The challenges of the next Speaker of the House: Uniting the Republican Party and achieving legislative results

Kevin McCarthy was removed as speaker of the House of Representatives in early October, setting off internal storms within the Republican Party, which quickly began moving to find a successor. After the fall of Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan hopes to become speaker, but that comes with many challenges ahead.

Jordan is struggling to reach the necessary 217 votes since some Republicans understand that supporting him would mean legitimizing the legislative victory of Matt Gaetz, responsible for having promoted the motion to vacate against McCarthy because he disagreed that the government shutdown had been avoided.

That is the first great challenge that the next speaker will face: uniting the Republican Conference in the House. Although the task does not sound very complex, it is something that John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy himself, the last three Republican speakers could not achieve. Two of them even lost their leadership positions because they couldn't do it.

Unite the House Republican Conference

For Matthew Green, a political scientist at the Catholic University of America and student of congressional leadership, the GOP is being traversed by a series of political tendencies, which combine with internal disagreements to turn the speaker of the House into "the hardest job in DC ."

Prior to the creation of C-SPAN, members of Congress were powerful depending on the role they occupied in the leadership since this, in addition to giving them freedom within the Chamber, gave them exposure in the media and facilitated their presence to the voters. This generated incentives for young legislators to seek sponsorship with the leaders and not pursue too much confrontation. C-SPAN democratized that power to reach voters and allowed other members to become influential in their own right, as was the case with Newt Gingrich during the 1980s.

The arrival of social media further enhanced this trend so that virtually all members of Congress can shake the leadership of their respective parties, initially rhetorically.

"And what gets attention? Being provocative. You’re not going to get a million followers by saying, ‘I like Kevin McCarthy.’ What gets you a million followers is saying, ‘Kevin McCarthy is a swamp creature’. So that also encourages the fracturing and splintering of parties in Congress," Green explained in an interview with POLITICO.

The GOP is internally divided between the most conservative and the most traditional Republicans. Although they share points of view on most issues, there are some details on which they disagree, which generates clashes of greater or lesser intensity.

According to Green, the next speaker must have enough intelligence to please, as far as possible, both conservatives and more traditional ones. Of course, this brings difficulties, such as the dilemma between reducing the Chamber's bureaucracy and legislative outcomes.

"What’s happening here, though, is that those goals don’t align. The rebels want a more open process, but they also want more conservative legislative outcomes, and they’re probably not going to get both. You can either get a really conservative speaker who pushes the right-wing priorities through, or you can get more open process. That’s why I think the struggle is going to continue, because I don’t see a conservative majority in the House at this point," the analyst said in his interview with POLITICO.

Strong leadership

Although Boehner, Ryan and McCarthy were heavy names within the Republican Conference, with legislative experience and the necessary support to remain in power, the three began to see the end of their cycle when a group of more conservative legislators rebelled against them.

Closely hand in hand with the union of the Conference, Green points out that strong leadership can eclipse these specific ideological divisions. He gave as an example the Democrats, who, even with the differences between progressives and classic liberals, knew how to unite under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi in recent years.

"So why haven’t Democrats had this problem? Franky, they’ve had better leaders — leaders who have had more experience in the legislative process and who are more willing and able to enforce discipline. Then part of it is the media environment, which has encouraged this in both parties, but we haven’t seen the equivalent of Fox News on the left. MSNBC is liberal, but it does not have the hold on voters of their party like Fox does," Green explained.

"If we want to talk about Republican dysfunction, it’s associated with these larger forces that are battering Congress and both parties. But those forces are not symmetrical, and so the challenges aren’t symmetrical. It’s an interesting thought experiment: What if there was a Nancy Pelosi equivalent in the Republican Conference?" he added.

Legislative triumphs

Under Kevin McCarthy's leadership, Republicans established the Chinese Communist Party Select Committee, avoided a government shutdown, and, among other things, passed a series of legislation that, while not expected to pass the Democratic Senate, serves to mark a contrast between Republicans and Democrats in the face of the next elections.

For Green to achieve these legislative victories, the focus must be on the next elections. The tight Republican majority reduces the room for maneuvering when dealing with laws, so the analyst asks for patience until January 2025.

"I don’t see any major reforms to the House or to the way Republicans operate happening until there’s until there’s a new, sizable majority. That majority could be a Republican one if they win 30 seats in the next election, or it could be a Democratic one if they win 40. But now, you basically have a tied House with no operational majority. Everything is just stuck. You’re not going to see procedural reform because you’re not even going to see much legislating done," he concluded.