I don’t think I have the passage right. But first, let me explain.
The Republican House leadership fell at the beginning of the month when the House approved Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the position of speaker of the House. The speakership was held by a member of his own party, Kevin McCarthy, and the motion’s passage marked the first time in U.S. history the procedural maneuver had been used successfully.
John Carter
This currently makes getting anything passed through the House (or Congress) impossible. Chalk this up as a win for the publicity-hungry nihilists, or PHNs.
The backstory of the motion is convoluted. In an increasingly radicalized Republican Party, where the incentives for any single politician are more geared to securing appearances (or “hits,” in D.C. argot) on Fox News over promoting the common good, leading House Republicans has become more and more challenging.
John Boehner, tired of dealing with the PHNs, stepped down as leader in 2015. Paul Ryan succeeded him, lasting four years. Kevin McCarthy became leader of the House Republicans, then in the minority, in 2019. When they became the majority in 2023, he was elected speaker. But to secure the position and placate the PHNs, he had to lower the threshold for filing a motion to vacate so that only a single representative could file it and have it considered by the full House. Essentially, he had to agree to let them keep a loaded gun on him at all times. Or to mix metaphors, it was a poison pill he had to agree to swallow if he wanted the position.
And considering the river of dung and duplicity he crawled through during the Trump years to even be the primary contender, there was no way he wasn’t going to swallow this particular pill as the final condition. This was the formal cause of his downfall.
“There was no way he wasn’t going to swallow this particular pill as the final condition.”
The efficient cause, however, was the events of Sept. 30, when then-Speaker McCarthy allowed a vote on a bill to allow the government to stay open (called a “continuing resolution”), notwithstanding Congress’ failure to pass legislation allowing it to pay its bills according to the budget already passed by Congress and signed by the president. The PHNs, being PHNs, wanted the government to shut down and so were furious when McCarthy, at the last moment possible, allowed a vote on a continuing resolution that was designed to elicit Democratic support. The government was allowed to keep its lights on — for 45 days, at least.
But allowing a vote on a bill that needed Democratic votes to pass was viewed as “cooperation with evil” as far as the PHNs could see, thus the successful motion to vacate.
McCarthy could have survived if as few as three Democrats had been willing to vote “no,” or if seven had been willing to vote “present,” which would have lowered the total number of “yes” plus “no” votes. (In addition to the seven not present, whose absence also lowered the threshold for blocking the motion.)
But instead, the Democrats decided their support could only be won at a cost. To oppose the motion, Democrats would need some concession, some “deal,” from McCarthy as the price. That, these armchair Machiavellians told themselves, was how politics is played. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to ridicule McCarthy for expecting any Democrats to support him without making concessions (summarized here). Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent made the same argument here. Writer Rebecca Solnit invoked the domestic analogy to make the argument here.
“The logic that Democrats shouldn’t have helped McCarthy is an example of systems theory poorly understood and run amok.”
The logic that Democrats shouldn’t have helped McCarthy is an example of systems theory poorly understood and run amok, that somehow by “not taking responsibility” for something another has caused, the guilty party will “learn their lesson” or at least be made to suffer the consequences of their actions.
This logic is specious, and no less so for being prevalent to the point of ubiquity. It imagines we are not implicated or affected by another’s choice, that the consequences of some action can be isolated to the person who “caused” it. The reality is we all have to live with the consequences of McCarthy’s downfall, and by failing to preclude that when they could have, Democrats are complicit in that outcome as an “act of omission” whether they want to admit that or not.
A fundamental misunderstanding underlying the Democrats’ argument is the failure to recognize the asymmetry between the parties. The Republicans as a group are — for real (not just imagined) political reasons — powerless to bring the PHNs to heel, while the PHNs have no interest in collective self-government, and many of the PHNs’ patrons are actively interested in getting self-government to fail.
Certain progressives have imagined that if Democrats could lash themselves to a similarly immovable faction, it would force a compromise or somehow “break the fever” of the moderate Republicans. But this is unlikely to happen, not because of immovability of forces but rather because of the content of what holds the PHNs together: delusional nihilism.
Meanwhile, the Democrats do care about collective self-government, but under current conditions that has to require some minimal level of assent from the Republicans. That doesn’t have to mean taking “responsibility” for another’s actions. But it does mean being an adult and understanding consequences can’t be isolated to the guilty party.
Which brings me to the passage I’m not sure I have right. I had forgotten what an awful, tragic story this is. And we church-folk cite it so casually.
It’s the biblical passage that speaks to such asymmetry, in an especially poignant way. It’s the one often cited as proving the “wisdom of Solomon,” although I would question that being the moral of the story. To say the very least.
Two women — why does the patriarchal narrator have to specify they were “harlots”? — bring a baby to Solomon, each claiming to be the rightful mother. Solomon says, “Well, since I can’t know who’s telling the truth, cut the baby in half and give a half to each woman.”
“Solomon is not especially virtuous or “wise” here.”
This is horrifying; this is not “wisdom.” One woman finds this a fair deal; the other says, “No, let the other have the whole baby, that it may live, rather than kill the baby for the sake of my claim.” I’m also assuming she was rightly outraged by the “judgment.”
Solomon is not especially virtuous or “wise” here. But he is, tragically, representative of the type of justice we often find in the world, indifferent to the lives it would destroy.
There are those in Congress who don’t care if the federal government fails — the same federal government that provides a wide array of programs that protect the environment, help marginalized people, provide foreign aid to allies, and which, in fact, make civil society possible. And to keep that failure from happening, Democrats have to deal with those Republicans whose fate is lashed to the PHNs.
Democrats seem to think they can pin this failure on the Republicans come election time. I do not think this is clearly the case. I certainly wouldn’t risk the life of an infant — or the future of our country — on it.
John Carter serves as visiting assistant professor of law at the Wake Forest University School of Law and in the Program for Leadership and Character and as visiting assistant professor of religion, law and public life at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.
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