The sad and sordid tale of the Republican House Speaker races

Thirty years of eating their own

As a kid, I sat around on Sunday mornings watching the Three Stooges bash and beat each other in their slapstick comedy shows. Today, I’m watching the same show except instead of the Three Stooges, it’s the Republican House caucus. I found Larry, Moe, and Curly hilarious back then and I find the Republicans equally funny today. If only their incompetence wasn’t so consequential.

Of course, they’ve been doing some version of this act for almost thirty years. From 1955 to 1995, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, electing a series of House Speakers that varied from mediocre (Tom Foley) to great (Sam Rayburn, Tip O’Neill). Since then, Republicans have controlled the House for 20 years, had five different Speakers, and, each time, they’ve eaten them for lunch. Democrats, in contrast, have controlled the House twice for a total of eight years and only had one Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi will go down in history as one the great House Speakers while the five Republicans will either be forgotten or remembered for their misdeeds more than than their leadership.

In 1995, Newt Gingrich became the first Republican Speaker of the House in 40 years. He rode the 1994 GOP wave to the Speaker’s podium waving his Contract for America. He only lasted four years. After trying to impeach Bill Clinton for his sexual escapades, the GOP had an abysmal 1998 midterm election and his caucus called for his head. About that time, it was also revealed that Gingrich was having an extra-marital affair. Hypocrisy didn’t wear as well back then as it does today.

Gingrich’s successor was going to be Louisiana Republican Bob Livingston. However, before he could take the gavel, he was exposed for having extramarital affairs, too. The party that was impeaching a president for being unable to keep his pants zipped couldn’t find a leader without a looming sex scandal. My crude joke back then was, “Bill Clinton got a blow job in the Oval Office and the entire Republican House leadership had to resign.”

So who do they choose? A low-key, consensus candidate named Dennis Hastert. Besides being a pedophile, Hastert actually was the most successful GOP House Speaker since before World War II. He served for eight years and we didn’t even figure out he had sexually abused boys on his high school wrestling team until after he left office. Hastert went on to serve a year in federal prison and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution to his victims.

Next up, John Boehner took the Speaker’s gavel after the 2010 midterm gave Republicans control of the house again. Boehner managed to herd Republican cats for four-and-a-half years, but, in the end, the burn-it-all-down caucus forced him to resign because he wouldn’t meet their demand to shutdown government in 2015.

Kevin McCarthy was supposed to succeed Boehner, but the burn-it-down wing refused to support him. Rumors of an affair between McCarthy and North Carolina Representative Renee Ellmers didn’t help his case. Regardless of why, he dropped his quest for the nomination.

With McCarthy out, Republicans chose a reluctant Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, to lead the House. When Ryan agreed to take the job, he made a career-ending decision. He struggled with his unruly caucus that became even more unmanageable with the election of Donald Trump. Ryan announced that he would not run for re-election in 2018, leaving Congress as one of the weakest Speakers in modern history.

Which leads us up to this year. After the Trump years, sexual scandals no longer matter to Republicans so McCarthy sought the Speakership again. He still faced opposition from the burn-it-down caucus but he was would have sold his mother for the gavel. After bargaining away most his power, he was elected speaker on the 15th ballot, four days after voting began. He didn’t make it through the year.

What we’re watching in Congress is culmination of three decades of Republicans empowering people who have little interest in governing but a great interest in owning the libs. They are following the lead set by Newt Gingrich before they torched him. Gingrich built a movement based on attacking his opponents. In a 2018 profile of Gingrich, McKay Coppins wrote, “His strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating, and then seize on the resulting dysfunction to wage a populist crusade against the institution of Congress itself.” The monster has consumed its master.