus.
The subject was a motion to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) for pressing the investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016 and for his role as the House impeachment manager at Trump’s Senate trial. The motion sought to refer Schiff to the Ethics Committee, and there, should it find that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentation and abused sensitive information” in connection with the Russian collusion investigation, thereupon fine him a whopping $16 million, or around half the cost of the Mueller investigation.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy nominally backed the resolution, as part of his continuing retribution against Schiff for being a chief thorn in Trump’s side during the prior administration. But GOP leadership did not whip votes on the motion, and while it made it to the floor along a strict party line vote, a meaningful 20 GOP members voted along with the Democrats to table the motion, effectively killing it, or at least this version of it.
To say the far right is upset by that result would be an understatement. Schiff has long been a target of their ire and a punching bag for their grievances, and to take this shot and miss was not only humiliating but showed the disunity and lack of leadership in the House GOP in clear, mathematical terms.
I can’t believe I’m quoting a Twitter account called “Catturd,” but given how popular that account is among the right—and how often the chief internet turd Elon Musk amplifies it—the sentiment is worth noting:
To the Republican Adam Schiff loving Party … stop messaging me to retweet you. Stop asking for donations. Stop asking me to support your next election.
You’re pathetic, you’re worthless, you’re cowards, you’re backstabbers, you’re sellouts, and you’re weak.
Totally useless.
Ah, how the road to a majority is “littered” with broken dreams, Catturd.
So what exactly happened here? How did the GOP majority manage to lose this House floor fight, again, and what might it signal in a larger sense?
To understand this, we need to rewind a bit to recall why the uber-Trumpy faction of the GOP hates Schiff so much and what they’ve already done to demonstrate that. Then we’ll look at the GOP defectors and see what’s going on there. The loss of so many in this vote could have big ramifications for the kind of mischief that the GOP had hoped to continue to generate through this year.
The tallest nail gets hammered down first
There’s an old Japanese proverb that warns that the nail that sticks out gets struck first. That certainly has been the story for Rep. Schiff, who as head of the House Intelligence Committee steadfastly led the fight for accountability over Trump’s various abuses of power.
First, there was the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russians, or the “Russia Russia Russia hoax” as the ex-president likes to call it. Schiff announced and led a sweeping investigation of that apparent collusion in 2019, making him one of the most hated House members with the MAGA Republican base.
Then there was the first impeachment trial, where Schiff served as the lead House manager seeking a conviction of Trump in the Senate. He painstakingly detailed the acts Trump had undertaken to pressure a foreign government to launch a bogus investigation into a chief political rival, Joe Biden, in 2019.
For different politically dysfunctional reasons that I won’t get into here, neither the Russia investigation nor the first impeachment resulted in successful charges or a conviction, respectively, for Donald Trump. And when the GOP retook control of the House in 2022, Schiff became a primary target for the party’s retribution, as a way to show devotion and fealty to Trump.
Speaker McCarthy, finally winning his election after 15 rounds, fulfilled his pledge to deny Schiff a seat on the House Intelligence Committee. But that wasn’t enough for the far right, who under Nancy Pelosi’s House leadership had seen their own members removed from committees and censured for making violent threats.
Because this is 2023 and irony is dead, the motion to censure and fine Schiff, on grounds he lied to the American public, came from none other than Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who herself is under a cloud for having fabricated much of her own political backstory. To further the you-can’t-make-this-up narrative, Rep. George Anthony Devolder Santos (R-NY) called on his fellow Republicans to support Luna’s motion, saying with as straight a face as he could muster that they “must preserve the integrity of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
McCarthy’s got 20 problems
To move any bill through Congress today, McCarthy can only afford to lose four votes. And that number may soon shrink if Santos resigns, perhaps in connection with a plea deal, or is somehow removed. It’s not going to be uncommon to see a handful of obstructionists use that slim majority to get their way. In fact, we saw this last week when 11 Republicans refused to back a simple Rules Committee bill, stopping all legislation from moving ahead until they could sit down with McCarthy to hammer out a “renegotiated power sharing agreement.”
Yesterday, the swing-district GOP members struck back. Voting with the Democrats on a motion to table the censure were notable “centrist” Republicans whose races are considered toss-ups in 2024, including Reps. Laurie Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-NJ) and Marc Molinaro (R-NY). Several other GOP House members from California, such as Reps. Kevin Kiley, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte and David Valadao, voted also to table the motion, possibly wary of angering voters in their districts, especially since Schiff is popular back home and a leading candidate for Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat next year.
Of symbolic importance to Schiff was the vote to table the motion by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), who currently chairs the House Intelligence Committee and was the ranking Republican member when Schiff led the committee during the last Congress.
Schiff was pleased by the vote, saying he was “frankly surprised” by it. “I think it showed a lot of courage for Republican members to stand up to the crazy MAGA folks,” Schiff said. “I’m astounded by the vote frankly; it was basically almost 1 of 10 Republicans voted against this resolution,” he added. “I thought it would certainly pass. Didn’t imagine they would set themselves up for another defeat on the floor. After the fiasco we saw last week.”
Rep. Luna isn’t content to let the defeat lie. She intends to bring the motion back up, this time without the $16 million fine, which she believes lost her some votes.
Losing their appetite?
The vote could foreshadow the way things might go later this year as the House seeks to put its thumb on the scale for Trump, and as far-right extremists file articles of impeachment and other attention-grabbing moves. To the extent that the “Freedom Caucus” claims it is tired of the GOP lying down and being beaten by Biden on things like the budget, the “moderates” within the Problem Solvers Caucus, along with any GOP representatives who feel electorally vulnerable, have grown tired of theatrics at the expense of any meaningful legislation.
For McCarthy’s part, he is out of promises he can make to the far-right faction, and his nods to them today, such as allowing a floor vote on Schiff’s censure, are blowing up in his face. Not long from now, with re-election on their minds, many House Republicans will begin to simply vote to save their own political hides, party be damned.
After all, when your party is looking even more like a vindictive, disorganized, anti-democratic cesspool of extremists and radicals, it’s prudent to distance yourself early from it.
I'm not surprised about Kean, his father was an outstanding governor in NJ, so that man likely grew up having certain principles drilled into his head.
The other thought I had was, on remembering interviews with Al Franken, behind the scenes, many of these representatives are actually friendly with their opponents behind the scenes.
Can it finally be that the adults in the room are telling the toddlers, "OK, that's IT, TIME OUT. Go sit in your room and think about your poor behavior, we have work to do." ?
Their party doesn’t just look like a vindictive, disorganized, anti-democratic cesspool of extremists and radicals. Their party IS a vindictive, disorganized, anti-democratic cesspool of extremists and radicals.