It’s easy to think of other modern instances in which the Republican Party had fallen on hard times. After Watergate, for example, the GOP’s reputation took a dramatic hit. After the 1998 midterm elections, Republican politics was in shambles as then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned and his successor, Bob Livingston, was derailed by a sex scandal.
In the final two years of George W. Bush’s presidency, the party’s standing reached cringe-worthy depths, thanks to a combination of congressional corruption scandals, the war in Iraq, and an economic crash.
But it’s hardly a stretch to think today’s GOP has reached a new low. As ugly as Republican politics became in these earlier eras, the party at least had the capacity to elect its own leaders and bring legislation to the floor. As things stand, the GOP can’t even clear this low bar.
Indeed, some in the party have been surprisingly candid on this point. Ordinarily, it falls to Democrats to tell voters that Republicans are a dysfunctional mess. Lately, prominent GOP voices have been willing to voluntarily acknowledge this reality on their own. As a Washington Post analysis summarized:
The situation has apparently gotten so dire that Republicans are effectively admitting that they can’t govern — that their party is so badly broken that it can’t do the most basic work voters elected it to do. And in some cases, they’re indicating their own party is actually doing damage.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” for example, and the Texas Republican conceded, “I have to say, and it’s my 10th term in Congress, this is probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ousted House speaker Kevin McCarthy used similar phrasing. When Kristen Welker asked for his response to concerns that it doesn’t appear that Republicans can govern, the Californian said, “Well, it’s embarrassing.”
Two days earlier, on Capitol Hill, a reporter asked the former GOP leader whether the Republican conference is “broken.” McCarthy replied, “We’re in a very bad place right now, yes.”
A day earlier, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia appeared on Fox News, described her party’s conference as “broken,” and concluded, “We owe the American people an apology.” The aforementioned Post analysis highlighted some related assessments. …Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said, “We’re not a governing body.” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said, “This is a bad episode of ‘Veep,’ and it’s turning into ‘House of Cards.’” “It is an embarrassment,” added Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) last week. When CNN host Jake Tapper on Friday likened the GOP infighting to high school, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said that gave his party too much credit.
To be sure, the candor is welcome, and it’s certainly preferable to the lazy and half-hearted efforts we’ve seen of late to blame Democrats for the Republicans’ chaos. But the acknowledgements of reality don’t change the fact that it’s difficult to imagine how and when GOP members will elect a new speaker, and it’s even tougher to envision how the party will explain to voters next year that it squandered the opportunity it was given last year.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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