The Deconstruction of the Republican Party
Dealing with the New Reality
The Republican “Party” is no longer a part of the two-party system paradigm that Americans have used to make sense of politics over the past 160 years. Rather, it is a weakly bound coalition of three fractious factions that have vastly different agendas. It is ungovernable. There is no source of cohesion or common purpose that could unite the factions. There is no old-style party discipline. There is no single universally accepted party structure or acknowledged leadership left, as McCarthy and Scalise have been cast aside. Tom Emmer is next in line, as the majority whip, but he is timorously silent.
This is the reality. It is why the House is currently spending weeks without a Speaker and unable to respond to the many crises we are facing.
What are those fractious factions? What are their agendas?
The chaos faction. It is composed of the members that forced the 15-round humiliation of Kevin McCarthy as he groveled for the speakership and accepted the poison pill ” vacate the chair “ rule that any single chaos-maker could invoke at any time for any reason. They are the ones that the members of the other two coalitions say don’t want to govern and just want to burn the place down. They are the ones who are enamored of Trump and are Trump’s beloved, the hard-core election deniers, and the ones most intimately connected to January 6. They are the ones who have no clue about how to legislate.
Jim Jordan, the new speaker designee, is their leader, a representative since 2007 who has not gotten a single bill through the House, let alone passed by the Senate and signed into law. Jim Jordan, the representative called out by Liz Cheney time and time again, as Trump’s eyes on the House on January 6 and the one who “caused it.”
Their agenda is to paralyze the House to tie Joe Biden’s hands running up to the election, to cause maximum harm to the economy, to provide fertile ground for general civic discontent, and to weaken our support for Ukraine as a gift to Putin. They are there to prepare the conditions for Trump to return to power as a “savior” with a side of retribution. Ultimately, they are the legislative spearhead of the new authoritarians in America.
The grievance faction. This is the largest faction of the former Republican Party. They understand and are on board with the billionaire-funded Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation plans to institute a single-party authoritarian system in America. They benefited from gerrymandering and support the rulings of a conservative doctrinaire judiciary whose rulings stoke the culture wars on which they thrive and have given enormous political power to the ultra-rich through Citizens United. They are all on board with the destruction of the professional civil service and executive branch described in detail in the Project 2025 manifesto as soon as there is a new nominally Republican president.
Their ultimate agenda is to see continued upward concentration of wealth in this country with more tax cuts for corporations and the 1%, institution of a white patriarchal society by curtailment of minority’s and women’s rights, and an isolationist “America First” policy that dismantles our alliances. This is not speculation, it is what Trump started to do during his presidency. Even though he was inept, major advances on the agenda were made in the culture wars, gerrymandering, judicial appointments, and securing minority rule in state legislatures.The remnants. This is the smallest faction, those who still have some memory of what their oath of office requires of them and who understand how the legislative process is supposed to work. They are centrists, members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and some of those who won in districts that went to Joe Biden in 2020. Not to put too fine a point on it, they are scared shitless that they will be primaried. But the bottom line is that they are already on the hit list of the Republican National Committee and Super PACs that have, for many election cycles, funneled funds to those who are fully aligned with the Operation REDMAP/Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation agenda. What they are not is openly “never Trumpers” like Cheney and Kinzinger. They chose to be silent bystanders.
Their agenda is to cling to their seats, support Ukraine and Israel, and try to see that the government is funded so their constituents are not harmed without making waves. They want the legislative process to work. They understand that there must be compromises in the legislative process. But they are conflicted between self-interest and principle.
The new reality of the deconstruction of the Republican Party makes the next steps for Democrats clear. The infighting in the Former Republican Party (FRP), the entirely fortuitous numbers in the three factions, and the narrowness of the FRP majority have opened a very small window of opportunity for Democrats to take over the House and restore a functioning legislature that will get us through the next 15 months until 2024.
Biden, Jeffries, and the Democrats must:
Call out the legislative dysfunction, point out the shadow billionaires and the danger of Project 2025, and the march towards authoritarianism.
Do whatever it takes to break the remnants away from the FRP and join in a coalition with Democrats. Undoubtedly, there will have to be horse-trading and a lot of nose-holding while cleaning up the subsequent manure, but this is politics in a time of national crisis.
Properly assess and deal with the removal of the poison pill “vacate the chair” rule. That rule is the major stumbling block to a functioning House. How it can be changed since it was enacted by the FRP Conference is unclear to me and will depend, at least initially, I think, on interpretation by the House Parliamentarian and an argument based on House precedent. But there is no question in my mind that the current SCOTUS would welcome a chance to issue a ruling, separation of powers be damned.
UPDATE: Paul Kane of the Washington Post has a detailed analysis of the current factions in the FRP (my acronym for the Former Republican Party) . He has all of the numbers during the speaker designee ballots and the inside skinny on the dynamics and distrust going on between different factions.
It is definitely worth the read. The link is below.
https://www.project2025.org/policy/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/14/jim-jordan-speaker-minority-rule/
Adam Kinzinger's take on the FRP infighting, what to expect next, and the possibility of a consensus speaker. What he doesn't address is the impact of the motion to vacate rule.
https://adamkinzinger.substack.com/p/speaker-update-video-2-dude-its-getting
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