Perverse Incentives

I spent the first day of my vacation on Twitter, watching the debacle in the House. It was … something. Kevin McCarthy failed three times to be elected Speaker, and no one else on the GOP side seems to have anywhere near his level of support. So it’s really unclear this morning who could possibly cobble together the 218 votes needed for election. 

I happened to see a detail in the news that put such a fine point on Republican dysfunction: “McCarthy’s leadership PAC, dubbed the Majority Committee, has donated to the campaigns of 17 of the 20 members who voted against him in the first three speaker ballots on Tuesday.”

In so many ways, the GOP and its ecosystem have scrambled incentives so that the normal levers of power—like using money to buy allegiance—no longer function. It has been a long time coming, but particularly in the past decade, the playbook for “success” in the GOP actively undermines a successful GOP:

1. Attacking leadership and saying outrageous stuff is a ticket to getting on Fox News—a way to quick prominence back-benchers never used to have. This is why GOP governance is now performative—endless Benghazi hearings—rather than substantive (ie, actual legislation). It’s why the GOP didn’t bother to offer a governing platform and the House promised only more endless hearings to air grievances. 

2. Running against government itself has become iron dogma. Anyone who wants an official leadership role is instantly despised. Look at Mitch McConnell’s status within the party, and recall what happened when golden boy Paul Ryan became Speaker. McCarthy’s desire for the job disqualifies him for it. 

3. The GOP has replaced normal horse-trading as a tool of negotiation with hostage-taking. As a largely minority party, that has been the easiest way to engage—though it’s more effective in the Senate, where the filibuster ensconces minority rule as the standard process. 

4. Trump demonstrated that job performance doesn’t matter. For the GOP, the “job” is getting on Fox News and finding new ways to excoriate your foes. We’re at the point where Republicans routinely call Democrats pedophiles. Since that kind of language is so successful against Dems, Republicans have discovered it works just as well in intra-party fights. 

5. No one cares about facts anymore, so conspiracies and lies become the oxygen Republicans breathe. This has the short-term benefit of activating base voters and providing pols with a reality-creation machine, but in the long term it creates bubbles resistant to outside reality. 

So of course the House GOP is having a hard time electing a Speaker. Contrast this with the Democratic Party, where the old ways prevail. Pelosi keat her party in check by doling out assignments and money, and the party succeeds when it passes legislation. Hierarchy still functions normally. So while the squad may issue statements about policy preferences, they vote with the majority. 

All the incentives are misaligned in the GOP right now. If you’re an individual member, you couldn’t care less about committee assignments, and you know that trolling leadership will put you on Fox and make it rain money. McCarthy has no leverage because he can’t offer anything. Indeed, being a target IS the thing he offers. 

I don’t know how it all resolves, but the person who does get the gavel in the end will face all these same dynamics, which will cause the 118th Congress to be the most dysfunctional ever—at least on the House side.