The Wall Street Journal editorial board was particularly bloodthirsty this weekend. Those writers encouraged House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., to come out of the shadows and “announce an immediate challenge” against House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Man up, Mr. Meadows,” they write. Otherwise, sit down and shut up.
Really the editorial is an excellent piece of writing that’s worth a read. It sounds like an abbreviated Shakespeare play, a slightly reimagined “Julius Caesar” crossed with “House of Cards.” And it’s got everything: togas, congressional knife fights, a dramatic coup — everything, that is, except an understanding of the situation.
Like all good screenplays, the editorial takes certain liberties. First of all, Meadows is an unwilling antagonist. “There is no plan, there is nothing there,” Meadows said Friday morning. “And I can tell you that if I was working on a plan to depose the speaker, you wouldn’t be reading about it in the press.”
He doesn’t want to kill the king. He just wants to argue with him.
Any opposition must be tantamount to outright rebellion. The editorial points to the top-down, no-questions-asked model exemplified by Nancy Pelosi in 2006 as “the way a congressional majority is supposed to work.” Apparently representatives should follow the leader, not their conscience, once they arrive in Washington. Republicans must operate like Democrats. Electorate be damned.
But that sort of reasoning assumes the presence of some kind of majority where one rarely exists. At least three different factions currently make up the GOP House conference. The lesser known and more liberal Tuesday Group wars against the conservative Freedom Caucus. A centrist leadership and the larger Republican Study Committee occasionally try to play peacemaker.
Warring against each other while wearing the same uniform, Republicans often obscure their own position. This type of infighting sunk healthcare the first time around and now threatens to torpedo tax reform. It’s brutal and messy and, for now, it occurs mostly behind closed doors.
A Meadows-Ryan race like the Wall Street Journal imagines would only exacerbate that tribal fight. Meadows would lose but it’s not clear what Ryan would win. The failed coup wouldn’t end the sniping. It’d just put it on display. Good luck moving any major reform legislation once the bloodletting starts.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
