As recently as Tuesday night, there was great uncertainty about whether House Republicans would succeed in their stunt targeting Attorney General Merrick Garland. GOP leaders appeared desperate to hold the nation’s chief law enforcement official in contempt for failing to fully comply with a misguided subpoena, but they weren’t sure if they had the votes.
Axios reported that the contempt resolution was “hanging by a thread” and “in severe danger of being pulled by GOP leadership.” The report added:
Moderates Republicans had raised concerns about holding in Garland in contempt, which is a tough vote for many of them in politically divided districts to take ahead of the November elections.
After seeing this late Tuesday, I more or less assumed that the resolution would pass — because actual “moderates” in the House Republican conference are in decidedly short supply. If opponents of the anti-Garland measure were counting on votes from the GOP’s alleged “centrists,” those opponents needed to lower their expectations.
Ahead of the vote, Republican Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio told The Washington Post that his fellow GOP House members had better things to do.
“He’s basically complied with the request,” Joyce said, referring to Garland, adding, “I’m not sure what the issue is.” After the vote, the Ohioan — who opposed the resolution — said in a written statement, “As a former prosecutor, I cannot in good conscience support a resolution that would further politicize our judicial system to score political points. The American people expect Congress to work for them, solve policy problems, and prioritize good governance. Enough is enough.”
That was a sensible assessment, but it didn’t persuade Joyce’s GOP colleagues: It only would’ve taken a handful of House Republicans to derail the anti-Garland measure in the narrowly divided chamber, but those votes didn’t exist. Joyce voted with the minority, but all of the other “moderates” with “concerns” went along with their far-right colleagues.
Or more to the point, they went along with their far-right colleagues again.
Last September, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters, “There are no moderates left in the House Republican conference. They talk a good game but at the end of the day, they all do the same exact thing: bend the knee to Donald Trump.”
It was, and is, an important point. Plenty of political observers are still inclined to believe that GOP members from competitive districts deserve to be seen as “moderates.” That’s an awfully tough sell.
Last summer, the Washington Post reported, “As the far-right draws attention, swing district Republicans want leadership to know: They have a bloc of votes that are important, too.”
It was a nice idea, but those same “bloc of votes” from swing districts haven’t made much effort to use their leverage in the divided chamber.
These Republicans went along with their party’s debt ceiling crisis. They went along when GOP leaders held up security aid to Ukraine. They went along with their party’s first-ever impeachment of a sitting cabinet secretary. They went along with the anti-Garland contempt resolution. They went along with pointless censure resolutions. When GOP divisions derail the party’s legislative plans — which has happened plenty of times in the current Congress — it’s happened because the party’s far-right flank balked, not because so-called centrists rebelled against their leaders. I’m sympathetic to the idea that arguments over semantics can quickly get tiresome. It’s also unrealistic to think political writers are going to report to the public about “far-right Republicans” and “not-quite-as-far-to-the-right Republicans.” But there simply aren’t a meaningful number of GOP “moderates” on Capitol Hill in 2024: The conference is filled with conservatives to one degree or another. Indeed, as NPR’s Steve Inskeep noted last year, even some of the more pragmatic House Republicans avoid using the “moderate” label to describe themselves. And if they’re not embracing the label, there’s certainly no reason to do them the favor of using it anyway. Ideally, there’d be a lot of true “moderates” in the House GOP conference, exerting influence. Alas, as we were reminded again yesterday, this centrist faction simply doesn’t exist. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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."
Latest Post
Recommended
