Democrats are standing firm in their refusal to bail out the House Republican majority as it struggles to elect a new speaker 10 days after after booting Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
They’re also dialing up the rhetoric against the GOP’s new nominee for speaker, prominent Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan of Ohio, blasting him as an insurrectionist, election denier and extremist.
“House Republicans have selected as their nominee to be the speaker of the people’s House the chairman of the chaos caucus, a defender in a dangerous way of dysfunction, and an extremist extraordinaire,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Friday on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by dozen of Democratic lawmakers. “His focus has been on peddling lies and conspiracy theories and driving division amongst the American people.”
There is no majority party in the House. It might look that way at a glance, since two of the parties operate under the same name, but there are actually three parties in the House right now and none of them have a majority.
The only way to govern in this kind of situation is via a coalition, and as the largest unified party in the House the Democrats should lead that coalition.
If that were true then the centrist Republicans would help the Democrats elect a Democratic speaker. But they want to pretend their party is two parties when it’s convenient and one party when it’s convenient.
Fuck ‘em. Let them sort out their own mess.