I spoke to Grace Segers of The New Republic for her piece on early dysfunction within the nascent GOP House majority and what it portends for this Congress.
Republican strategist Liam Donovan identified the Republican strife as “more of a reflection of underlying dynamics than a driver of them,” noting that “it’s not as though recent GOP majorities were well-oiled machines even with higher morale and a bigger cushion.” (See: Boehner, John.) The true tests of the functionality of a Republican majority, Donovan said, would be the must-pass items like funding the government and the debt limit. Indeed, the vast majority of House Republicans voted against an omnibus spending bill that skated through the Senate on a bipartisan basis just last month. If McCarthy can’t wrangle his conference to vote for him as speaker in one round, he may struggle to address basic housekeeping issues like avoiding a government shutdown and preventing the government from defaulting on its debts.
Read the full piece here.