The New House Is Just Like the Old House

Jonathan Bernstein: “I think those who interpreted this as chaotic were, nevertheless, completely correct. Eleven House Republicans immediately released a letter basically making sure everyone knows that they remain dissatisfied with their own leadership. Yes, they were willing to keep peace within the conference for now, but there’s no guarantee that they’re going to support major bills that deviate from their idea of perfection – and bills that do pass muster with them may lose votes from elsewhere within the conference. Or in the Senate.”

“And yes: Trump eventually seems to have helped get this done, but only after the radicals managed to turn a routine exercise into another black eye for the party. So I wouldn’t exactly count this as evidence of Trump’s clout. I think it’s far more likely that they folded because at the end of the day they didn’t have a better Speaker candidate and they fulfilled their immediate goal of demonstrating their clout, not because they were intimidated by Trump.”

“The bottom line here is that electing a Speaker is easy, but legislating is hard even with much larger partisan majorities and far more legislative experience than House Republicans have. Perhaps they’ll manage anyway, but the mismatch between their extremely ambitious agenda and their ability to get things passed is about as wide as it could be.”