WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner’s resignation announcement stunned Washington on Friday.
The shockwaves from the Republican lawmaker’s surprise move are expected to have an immediate impact on the nation’s political scene — and those shockwaves will continue to spread to the 2016 election and beyond.
Here is what you need to know about the implications:
In the short term A flurry of activity
• A stopgap spending bill to fund the government will pass next week, averting a shutdown until at least mid-December.
• Before Boehner’s Oct. 30 departure from Congress, he might use his lame-duck status to ram through some stuff that his critics hate, such as raising the debt ceiling, reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank and passing a long-term highway bill. All could happen with Democratic votes. That could spare his likely successor, Kevin McCarthy, from having to twist the arms of members whose votes he needs right now to win the top job.
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is about to become the right’s main new bogeyman. “McConnell is infinitely worse as a leader than Boehner,” Rep. Mike Salmon, R-Ariz., told Politco. “He surrenders at the sight of battle every time.”
In the medium term (from January through January 2017)
Nothing really changes, which is to say nothing will really happen.
• The Republican civil war will rage on. Members who gave Boehner such heartburn are not going away, and their discontent runs much deeper and wider than Boehner.
As New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait puts it: “Boehner’s tormentors refused to accept the limits of his political power. The usual band of irreconcilables in the House have recently demanded that Republicans shut down the federal government to force President Barack Obama to agree to zero out funding for Planned Parenthood. Boehner and the party leadership have resisted not because they agree with funding Planned Parenthood, but because this tactic has no chance of success. The irreconcilables have tried to pressure him into yet another futile gesture by openly threatening, once again, to depose him. … Boehner has never supported any important aspect of the Obama agenda.”
“I don’t know how anybody’s going to do anything different; it’s just going to be a new person,” said Rep. Tom Rooney of Florida, a deputy whip. “In a few months, we’re all going to look back and think: ‘Hey, you know what? Maybe it wasn’t so easy just saying that we’ll replace Boehner.’ … We’re a divided government and we’re extremely polarized, and trying to herd all those cats is not an easy thing to do.”
• The new leader will also be weak. Boehner’s replacements will be fresh and need to focus on consolidating their power. That will make them each especially leery of doing anything to alienate the base. To secure the votes he needs, McCarthy will surely make some quiet commitments to the right flank. While he has widespread support in the Republican conference, many believe McCarthy lacks the political and tactical gravitas to exert control over what has become an essentially ungovernable House.
• McCarthy lacks policy chops. He has never chaired a full committee like Boehner did. In only his fifth term, he’ll become the least experienced speaker in more than a century, since Charles Frederick Crisp, a Democrat from Georgia, took the post in 1891 having served just four terms.
• Obama, already a lame duck, is less likely than before to get big-ticket items out of Congress. At least initially, McCarthy will not be as worried about his legacy as Boehner was, or Obama. As a result, there will be no real movement on tax reform next year or any kind of grand bargain that would raise revenue. If Boehner doesn’t get Ex-Im done before he leaves, which is totally foreseeable, the loan program will probably stay expired. And McCarthy is certainly not going to tackle something like immigration during the remainder of this Congress when the issue is so toxic with conservative base voters.
• It’s going to be hard to get the votes for anything without turning to Democrats, and there will be pressure on all the candidates seeking leadership positions to pledge that they will abide by the Hastert Rule. This requires leadership not to bring a bill up for a vote on the floor unless at least half of Republicans support it. Maybe something like criminal justice reform could get through that gantlet because there is a push for it on the right.
• This leadership change is also happening against the backdrop of presidential politics. The Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating calendar on Feb. 1, which is only four months away. As always, it is much harder to pass big bills during an election year. The old saying in Washington is that you govern in odd years and campaign in even years.
In the long term
(Jan. 20, 2017, and beyond)
Uncertainty.
• A lot really depends on who wins the upcoming leadership races and, more important, who is the next president.
“No congressional leader can truly take the reins of his or her party nationally,” said Dan Balz, The Washington Post’s chief correspondent. “That is reserved for presidential nominees and ultimately presidents. It often has been said that the most successful among them are politicians who define their parties rather than being defined by them.”
Could someone such as Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Marco Rubio tap the anger and unhappiness within the base while still making a case for conservative governance that includes compromise and cooperation with Democrats? Balz doesn’t know the answer but argues that the nominee will have to show he or she is ready and willing to govern in order to win next November. “Republicans have been on a rightward journey since President George W. Bush left office in 2009, and their leaders have been in hot pursuit,” he notes. “The nomination contest of 2012 pushed Mitt Romney further to the right on immigration than was politically sound. The current contest threatens to do the same to the eventual nominee.”
• If a Democrat wins the White House, it will be harder for the GOP’s governing class to marginalize the activist wing of the party.
The struggle for power is well underway.
McCarthy should not have any kind of a competitive race for speaker, despite loud rumblings on the right. Late Friday, Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida announced he’ll challenge him. He ran against Boehner in January and garnered just 12 votes. Other longtime Boehner critics are also balking, such as Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and radio host Laura Ingraham, but people familiar with whip counts don’t put too much stock in their ability to interfere with McCar thy’s ascension.
• The right wing has a much larger ability to influence who wins the lower-tier races:
The top three contenders to replace McCarthy in the No. 2 job are: Current Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Conference chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and Budget Committee chairman Tom Price of Georgia. Also mulling bids for top leadership spots: Chief Deputy Whip Peter J. Roskam of Illinois, Financial Services chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions of Texas, the former NRCC chairman. This race then sets in motion contests for the No. 3 and 4 spots. Roskam sent a letter out calling for a closed meeting so that all the GOP members could talk about the future of the party before the vote.
A race for House majority whip unfolds only if Scalise gets elevated to majority leader. Then it becomes a proxy fight for which factions will hold the most sway in the post-Boehner majority. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who is just 38 and was elected in 2012, is already running, per Politico. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, currently the chief deputy whip and a close ally of Boehner, almost certainly will, as well. Rep. Dennis Ross of Florida might hop in, which would shift the dynamic.
