Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced that he was ending what many would likely agree was a tumultuous reign as Speaker of the House. Predictably, the conservative blogosphere erupted in victory, probably as ebulliently as if they had won a presidential election. For his part, Speaker Boehner seemed like he had just shrugged off the weight of the world in his press conference, looking happier and more relieved than I have ever seen him look. As for me, I have long believed the GOP would be better served by having someone else serve as Speaker, but not for the same reasons as many of my conservative friends. To me, Speaker Boehner’s tendency to burst into tears made him, his party, and his institution look weak. In general, he was a PR disaster for the party whenever he was on camera. I do believe his presumed successor, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California), will be much more photogenic and provide a fresh face for the House and for the House GOP. On the other hand, however, I do think he did an admirable job of leading together a bitterly divided caucus and pulling the country in a more conservative direction. I do not believe conservatives will be satisfied in the long-run and they may even yearn for the return of Speaker Boehner.
Boehner’s tenure was doomed to be difficult from the start because of what Aldrich and Rohde (2000, 2001) term “conditional party government.” According to this theory, party leaders are strongest when their caucus is relatively ideologically homogenous. With a homogenous caucus, the party leaders can set a more vigorous agenda and more easily punish defectors by virtue of marginalizing them. When a ruling caucus is more ideologically heterogeneous, however, the party leaders are reduced to bargaining with the rebellious factions or even with the minority party in extreme cases. Nancy Pelosi had to deal with this when she was Speaker, because the Blue Dog Democrats were a well-organized rebel caucus led by credible Democrats such as Jason Altmire (D-PA) and Heath Shuler (D-NC), but these Blue Dogs were the main casualties of the 2010 elections (their numbers now total 14, which were once over 50). While losing the Blue Dogs has meant losing her gavel, it also strengthened Pelosi’s role as party leader to be an extremely effective whip in opposition. Boehner, on the other hand, had to deal with a caucus that included 25-30 conservatives so abjectly opposed to him that they have launched, according to Daniel Hanson, eight separate leadership challenges over the past 5 years (some more credible than others). It is a minority caucus of individuals representing some of the reddest districts in the entire country who have to loudly challenge “the establishment” on every piece of legislation in order to prove to their constituents that they are conservative enough to represent them in Congress. As such, Boehner was a disadvantage from the very beginning- his caucus was too bitterly divided for him to be a powerful whip like Pelosi.
Boehner, of course, also had to deal with a divided government from Day One. Per the design of the Founders, the Speaker of the House is not as powerful as a prime minister in a parliamentary system. Instead, he has to contend with the president, Senate, and Supreme Court if he wants his agenda to pass in some form (not to mention the media and public opinion). Boehner never had the opportunity to work with a Republican president and only a few months to work with a Republican Senate. This leads to a classic game, termed by political scientist Keith Krehbiel, as “pivotal politics,” which is basically a formalization of separation of powers. The preference point of the House of Representatives (generally assumed to be the median voter in Krehbiel’s world, but we will just assume it is the median of the ruling party) is but one preference point on the ideological spectrum. Unless all relevant actors (the president, the veto pivots of both parties, the filibuster pivot of the Senate, and probably the Supreme Court) are all on the same side of the status quo, it is unlikely that the status quo will change, at all. Boehner and President Obama have hardly ever been on the same side of the status quo. Obama’s veto power, especially the threat of a veto, has been employed on numerous occasions and is extremely difficult for Boehner to circumvent (having nowhere near the required 2/3 supermajority to override the veto). Consequently, Boehner has been forced to negotiate with ideologically different partners (Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi) in order to negotiate some marginal concessions. According to Reid, Obama, Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Chuck Schumer and others, Boehner was an honest, good faith negotiator who has had more victories than it seems. As Dan Hanson notes, Boehner has reduced House spending and made good on his promises to curtail earmarks. In short, Boehner is a masterful pragmatist who has managed to get things done in an era of perpetually-divided government.
Why then are conservatives so eager to see him leave? To be fair, Boehner has not made good on his promises to eliminate Obamacare, but that is not his fault. The House has voted at least 67 times over the past five years to repeal Obamacare, all of which have come up empty-handed because either the Republicans did not control the Senate, Obama issued a veto threat, or both. That the GOP lost the shutdown of 2013 is not Boehner’s fault, either- Ted Cruz’s strategy of trying to get some twenty Senate Democrats to magically switch positions on Obamacare was fanciful, at best, or a cynical attempt to raise his profile for a presidential run, at worst. Basically, no matter the issue, Boehner being bound by Constitutional checks and balances and therefore being unable to get conservatives 100% of what they want is derided as “selling out” conservatives and conservative principles and leading the “surrender caucus.” If there is anything I have learned as an academic studying political science, it is this: politics is truly the art of the possible and is also all about power. Boehner specializes in negotiating within the realm of the possible, and thus cannot appease the ideologues who do not seem to understand the realities of power divisions within our constitutional framework.
So with Boehner leaving, what happens next? As mentioned earlier, I think Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker of the House, as he commands the loyalty of far more House Republicans than Louie Gohmert, Ted Yoho, or any other Freedom Caucus member can muster. Ironically, by forcing Boehner out, the loud conservatives will only ensure the ascension of a figure slightly less conservative than Boehner. According to DW-NOMINATE, Boehner had a score of .53 against McCarthy’s .48 (the Republican caucus median is .51), with higher scores indicating a more conservative voting record. In other words, they will be trading someone slightly more conservative than half the caucus for someone less conservative than half the caucus. Now, the NOMINATE scale runs from -1 to +1, so the difference between McCarthy, Boehner, and the majority of the majority seems fairly negligible, but for ideological purists, that .05 between Boehner and McCarthy will become the source of countless Tweets, blog posts, and Facebook statuses about how much of a “liberal RINO” McCarthy is, even compared to that RINO sellout of old, John Boehner. Unless some Raul Labrador or Trey Gowdy can run a strong enough campaign in a leadership election to topple McCarthy (which I find unlikely, especially since Gowdy is not running), the new Speaker will be less conservative than Boehner was.
I also read this morning that Boehner’s resignation has re-invigorated the leadership wing of the House Republicans. Figures like Charlie Dent and Pete King are fuming at the rebel caucus and have vowed to deal with them more harshly than Boehner ever did. In the eyes of Dent, in particular, Boehner was far too accommodating to the rebellious faction and looked weaker than he needed to appear. This, of course, will not sit well with conservative activists, who cried “repression!” when Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) temporarily lost a subcommittee chairmanship for voting against the leadership on a procedural matter. If Dent is to be believed, we will witness a strong crackdown against party rogues in the coming months and it will not be pretty.
In closing, I would just like to warn all those celebrating the demise of John Boehner today that they had better be careful what they wish for, because they may well be crying out for Boehner to return in a couple of months. Kevin McCarthy is, according to every account I have heard or read, a fine, gentile man just like Speaker Boehner, but he is also slightly less conservative than his predecessor and will be commanding an angry leadership team tired of being pushed around by a vocal minority of nominal party affiliates. I think the GOP will benefit from having a new face at the helm, a man who does not burst into tears at the sight of a puppy and will do far better on camera than Boehner ever did, but he will face the same challenges Boehner did of presiding over a strongly-divided caucus and trying to govern in a bitterly-divided system. How well he manages to balance these competing interests, only time will tell, but I am sure he will soon be the target of relentless criticism from the activist wing of the Republican Party that will never, ever be satisfied (unless we could somehow clone Ted Cruz 545 times, so that every member of Congress is replaced with Ted Cruz, as well as every Supreme Court justice and the president and vice president). In the meantime, thank you, Speaker Boehner, for your service to this country and your steady, under-appreciated leadership of my party. Enjoy what I am sure will be a rejuvenating retirement now that you will no longer have to be burdened by the thankless job of leading an oft-antagonistic party caucus.
Boehner’s tenure was doomed to be difficult from the start because of what Aldrich and Rohde (2000, 2001) term “conditional party government.” According to this theory, party leaders are strongest when their caucus is relatively ideologically homogenous. With a homogenous caucus, the party leaders can set a more vigorous agenda and more easily punish defectors by virtue of marginalizing them. When a ruling caucus is more ideologically heterogeneous, however, the party leaders are reduced to bargaining with the rebellious factions or even with the minority party in extreme cases. Nancy Pelosi had to deal with this when she was Speaker, because the Blue Dog Democrats were a well-organized rebel caucus led by credible Democrats such as Jason Altmire (D-PA) and Heath Shuler (D-NC), but these Blue Dogs were the main casualties of the 2010 elections (their numbers now total 14, which were once over 50). While losing the Blue Dogs has meant losing her gavel, it also strengthened Pelosi’s role as party leader to be an extremely effective whip in opposition. Boehner, on the other hand, had to deal with a caucus that included 25-30 conservatives so abjectly opposed to him that they have launched, according to Daniel Hanson, eight separate leadership challenges over the past 5 years (some more credible than others). It is a minority caucus of individuals representing some of the reddest districts in the entire country who have to loudly challenge “the establishment” on every piece of legislation in order to prove to their constituents that they are conservative enough to represent them in Congress. As such, Boehner was a disadvantage from the very beginning- his caucus was too bitterly divided for him to be a powerful whip like Pelosi.
Boehner, of course, also had to deal with a divided government from Day One. Per the design of the Founders, the Speaker of the House is not as powerful as a prime minister in a parliamentary system. Instead, he has to contend with the president, Senate, and Supreme Court if he wants his agenda to pass in some form (not to mention the media and public opinion). Boehner never had the opportunity to work with a Republican president and only a few months to work with a Republican Senate. This leads to a classic game, termed by political scientist Keith Krehbiel, as “pivotal politics,” which is basically a formalization of separation of powers. The preference point of the House of Representatives (generally assumed to be the median voter in Krehbiel’s world, but we will just assume it is the median of the ruling party) is but one preference point on the ideological spectrum. Unless all relevant actors (the president, the veto pivots of both parties, the filibuster pivot of the Senate, and probably the Supreme Court) are all on the same side of the status quo, it is unlikely that the status quo will change, at all. Boehner and President Obama have hardly ever been on the same side of the status quo. Obama’s veto power, especially the threat of a veto, has been employed on numerous occasions and is extremely difficult for Boehner to circumvent (having nowhere near the required 2/3 supermajority to override the veto). Consequently, Boehner has been forced to negotiate with ideologically different partners (Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi) in order to negotiate some marginal concessions. According to Reid, Obama, Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Chuck Schumer and others, Boehner was an honest, good faith negotiator who has had more victories than it seems. As Dan Hanson notes, Boehner has reduced House spending and made good on his promises to curtail earmarks. In short, Boehner is a masterful pragmatist who has managed to get things done in an era of perpetually-divided government.
Why then are conservatives so eager to see him leave? To be fair, Boehner has not made good on his promises to eliminate Obamacare, but that is not his fault. The House has voted at least 67 times over the past five years to repeal Obamacare, all of which have come up empty-handed because either the Republicans did not control the Senate, Obama issued a veto threat, or both. That the GOP lost the shutdown of 2013 is not Boehner’s fault, either- Ted Cruz’s strategy of trying to get some twenty Senate Democrats to magically switch positions on Obamacare was fanciful, at best, or a cynical attempt to raise his profile for a presidential run, at worst. Basically, no matter the issue, Boehner being bound by Constitutional checks and balances and therefore being unable to get conservatives 100% of what they want is derided as “selling out” conservatives and conservative principles and leading the “surrender caucus.” If there is anything I have learned as an academic studying political science, it is this: politics is truly the art of the possible and is also all about power. Boehner specializes in negotiating within the realm of the possible, and thus cannot appease the ideologues who do not seem to understand the realities of power divisions within our constitutional framework.
So with Boehner leaving, what happens next? As mentioned earlier, I think Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker of the House, as he commands the loyalty of far more House Republicans than Louie Gohmert, Ted Yoho, or any other Freedom Caucus member can muster. Ironically, by forcing Boehner out, the loud conservatives will only ensure the ascension of a figure slightly less conservative than Boehner. According to DW-NOMINATE, Boehner had a score of .53 against McCarthy’s .48 (the Republican caucus median is .51), with higher scores indicating a more conservative voting record. In other words, they will be trading someone slightly more conservative than half the caucus for someone less conservative than half the caucus. Now, the NOMINATE scale runs from -1 to +1, so the difference between McCarthy, Boehner, and the majority of the majority seems fairly negligible, but for ideological purists, that .05 between Boehner and McCarthy will become the source of countless Tweets, blog posts, and Facebook statuses about how much of a “liberal RINO” McCarthy is, even compared to that RINO sellout of old, John Boehner. Unless some Raul Labrador or Trey Gowdy can run a strong enough campaign in a leadership election to topple McCarthy (which I find unlikely, especially since Gowdy is not running), the new Speaker will be less conservative than Boehner was.
I also read this morning that Boehner’s resignation has re-invigorated the leadership wing of the House Republicans. Figures like Charlie Dent and Pete King are fuming at the rebel caucus and have vowed to deal with them more harshly than Boehner ever did. In the eyes of Dent, in particular, Boehner was far too accommodating to the rebellious faction and looked weaker than he needed to appear. This, of course, will not sit well with conservative activists, who cried “repression!” when Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) temporarily lost a subcommittee chairmanship for voting against the leadership on a procedural matter. If Dent is to be believed, we will witness a strong crackdown against party rogues in the coming months and it will not be pretty.
In closing, I would just like to warn all those celebrating the demise of John Boehner today that they had better be careful what they wish for, because they may well be crying out for Boehner to return in a couple of months. Kevin McCarthy is, according to every account I have heard or read, a fine, gentile man just like Speaker Boehner, but he is also slightly less conservative than his predecessor and will be commanding an angry leadership team tired of being pushed around by a vocal minority of nominal party affiliates. I think the GOP will benefit from having a new face at the helm, a man who does not burst into tears at the sight of a puppy and will do far better on camera than Boehner ever did, but he will face the same challenges Boehner did of presiding over a strongly-divided caucus and trying to govern in a bitterly-divided system. How well he manages to balance these competing interests, only time will tell, but I am sure he will soon be the target of relentless criticism from the activist wing of the Republican Party that will never, ever be satisfied (unless we could somehow clone Ted Cruz 545 times, so that every member of Congress is replaced with Ted Cruz, as well as every Supreme Court justice and the president and vice president). In the meantime, thank you, Speaker Boehner, for your service to this country and your steady, under-appreciated leadership of my party. Enjoy what I am sure will be a rejuvenating retirement now that you will no longer have to be burdened by the thankless job of leading an oft-antagonistic party caucus.