Opinion | The Culture of House Republicans Is Warped

The speaker of the House is a big job. Yet a small group of deeply unserious people has consumed an inordinate and growing amount of the speaker’s time over the last 12 years.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has given us fresh evidence of that this week as she threatened to pull the trigger on a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson only to deescalate — at least temporarily — after multiple meetings with him. But the standoff, for all its foolishness, gives the House a chance to reverse this drift and serve as a turning point toward becoming a more deliberative body once again.

Over the House’s more than two centuries, there has no doubt been all manner of cranks and questionable characters serving in the institution. It is a modern phenomenon, however, that we pay them so much attention. Today, congressional politics revolve around a rump group of lawmakers who typically hold no significant role on committees, often have served just a few terms, and whose rhetoric implies only a tenuous grasp of political reality.

We must stop taking them so seriously. We need a bipartisan pact that we’re going to stop letting the people who delight in the absurd have an outsize influence in the House. It would be good for the institution, good for Republicans and even good for Democrats.

Both parties have their gadflies and their fringes, but the reality is that the forces fueling historic levels of congressional dysfunction are coming from a small but growing group of Republican hard-liners. And it’s infected the culture of the broader House GOP. I’ve seen that up close, having previously served as an adviser to Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

Lately, Greene has accused Johnson, a conservative derided by the left as “MAGA Mike,” of literally being a Democrat. She’s among a swath of Republicans who insist a tiny House majority can foist a conservative agenda upon a Senate and White House controlled by Democrats.

Similar nonsense was thrown at Johnson’s predecessors whenever they would strike a necessary bipartisan agreement. Republicans have indulged this ridiculous thinking too long; indeed, doing so has only emboldened the hard-liners from one speakership to the next.

Boehner could barely tolerate many members of the Freedom Caucus, and he did little to hide it. Ryan believed a dash of inclusivity and an open line of communication would moderate their worst instincts, and he held a weekly lunch with members from different pockets of the conference, including Freedom Caucus leaders. Kevin McCarthy went so far as to give the chair of the Freedom Caucus a seat at the leadership table.

No matter the approach, the threats from the far right never subsided.

Johnson similarly spent much of his first six months in office chasing around their unrealistic demands until he, surprising many, decided to pass a domestic funding agreement and a large foreign aid package with broad bipartisan support.

Greene’s threat to try to boot Johnson using the motion to vacate is the latest turn in a cycle that makes the House a miserable place to serve.

That’s why this moment offers an opportunity for both parties to begin to fix the House.

Democrats have already pledged the votes needed to protect Johnson, but only once. If Greene does reverse herself and force a vote against the speaker, he should be prepared to go further than just defeating it. He should call another vote to change the House rules so that one member alone cannot trigger the motion to vacate. This will require Democratic help, but it can be presented as a commitment to govern honestly rather than continually at the mercy of Greene or others operating on bad faith. Similarly, if hard-liners keep defeating procedural votes on the floor as they have in record number this year, Johnson should normalize the practice of bipartisan rules — again working with Democrats to effectively govern the floor if he must.

What people like Greene crave more than anything is attention. And the motion to vacate is their most potent tool for commanding it. It is the weapon that has, even in quieter times, hovered over the thinking of four straight GOP speakers. When that weapon is taken away, there is a completely different equation for leadership, allowing for rational decision making about what is best for the Republican Conference and the House.

Of course, taking away the motion to vacate does not solve all the speaker’s troubles. As we have seen in spectacular fashion this Congress, hard-liners can still make it more difficult to bring bills up for a vote, and they will still be able to raise money and play to the conservative media in ways that undermine their colleagues.

That is why this is not a problem that leadership alone can address. The rank and file, too, must not tolerate criticism that defies the obvious realities of divided government. There is a cultural peculiarity in the House GOP where it is almost taboo to say out loud that a conservative priority is not immediately achievable. Even behind closed doors, few words are devoted to what can reasonably be attained. Everything must be grounded in a fight for the maximalist position. And whenever conservatives foil a more realistic plan, they do so with impunity.

Change starts with a shift in culture of the House GOP Conference. It must be okay to say true things, like that hard-liners are making policy outcomes less conservative, not more, by refusing to back their own speaker.

As we have seen, change also requires cooperation from Democrats. It is reasonable for the minority party to question why they should be in the business of protecting a Republican speaker from conservative hard-liners. We should not pretend that Democrats’ primary goal isn’t to take back the House. And it is fair to believe continued chaos in the GOP majority sends a signal that it is not a party capable of governing. At the same time, there is also little evidence that these leadership fights break through with voters, especially by the time they go to the polls.

What’s more, should Democrats take back the House, it’s entirely possible they too will have a tiny majority, given how few competitive districts we now have. Democrats are not immune from party infighting, and it would be good for the whole House if both parties commit to rewarding sanity, not hijinks.

The alternative today for Democrats is a speaker more beholden to the hard-liners and an institution incapable of doing even basic responsibilities. A short-term assist to Greene or like-minded conservative bomb-throwers would do more long-term damage to an institution that nearly all bemoan as dysfunctional.

Morale on Capitol Hill is as low as anyone can remember. And why wouldn’t it be? Most weeks, little gets done, and the House is constantly under threat by people who have no interest in governing. This has contributed to an unmistakable trend of members retiring while still in their legislative prime. The U.S. House of Representatives has become a place where serious people feel like they don’t fit in.

Whether that continues is a choice. Johnson, to his credit, has shown that governance is possible if the loudest, most disingenuous voices are ignored.

If the hard-liners don’t like it, there is an alternative: act like a majority and back your speaker. And then win more elections so there are the actual conditions for conservative governance, not the pretend ones they’ve been operating under.