The Republican scramble to find a speaker to lead the US House hasn’t just brought dysfunction and a leadership vacuum to Congress’ lower chamber – it’s also setting off alarm bells for the future of US democracy.
The speakership battle underscores how Republicans who full-throatedly embraced election denialism continue to have access to positions of power. It also serves as a startling example of how a small minority of members are able to wield considerable power in a congressional system with few competitive races and little incentive to work within the party structure.
The two leading candidates to be the next speaker, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, tried to overturn the 2020 election. Both voted against certifying the electoral college vote and signed on to a Texas-led lawsuit at the supreme court to try and get the vote thrown out. Jordan, a prolific spreader of election misinformation, was a key Trump ally before and after the attack on the US Capitol who refused to cooperate with the panel that investigated January 6. Meanwhile, months after January 6, Scalise still refused to say the election was not stolen. If either of them were to become speaker, it would place someone who openly sought to overturn the election in one of the most powerful offices in Washington.
“I see the GOP as an autocratic party now and it has internalized the principles and methods of the January 6 coup attempt as party dogma,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who studies fascism and authoritarianism. “Those who can get ahead in the party have to be people who are active in that regard and who continue to support the coup attempt and corruption more generally.”
If Jordan were to win the speakership, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution,” Liz Cheney, a Republican who served as the vice-chair of the January 6 committee, said in a speech last week at the University of Minnesota.
“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” she said. “Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election.”
There are also questions about the fairness of the congressional maps in both Louisiana and Ohio that Scalise and Jordan were elected under. Courts have ruled the overall maps in both states are illegal, though both congressmen would likely survive any redraw of the maps in their states.
The eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy represent less than 2% of the US population, according to a Washington Post analysis. All of them were elected in districts that are safely Republican and have virtually no chance of being ousted in a general election. One the eight, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, was elected to represent a district whose boundaries were illegally drawn to discriminate against Black voters, a three-judge panel ruled earlier this year (the US supreme court will hear the case on Wednesday).
“What’s happened right now is an extreme form of minority rule,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political reform program at the New America foundation. “A fundamental principle of modern democracy is that ultimately majorities should get their way, assuming they’re not infringing on individual liberties.”
The battle over the speakership comes as the number of competitive seats in Congress has fallen to record lows – around 8% of House races were decided within five points in 2022, according to an analysis by FairVote, a non-profit that advocates for electoral reforms like ranked choice voting and proportional representation. The average margin of victory in contested races was 28 percentage points, the report found.
That declining competition, combined with an ability to raise significant money over the internet and reach audiences directly through a fragmented media ecosystem, has emboldened lawmakers to act more like “free agents” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University.
“Party leaders have lost some of the leverage that they once had over potentially recalcitrant rank and file members because these individuals no longer, they don’t have to work their way up through the party hierarchy to have a national reputation,” he said. “They’re not dependent on the party or the party leadership for campaign finance support. To the same extent.”
A body that appears dysfunctional or unable to do the basic business of governance makes for an “unhealthy” democratic system, Pildes added.
“It can lead to withdrawal from any interest in government or politics or participation. It can lead to anger and distrust and alienation,” he said. “Even worse, it can lead to desires for strong men or strong women figures who purport to be able to cut through all this dysfunction and deliver. So yes, I do think it’s a dangerous dynamic for democratic systems.”
As Republicans move towards electing a new speaker, it’s still unclear which candidate, if any, will be able to get a majority of the votes. But regardless of which Republican ultimately prevails, they’re almost certain to have to deal with the same issues that McCarthy was ultimately unable to control – a fragmented party where a small minority can wield extreme power irrespective of what the majority wants.
