Chaos in race for Speaker in Congress should open door to bipartisanship

Last week, national news outlets reported that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) had dropped out of the race to replace Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) after Boehner announced his resignation from Congress on Sept. 25. McCarthy, tipped to be the next Speaker ahead of other candidates Representatives Daniel Webster (R-Florida) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), ended his candidacy for the position after committing a major PR flub in saying that the committee to investigate the events around the killing of American diplomats in Benghazi was meant to damage Hillary Clinton’s prospects for President. His decision, of course, is also based on the lack of support from the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 members who dislike the way the Republican conference is run and want to pressure the Republican leadership to be more conservative. With few Republicans able to win over the most conservative members of their party, some have suggested that the Republicans look to the Democrats to gain enough support to elect a Speaker.

While this plan may be anathema to the Freedom Caucus and does not seem likely to happen, the merits of fostering bipartisanship by themselves and the grim state of affairs for the Republicans may make it necessary. Charlie Dent, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is considered a longtime ally of former Speaker Boehner, has suggested as much saying, as reported by The Hill, that working with Democrats is “a very real possibility right now, and I think anybody who's honest about this knows it. They may not want to talk about it, but they know it.” Republicans and Democrats last week  teamed up in a similar scenario to force a vote on legislation to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. 

What’s more, the looming possibility of a government shutdown throws further weight in the argument to find a durable solution sooner rather than later. The fight between establishment Republicans and their fellow conservatives has played a big role in government shutdowns before, when, in 2013, squabbles among party members increased the threat of credit downgrade. The impression left on the world was that the United States could not govern itself. Avoiding a shutdown was hard with Boehner as Speaker -- and he could barely control the Republican Conference.

A bipartisan alignment between the Democrats and moderate Republicans has the possibility of not just surviving the deep-seated problems that currently plague policy-making but also setting a new standard of cooperation. Of course, it’s fanciful to imagine that Democrats and Republicans could cooperate at all, let alone set a new standard of government functioning. If both parties end up coming to that conclusion, however, the chaos within the Republican conference could yet be a positive development, instead of an additional reason to worry.