A House Divided Cannot Stand: Congress Needs a Moral Reset

For the first time in American history, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to oust its Speaker this week. Taking advantage of the rule change that Rep. Kevin McCarthy put in place in order to gain the speakership eight months ago, a single Republican called the vote and seven others joined all 212 Democrats to vacate McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair. “What now?” one member asked from the floor as the vote concluded.

Next steps will, no doubt, be at the forefront of conversations on Capitol Hill in the coming days, but we cannot move forward with any hope of a functioning democracy unless we acknowledge that the House has really been without leadership for eight months. The question isn’t so much how to replace McCarthy as it is how to find leadership to pursue the policies that the people of the United States overwhelmingly agree we need.

In the bicameral system that the framers of the U.S. Constitution adopted, the House, which is elected every two years, was imagined as the chamber of the people, to be balanced in policy-making by the Senate, where members serve six-year terms and never experience complete turnover. By design, the Senate is the slow-moving body where extreme ideas are supposed to be tempered by wisdom and experience. The House is where we, the People, are supposed to be able to push legislation to meet the immediate needs of everyday Americans. The Speaker of the House is, in the framer’s intention, a voice for the People.

Like many Republicans, McCarthy thought he could harness the winds of extremism to bolster his own political ambitions. But he has sown to the wind and reaped the whirlwind, toppled by the very forces that he thought he could use.

By this definition of leadership, though, Kevin McCarthy never assumed the Speakership. Public opinion polls and ballot measures in the states in 2020 and 2022 made clear that an overwhelming majority of Americans want the government to raise the minimum wage, expand access to healthcare, and protect both voting rights and a woman’s right to make decisions about her own reproductive health. Despite the will of the People, though, McCarthy never brought a bill focused on any of these issues to the floor for debate. Instead, he allowed members of his caucus to pursue a pointless impeachment inquiry against the President and pushed legislation designed to divide Americans along the lines of the culture war.

Like many Republicans, McCarthy thought he could harness the winds of extremism to bolster his own political ambitions. But he has sown to the wind and reaped the whirlwind, toppled by the very forces that he thought he could use.

McCarthy is certainly not alone in this fundamental failure to lead. The Republican Party he belongs to is consumed by a faux populism that pretends to represent the anger of everyday Americans while ignoring the very things people say they need to survive in an increasingly unequal economy.

According to the Pew Center, 89% of all Americans support raising the minimum wage, and 62% agree that it should be more than double what it is right now ($7.25 an hour). Yet the so-called populism of the extreme right distracts Americans from the corporate profiteers who are taking ever larger pieces of the economic pie by inviting them to be angry at immigrants, sexual minorities, or people who want to tell the whole truth about American history. The Republican Party does not need a leader who tries to find some middle ground between these lies and representatives who want to govern. McCarthy has failed to lead precisely because he thought he could form a governing majority with people who do not believe government can play a role in improving the lives of people who are struggling to make ends meet.

The so-called populism of the extreme right distracts Americans from the corporate profiteers who are taking ever larger pieces of the economic pie by inviting them to be angry at immigrants, sexual minorities, or people who want to tell the whole truth about American history.

In a sense, the eight extremists who brought McCarthy down this week have more integrity than him: at least they did what they have said they wanted to do all along. Republicans who say they want to do the work of debating how policy can improve the lives of everyday Americans should take this opportunity to enact a moral reset in the House. If their caucus does not have a majority that wants to govern, some of them should join Democrats and elect Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as Speaker—not because they agree with him or their Democratic colleagues on all the details of how we should address the real issues of the American people, but simply because they share a commitment to genuine debate about the real issues that real people are facing.

In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln quoted Jesus to say that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Anyone who believes in democracy—indeed, anyone who has lived in a house with their family members—knows that a house can stand disagreement. We don’t all have to agree in order to move forward with the work of the people. But a House divided against itself—that is, a House that cannot form a majority committed to doing the work it was designed to do—cannot last.

It’s time for a moral reset in the People’s House. If at least a few Republicans are not willing to do this, it is further evidence that the party as a whole has capitulated to extremism and is no longer interested in democratic government. At the same time, though, Democrats cannot gloat: though they controlled both chambers and the White House for two years, they were not able to pass legislation to raise the minimum wage. It’s time to form a governing majority of Democrats and Republicans who want to do the People’s business. I hope Jeffries will step forward and offer this kind of leadership to the nation.