If you think Republicans’ inability to efficiently elect a speaker of the House is embarrassing, just wait and see what will happen if 20 Republicans dictate policy and procedure to more than 200 of their colleagues. Rejecting McCarthy is just the tip of the iceberg. What they turncoat 20 really want is power and influence without doing the work or having the votes to earn it.

If McCarthy is a Republican in name only (RINO), so is Donald Trump. From a policy standpoint, McCarthy has been lockstep with the former president. If the problem is that Washington is fiscally insane, it was the same under Trump. Republicans who backed Trump on policy don’t have a leg to stand on if they’re opposing McCarthy.

Other Columns by Cameron Smith:

Maybe the issue is that McCarthy is from California where liberal policies thrive. The only problem with that logic is that he represents a R+16 district according to the 2022 Cook Partisan Voting Index. The voters who send McCarthy are far more Republican than the national average.

When Trump, Sean Hannity, Jim Jordan (R-OH), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Don Bacon (R-NE) are backing the same candidate for speaker of the House, it’s safe to say the GOP ideological spectrum is covered.

Some Republican holdouts won’t vote for McCarthy for personal reasons. That’s certainly their right, but they aren’t putting forth alternatives who could reach the 218 vote threshold for election. It’s not a problem for them, because they don’t actually care about democratic governance.

“We are showing the American people that this process works,” said the Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA). Perry might be shocked to learn that most of America can, in fact, count to 218. Some of us even took civics in school.

This isn’t about McCarthy. It isn’t even really about policy. McCarthy would gladly bring up votes on term limits or border security funding. A small minority group of Republicans have decided to side with Democrats to bring the House of Representatives to an absolute standstill.

They’re not going to stop here.

One of the most important rules changes the holdouts have extracted from McCarthy is the ability of one member to make a privileged motion to vacate the chair. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. The motion to vacate is simply the ability to remove the speaker of the House and initiate a new vote for speaker.

The fact that the motion is privileged is particularly important. Any member could introduce a resolution at any time, and the House must stop what it is doing to consider it.

Making the motion to vacate the chair easy to access isn’t a problem. The majority should always be able to decide who speaks on their behalf. The bigger issue is that 20 members of the GOP have no intention of using it in good faith.

Imagine a $1.5 trillion omnibus comes up for a vote next year. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) rightly recognizes that it’s fiscally irresponsible. Instead of voting against the measure and making his point on the House floor, he files a motion to vacate the chair. All Democrats and six Republicans vote for the measure.

We’re instantly back to the present moment where the House is frozen. Republicans get all the blame, and Democrats laugh all the way to the polls.

That might sound delightful to some conservatives, but it’s a made-for-tv campaign ad for liberals. Forget winning in swing states or districts, Republicans will be in a self-righteous permanent minority that feels principally justified and is functionally useless in advancing conservative policies.

This nonsense could happen every single time any member feels like throwing a wrench in the legislative process.

Because Democrats are willing to vote in a block, a group as few as six Republicans would effectively have veto power over the House of Representatives at any time for any reason. They’re quite literally closer to Democrats than Republicans at that point, but they’ll undoubtedly pronounce themselves to be patriotic conservatives.

Hogwash.

They’re leveraging Democrats against their fellow Republicans. This is the antithesis of Ronald Reagan’s “big tent” approach to Republican politics that led to a decade of prosperity for America.

If the 20 were serious, they’d offer a consensus Republican speaker like Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) who might reach the 218 threshold. Here’s a hint: The next speaker is not going to be one of those 20, and, increasingly, it’s not going to be anyone like them.

The irony is the 20 obstructionists don’t have their own speaker to negotiate on their behalf. The accommodations that would, in fact, secure 218 votes seem to be constantly in flux. McCarthy has been giving away the farm, and he’s still losing time and again.

After the speaker is selected, where will the 20 will find 198 votes to move a single conservative bill? The Democrats aren’t going to help them, and, now, their Republican colleagues won’t either. The real losers are their constituents who will have no effective representation in Congress.

The House isn’t the deliberative body in Congress for many reasons, not least of which is the fickle political passions of representatives. McCarthy remains confident that he will have the votes to become speaker. If that’s the case, he faces the fresh challenge of cobbling together a functioning majority between 20 Republicans who want more power for themselves and 202 who deeply resent them for the same.

Smith is a recovering political attorney with four boys, two dogs, a bearded dragon, and an extremely patient wife. He engages media, business, and policy through the Triptych Foundation and Triptych Media. Please direct outrage or agreement to [email protected] or @DCameronSmith on Twitter.