“Political Incontinence”

Reps. Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert are among the mutineers in the GOP. Photo: Sarah Silbiger / Bloomberg via Getty Images

There’s a full-fledged mutiny happening in the House GOP that has paralyzed the caucus for the past two days, with no House business expected or able to move forward until at least Monday, perhaps even longer.

A small group of chaos fomentors, led by the likes of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have effectively seized control of the GOP ship. “House Leadership couldn’t Hold the Line,” Gaetz tweeted on Wednesday, referring to the budget and debt ceiling bill that far-right members view as a betrayal of promises by House leadership. “Now we Hold the Floor.”

To understand the depth of the problem that Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his lieutenants such as Steve Scalise now face, we need to take a closer look at how some dozen mutineers can effectively wrest control of the party and its agenda, even without ousting McCarthy, and what it is they are actually asking for. We’ll also look ahead to how the mutiny could impact everything from the appropriation bills this fall to the election next year.

I’ll try to do all this without indulging too much in the satisfaction I feel watching McCarthy try to regain control of a House he has probably already lost.

The dirty dozen

Here’s how things are supposed to work: The Rules Committee, controlled by members loyal to the Speaker, sends a rules bill to the floor governing how other bills are to be administered, including, for example, whether they can be amended. A single rule bill can cover multiple bills. The House traditionally votes on rules bills along a straight party line. Members even traditionally vote yes on rules bills they personally oppose. That’s because sticking with the Speaker is how the party in power effectively holds the floor.

For over 20 years, no speaker has ever lost control of the floor by having members of their own party vote against a rules bill. The last time that happened was 2002. Speakers would sooner pull a bill that isn’t likely to pass than allow the embarrassing spectacle of members of the party crossing over to vote with the opposition to sink it.

Yet that’s precisely what happened on Tuesday. As a procedural rules bill governing four bills—including a darling measure of the right to prevent the federal government from banning gas stoves—went to a vote, nearly one dozen mostly Freedom Caucus members voted no along with the Democrats to defeat the bill. 

It was a record scratch moment, a highly unusual show of disdain for the way Speaker McCarthy has been handling things. All of a sudden, McCarthy truly became the SINO—the Speaker in Name Only—because he couldn’t even advance simple bills to the floor for an up or down vote.

A form of this had actually happened earlier this month with the budget deal bill. A motion to open debate didn’t have the support of enough of the GOP to pass, so Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, withholding his own and many Democratic votes till the end, signaled to his caucus to vote in support of it. It was Jeffries to the rescue, and he noted at the time that McCarthy appeared to have lost control of the floor.

Worse still, the obstruction which began Tuesday turned out not to be a mere blip. On Wednesday, GOP House leaders met with representatives of the mutineers, but they did not reach an agreement to stand down. Now it appears there will be no House business conducted until Monday of next week.

What do the mutineers want?

There are some conflicting reports, but it appears that their primary demands revolve around assurances that McCarthy allegedly made (apparently orally but not in writing, hello?) to flip holdouts to his side and elect him Speaker back in January.

Per reporting by the Washington Post, there are three main components of that alleged oral agreement: 

• Voting for legislation that reduces spending back to 2022 appropriation levels; 

• Putting only legislation on the floor not passed overwhelmingly by Democrats; and 

• Not taking up bills without unanimous support from Republicans on the Rules Committee.

McCarthy violated all three of these alleged conditions in the budget compromise bill. The appropriation levels were held to 2023 levels, not 2022, which left much of Biden’s climate agenda and IRS beef-ups untouched. The budget bill passed the House with more Democrats voting for it than Republicans. And even though two of the three Freedom Caucus members in the Rules Committee had opposed the bill, it moved forward anyway with all other GOP members voting in favor. Naturally, McCarthy now denies he ever agreed to these conditions.

The mutineers may have concluded that they lack the votes currently to oust McCarthy, but they seem to believe they can rebel in this fashion and effectively neutralize and then control him. Their power may only grow in the coming months: McCarthy just lost the vote of Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), who is stepping down to care for his ailing wife, and Rep. George Santos (R-NY) may be forced to resign in the near future. If there are two empty formerly GOP seats, that would mean merely three far-right mutineers could keep McCarthy from steering the ship.

What might this mean for the GOP?

In the near term, the party will look incredibly fractured and dysfunctional, especially to voters in key swing districts. 

Less-extreme Republican members want the party to produce some “kitchen table” bills, to help fulfill their promise that they would address the concerns ordinary American working families. But that is now on hold, along with everything else.

“This is, in my opinion, political incontinence on our part. We are wetting ourselves and can’t do anything about [it]. This is insane,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) rather memorably remarked. “This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave. And frankly, I think there’ll be a political cost to it.”

One key concern, for both the GOP and the country, are the twelve appropriation bills that must be voted upon later this year, under the terms and limits hammered out by the parties in the budget compromise. If McCarthy can’t move the bills to the House floor, he may have to turn again to the Democrats to help him. Not a great look from the standpoint of the Freedom Caucus or the MAGA base.

Then there is always the threat of a motion to vacate the chair, which any one member could raise under the Faustian deal McCarthy made back in January with the far right. If McCarthy can’t get the chaos caucus in line and voting with him, the GOP might decide they need to elect someone else who can. And that’s got to be weighing on McCarthy’s mind, just as it likely has every day for the past five months.

A clearly energized Rep. Gaetz was blunt, warning that McCarthy would have to make a decision whether he wanted to do bipartisan bills with Democrats or keep the support of the far right. “We’re going to force him into a monogamous relationship with one or the other,” Gaetz threatened during an interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “What we’re not going to do is hang out with him for five months and then watch him go jump in the back seat with Hakeem Jeffries.”