John Boehner had announced his resignation. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to ascend as next-in-line to the speakership had imploded. There was no one who was an immediate and obvious choice. So, obviously, that meant that the House was in CHAOS!
NBCNews.com headline, 10/8/15: “House Chaos: Why the Republicans Can’t Choose a Speaker”
Politico.com headline, 10/8/15: “The House GOP’s historic implosion”
WashingtonTimes.com headline, 10/8/15: “White House revels in House GOP chaos: ‘We’re having a little fun with all of this’”
RedState.com headline, 10/9/15: “Chaos in the House”
Utter ANARCHY – Whatever would we do????
Slate.com headline, 10/9/15: “The Real Reason for the Chaos in the House”
RealClearPolitics.com headline, 10/9/15: “House GOP Chaos: Will It Hurt 2016 Hopefuls?”
Breitbart.com headline, 10/9/15: “LIVE UPDATES FROM INSIDE THE CHAOS”
ThinkProgress.com headline, 10/9/15: “This Document Reveals Why The House Of Representatives Is In Complete Chaos”
Was this the end of the Republican Party? Of the republic itself???
MSNBC.com headline, 10/12/15: “GOP searching for speaker amid House ‘chaos’”
USAToday.com headline, 10/18/15: “Congress returns amid chaos over House speaker”
WashingtonExaminer.com headline: 10/21/15: “House ‘chaos’ stalls Obamacare reform, repeal”
Everywhere we looked, from the far left to the far right, everyone was telling us that the House was in chaos and upheaval with no answer in sight. It was the common narrative, the conventional wisdom.
And it was totally, completely, and utterly wrong.
In today’s world of the internet, 24-hour news cycle, smart phones, and social media, we have come to demand and expect instant gratification. If we see a problem for which there is no answer that is obvious and immediate, we panic and prepare for doom. That’s what we did here. But in so doing, we lost faith in our fundamental values and institutions. We forgot that our forefathers gave us a representative democracy that has succeeded for 239 years to meet every challenge and that was specifically designed to meet this one.
The resignation of John Boehner never triggered “chaos” and “upheaval.” And the failure of Kevin McCarthy to slip smoothly into the speaker’s chair as a next-in-line entitlement never triggered a “crisis.” What these developments represented was our representative democracy in action, and in the end, as it always has, our representative democratic system delivered us good and solid solution.
So let’s start w
ith John Boehner’s resignation. Did it create a “constitutional crisis”? Of course not.
Boehner was forced to resign because the people of this country lost faith in him. He had campaigned as the leader of all Republican House candidates on a pledge to thwart Barack Obama’s leftist agenda and specifically to stop his illegal and unconstitutional executive amnesty. The American people overwhelmingly wanted what Boehner was promising, and we responded by giving the Republicans their largest majority in nearly 100 years.
But upon seating the new 114th Congress with its Republican supermajority, Speaker Boehner proceeded to break every promise on which the American people had provided that majority. He not only refused to try to stop executive amnesty; he insisted on fully funding it and went to great lengths to thwart efforts by members of his own caucus to keep the promises he had made. He then went to work to provide full funding for Obamacare and for Planned Parenthood, notwithstanding videos demonstrating the Planned Parenthood was butchering babies to sell their parts on the open market and ship them to customers through the postal mail.
By the ninth month of this abdication of leadership, the outcry from the American people was so loud and strong that Boehner could no longer even nominally lead. He had lost the confidence of the people and of his caucus, and he had little choice but to resign. Our representative democracy worked. Our elected representatives gave us what we demanded.
Immediately after Boehner announced his resignation, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy became, in the eyes of the common narrative and conventional wisdom, the heir-apparent to the speaker’s throne. But the common narrative and conventional wisdom once again ignored the reality that the people did not want the chosen successor and right-hand man of the speaker they had just deposed. So, when the Republicans met to coronate McCarthy, he found that he lacked the votes of the elected representatives of the people to accede to the throne, and he was forced to step aside. Once again our representative democracy worked and our elected representatives gave us what we demanded.
At this point, the news media and the pundit class across the political spectrum uniformly engaged in an all-out panic because there was no immediate and apparent candidate at that moment to win the speakership. But that panic was not rooted in reality. It was the product of our new culture of demanding immediate gratification. In any other time the people and the press would have understood that we have a process in place that was specifically designed to handle such situations and that had done so successfully for nearly 240 years, and we would have calmly allowed that process to play out.
Well, despite all of the hysteria and alarmism, the process did play out as it was designed to do and always has, and within a couple of weeks a consensus formed around a Republican congressman with a proven record of principled conservatism but with the pragmatism and character to be able to lead and govern. And today, that man, Paul Ryan, was overwhelmingly elected speaker. (Yes, there were some brats in the Republican caucus who continued to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and refused to vote for Ryan, but those nine fantasy-world purists represented a full 3.67% of the Republican caucus. The other 96.33% of the caucus unified around Ryan.)
All of this happened without any bombs bursting, buildings burning, or founding documents disintegrating – because our representative democracy worked, and our elected representatives gave us what we demanded.
Despite the hysterical common narrative and conventional wisdom, there never was “chaos” or “upheaval” or a “crisis.” All there ever was was impatience. Our Constitution that provides the means for our representative democracy once again worked as intended.
The people prevailed. And that’s how it’s supposed to work.
