Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Speaker McCarthy - with Matthew Continetti

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

“Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line." So said former President Bill Clinton. But it didn't seem that way last week, as House Republicans struggled to select a new Speaker. A band of rebels wasn’t getting in line for anyone - not for the most recent leaders of the House Republican Conference, not for the leaders of their own House Freedom Caucus, and not even for former President Trump. What happened? What does it tell us about the current state of Republican politics heading into 2024, and about Republican governance in Congress, as Washington has to take up issues like the Debt Ceiling.Matt Continetti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. He’s also the author of several books. His most recent book is called “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism”.Also read Matt's most recent Washington Post piece "House Republicans, There you go again".And, for our next two episodes, send a question for Congressman Mike Gallagher or Mohamed El-Erian by emailing a voice memo to [e-mail] (please keep the question to under 30 seconds).

Part of the problem is that every new establishment becomes unsatisfactory to every new generation of conservative insurgents. So Trump was an insurgent leader in 2016. He took over the Republican Party. He changed the Republican Party. But he's now the establishment. So he supported McCarthy too. Bill Clinton famously said that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Well, it certainly didn't feel that way these past few days as House Republicans struggled to select a new speaker. A band of rebels wasn't getting in line for anyone, not for the leaders of the House Republican Conference, not for the leaders of their own House Freedom Caucus, and not even for former President Trump. What happened? What does it tell us about the current state of Republican politics heading into the 2024 Republican presidential primaries? And even

sooner, what does it tell us about Republican governance in Congress as Washington has to take up issues like raising the debt ceiling? And where do the Democrats in Congress fit into all this in the months ahead? Matt Continetti is among the most astute observers of Republican politics and policymaking. In fact, he has a piece in the Washington Post right now called There You Go Again, House Republicans. He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, founding editor of the Washington Free Beacon, and a columnist for Commentary magazine. He's also the author of several books, including his new book called The Right, The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism, which I highly recommend. Before we move on to our conversation

with Matt, one housekeeping note. I often hear from a number of you with questions you would have liked to have asked our guests. So when we have lead time on guests, which isn't always the case, sometimes based on the news we are booking a day or two in advance, but when we have real lead time, real advance, we'll let you know so you can send in your questions before the episode rather than after. So we know that the next two episodes of this podcast will feature Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher and Mohamed El-Aryan to talk about macroeconomics and the markets. If you have a question for either Mike Gallagher or Mohamed El-Erian, please record a voice memo on your phone and send it to dan at unlocked.fm. Again, that's dan at unlocked.fm. All we ask is you just keep the voice memo to

under 30 seconds. We'll play your question on the podcast and have our guests answer them. Now on to my conversation with Matt Continetti. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Matthew Continetti. Matt is the author of The Right, which we've had him on in the past to talk about his book, which fantastic history of the conservative movement. One of the best books I read in 2022. He's with the American Enterprise Institute. And he is a regular columnist with Commentary Magazine. And in fact, he informs me that after this podcast, he has to sit down and write his column about what we're talking about today for commentary. So hopefully,

I'll give him good ideas to write about. Matt, thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me, Dan. Okay, so Matt, there's a lot we want to cover. I'm so glad we got you. We recorded this after the 12.30 a.m. Saturday morning vote on Kevin McCarthy's speakership rather than before, because I felt for all these people recording podcasts in the middle of all this, that they could record a podcast, have a deep, meaningful, interesting conversation, and it could be completely OBE by a vote in the House,

but we got past it. So now we can look back and look forward. You wrote a terrific, very succinct piece trying to explain what was going on in the House. You wrote this piece for the Washington Post, which we're going to link to in the show notes. Can you just describe or just summarize the big point of the piece, and then I want to get into some of the subtopics. Absolutely. Well, watching the battle play out, I was just struck that this is a regular event in Republican houses. The GOP has taken control of the House of Representatives three times in the last 30 years, in 1995, in 2011, and then this year. And each time, there have been fights over leadership. In the first case, in the 90s, those fights didn't come later until a few years in. But Newt Gingrich, you know, the architect of the Republican takeover of Capitol Hill in 1994, it was pretty soon after he assumed power that his agenda faced setbacks.

And within two years, 1997, he was facing coup attempts. Of course, we're more familiar with the recent history of the Tea Party Congresses coming to power in 2011 and all of the frustrations, fights, shutdowns, standoffs that Speaker Boehner had to deal with, which eventually he grew so tired of, he resigned the position and Paul Ryan became speaker. And so when I was reading the coverage of the fight over the speaker's gavel this time around, I saw a lot about, oh, well, this is the Trump GOP or this is the MAGA GOP. And I said, well, at least it's kind of just the GOP. When the Republicans are in the House, in the absence of a strong external force, that is to say a Republican president in the White House,

they tend to kind of turn it against one another. They tend to be confused as to their purpose. And it's only when you have a strong leader supplying them an agenda and a direction, which Gingrich did for the first year in 1995, and then what George W. Bush did during his first term in office, and Donald Trump did during his term in office, the GOP House conference kind of tends to blow apart. And I think that's what we've seen in recent weeks. So in the George W. Bush administration, Denny Hastert was speaker. So he was speaker from 1999 to 2007, which covered most of the Bush years until the Republicans lost the House, actually, during the second Bush term. He was not considered a necessarily strong speaker, but to your point,

he happened to be speaker when there was a Republican president. Paul Ryan was speaker during the first two years of the Trump administration until the Republicans lost the House during the second half of the Trump term. And he happened to be president, he happened to be speaker during a Republican administration. So it's not, you're saying it's not necessarily about the speakership, it's about the White House. I think so. And I think the reason it's about the White House is that presidents are typically elected with a forward-looking agenda. They have things they want to do. In George W.'s case, the agenda was compassionate conservatism and then after 9-11 the agenda was the freedom agenda. It was the war on terrorism. Donald Trump had the

MAGA agenda while he ran for president in 2016. He of course because of his idiosyncrasies, his givenness to distraction, and his impulsiveness. He had a hard time enacting that agenda, but he was saved by Paul Ryan, who had spent the election year 2016 working up his own agenda about what he wanted the Republicans to do if they had full control of government. Which was basically an accumulation of work he'd been doing for years. That's right. And the centerpiece of that was the tax reform in 2017, which was landmark legislation because it not only was a significant tax reform, it also contained longstanding goals like abolishing the individual mandate in Obamacare, like opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.

So all of that was kind of supplied by Ryan. And I think the reason for why you need a president in order to direct Republicans in Congress is Democrats are elected, all Democrats are elected to do things, right? Democrats want things out of government. And they go to the people every two years and say, here's what I'm going to have government do for you. At the very least, keep benefits going, right? Keep the entitlement state functioning. Republican congressional candidates tend to be elected to stop things, right? So in 1994, the Republican Revolution is a check on Clinton's first two years, which were much more liberal than Clinton had advertised in the 1992 election. In the Tea Party Congress, of course, the 2010 election, the Republicans are elected, a huge wave election, to stop the bailouts, to stop Obamacare, to stop the Obama new foundation agenda,

right? This year is a little bit different in the sense that the House was, you know, you win the House, the Republicans win the House as a check on big government, a check on the Biden agenda, the inflation primarily, but also some of the policies on the border and such. But the margin is so small that you have even more kind of a tendency toward disintegration because with such a small margin, that last added member becomes so crucial. And when you have a conference like today's GOP, where you have a significant number of members who come from deep red districts, you're going to almost by default present a challenge to anyone who emerges as the eventual leader of the House. So just to put this in perspective, up until 1994, which was the big Republican wave where Republicans won control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years.

So for 40 years, Democrats were in control of the House straight. And Democrats had multiple speakers during those years that included names that listeners of this podcast would be familiar with, like Tip O'Neill or Jim Wright or Tom Foley. But if you look at like, so Jim Wright fell, congressman from Texas, he was the Speaker of the House. He fell based on Republican pressure on him over ethics complaints. Yeah, that was Gingrich's first scalp of speaker, yeah. Well, first scalp as in the minority. First Democratic speaker, yeah.

Because then he took out Foley in 94, right? So he takes out Wright, I think, in 89, around then. And then Tom Foley, congressman from Washington State, becomes speaker, senior Democrat. And then, to your point, Foley, the Republicans not only win the majority of the House in 94, so knock Foley out of the speakership, but knock Foley out of his congressional seat. So Foley, who was considered to be in a safe congressional seat in Washington State, not only loses leadership post, but loses a seat in Congress. This is the way Democrats went down as speaker, right?

It was basically the work of either losing your seat, losing a general election, or losing power based on pressure from the other party, not based on your own party taking you out. If you go through the list you just went through, Gingrich starts facing coup attempts in 97, ultimately leaves in 98 after Republicans underperformed in the midterms in 98, Hassard's in power from 99 to 2007, but as we discussed, that was during a presidency, a Bush presidency. I should say, when Gingrich went down in 98, he was followed by, he was supposed to be followed by Bob Livingston, a senior member of Congress, chairman of the

House Appropriations Committee. He then blows up on the tarmac based on his own personal ethics issues, has to become speaker. Then 2011, after the Republicans take control of the House, after the 2010 midterms, John Boehner becomes Speaker, makes it to late 2015, then he gets frustrated by internal pressure. It is not the pressure of the other party. It is his own, it is kind of the hostage-like situation he feels like he's being put into with this motion to vacate issue. So he leaves in 2015. Ryan takes over October 2015. He's there to 2019. And it's just, so this is a lot of pressure from within. And that is, I think, the key distinction. You know, it's interesting, Pelosi, there's this new documentary about Pelosi.

There's a lot of like, you know, the accolades around Pelosi and her legacy reminds me of all the RBG coverage and documentaries. But I will say it is impressive. I mean, she was speaker after the Democrats took control of the House in 2006, so 2007 until 2010, I guess, or 2011, January of 2011, when the Republicans took the House again. And then the Republicans lose the House again. She becomes Speaker again. I mean, think about that. Years apart, two speakerships. Just talk about stability and leadership of a party.

Well, for sure. And, of course, the transition to the new set of Democratic leaders in the House, led by Hakeem Jeffries, has gone very smoothly. And it's been quite a contrast. And if you were just a man from Mars... Totally drama-free. You come down and watch the proceedings on the House for the past week, you would think that the Democrats actually won the election. They were much more unified. They were happy. They were giving these stirring, rousing speeches for their leader. The Republican conference is very different. In some ways, Dan, I mean, as we go through that

history, John Boehner, accomplished legislator, he had been in leadership before, actually, with Gingrich after the Republican Revolution in the 90s. He comes back into power after Hastert is defenestrated and becomes the minority leader in 2007, ascends to speaker in 2011. He kind of was not the best fit for the Republican Party that was emerging at that time. And the more I study this history, the more I recognize the importance of 2008 and the bailout in conditioning the nature of today's Republican Party. The Tea Party Congress, so as the election of 2010,

it's the first post-global financial crisis election. Huge win for Republicans. That year, there was great candidate recruitment by, actually, Speaker McCarthy. There was great candidate recruitment by, actually, Speaker McCarthy. There was massive fundraising. But that election was really driven by the grassroots and by the Tea Party and by this general feeling that Barack Obama was changing the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way many Americans were uncomfortable with. And a lot of that had to do with the bailout,

the sense that the same figures who had been responsible for the financial crisis did not pay any price. The same people who had taken out the subprime mortgages, they did not pay any price. The banks, the generalized anti-Wall Street feeling, that was the sentiment of this new Tea Party Congress. And they were being led by a man who really was a figure from a different pre-bailout era. In many ways, McCarthy is the last man standing of the pre-2008 Republican Party.

But the reason he's standing is he's been the most flexible in accommodating himself to this new Republican Party, this new anti-establishment Republican Party. And he's been able to change his approach and indeed the powers of his office in a way that gains him this position. And so I think in some ways, the GOP conference may be, and this goes against the grain of much of the media coverage of the past week. But in some ways, it may be strengthened by this fight in the sense that they've taken care of it now. There are going to be other fights to come. There are going to be a lot of disagreements to come, which we'll get into. But this idea, okay, how much buy-in do the rebels have, right? How much influence will the Freedom Caucus, which is the main source of opposition to McCarthy,

how much buy-in and what role will they have in the management of the floor? That's been litigated. We now know that. And we're going into this new conference with actually an arrangement which we haven't seen in decades. Okay. So I want to, let's talk about that. I want to get in, I want to get into like what governing looks like. And I was going to get into that later, but this is is this is a perfect segue so so can you can you talk a little bit about the actual agreement that led to enough of these 20 plus holdouts voting for mccarthy that will lay the groundwork for potentially i mean i have a apocalyptic view that it's going to be just more chaos months into it later in the year we're

gonna have the debt ceiling vote. Gosh knows what else. But there is a world in which it's actually not chaotic because of the tensions they address now. Yeah, I do think the debt ceiling fight is a huge unknown and has the great potential for chaos. But when you look at the list of concessions, some of them, you know, holding a vote on a balanced budget, I mean, okay, you know, it's not going to go anywhere. It's going to go into the Senate. And the Pelosi

House, since of the last two years with the Democratic president, also voted for several things that didn't go anywhere. They went into the Senate. Then there's a concession on the so-called motion to vacate, right? Who can basically move to hold a vote of no confidence in the speakers. That threshold was lowered considerably. But as my colleague Yuval Levin has pointed out, if a single member just on a lark says, I move to vacate the chair, that is to overthrow Kevin McCarthy,

and that member has no support, well, that member is going to look like an idiot. So there's kind of a deterrence built into that, right? The only time the motion to vacate will actually happen is if there's enough members who no longer have the confidence. And to be clear, so the rule now, based on the deal, is one member can introduce a motion

to vacate the speakership. And that was the rule prior to 2015. So in a way, we're just reverting back to that. Right. And that was the rule that put so much stress on Boehner, actually. I mean, he lived in fear. Mark Meadows was orchestrating or threatening to orchestrate these motions to vacate, and he just felt like he couldn't govern.

Another big concession is on the discretionary spending, which would mean that now discretionary spending is non-entitlement spending. So this is the problem. Defense is discretionary spending. And so because of this. So this is the problem. Defense is discretionary spending. And so because of this agreement, there is the implication that defense spending would be held at the current level. And this bothers many defense hawks and advocates for more military spending. I am both, so I am very disturbed by this. And they actually settled on an actual number, right?

Didn't they talk about... Yeah, I mean, I think what I saw is they settled on a level which you can extrapolate what the cut, you know, that is to say the delta between what people would like to spend and what is actually set as the level. You can extrapolate what that is. And that, I think, is a potential source of conflict because there are many Republicans in the conference who want to plus up spending on defense. By the way, there are many Senate Republicans, too, who want to plus up spending on defense.

So I do think that fight will come. And there's a possible source of conflict there down the road. And then finally, other than the spending agreement and its implications for defense, the major concession that McCarthy made was was a promise to appoint, I believe, four seats on the House Rules Committee to Freedom Caucus members or Freedom Caucus fellow travelers. And the House Rules Committee is a very little-known committee. It's little-known because it's in the past, for the last century at least, it's basically just been an appendage of the Speaker's office. The House Rules Committee sets the timetable when you're going to consider certain bills. It also establishes the amendment

process for bills. It establishes, you know, how you can bring the bill to the floor, how it will be debated. So just for our listeners, it's an extreme, the Rules Committee is an extremely powerful position. It is the committee that more than any other, I guess maybe other than appropriations and ways and means,

really gets to the guts of the most important part of governing Congress, governing the House. And to your point, it doesn't get a lot of attention, even though it's powerful, because the Speaker chooses who's on it, or at least the majority seats that are on it. And it's all the Speaker's people, and it's what the speaker uses to run the floor. And you're basically saying he's now part of this deal. McCarthy has outsourced that organ or part of it to people who may not be aligned with him.

That's right. I mean, he's certainly allowing for the presence of the anti-establishment faction on there. And so they're going to have a say in what you can take to the floor and how you're going to vote on it. And I think that will have implications for the coming fight over the debt ceiling. Because if we go back in time and remember how Boehner eventually broke the logjam over raising the debt ceiling in 2011, it was basically by throwing up his hands and saying, we're going to put a bill on the floor that enough Democrats will be able to vote for, that we're going to be able to raise the debt ceiling. There is the

potential now that you would have enough seats on the rules committee to block something like that from happening. So you'd have to really get, persuade the Freedom Caucus voices on that committee that we've reached a place where we can raise the debt ceiling. We've pocketed enough victories where we can raise the debt ceiling in order to even bring such a bill to the floor. And I think that's going to be a big challenge. I think Tom Cole is slated to be the chair of the Rules Committee.

And Tom Cole is a very responsible member of Congress, a legislator. Congressman from Oklahoma, longtime legislator, and conservative ideologically, but kind of moderate in temperament and governing style and considered a responsible institutional player. Yeah. So he's, you know, he's putting on a positive spin to this development. He thinks they'll be able to handle it, but it is definitely something to watch. So let's just explain. So the federal government spends obviously far more each year than it receives in revenues, and that produces a budget deficit.

And it's usually in excess of a trillion dollars a year, at least for the next decade. And obviously that keeps adding to the national debt. That's, I think, last year, top 31, something like $31 trillion. So federal law puts a limit on how much money the government can borrow. Doesn't require the government to balance the budget, but that means that Congress

has to periodically pass these increases to the borrowing limit to avoid a situation in which the government can't pay its bills. And obviously can't make payments to military salaries, Social Security benefits, other debt holders of government bonds. So this is why there's always this increasing brinkmanship around the debt ceiling increase. And what you're saying is if Tom Cole doesn't have a handle on this and these rebels who were against McCarthy really are willing to engage in an even heightened brinkmanship. You know, it could put the—we've had votes in the past that felt pretty dicey, like you talked about the Boehner vote. Interestingly, it never happened during the Trump years. There was never this brinkmanship.

There were three debt ceiling increases. That's why the Republican presidents are important. Right, right, right. So there were three debt ceiling votes during the Trump years, and I never remember any drama around it. Right. So during the three debt ceiling votes during the Trump years, and I never remember any drama around it. No. I mean, we spent $6 trillion on pandemic relief in two years. And while Trump was president, there wasn't much drama. In fact, the major opposition to the final amount of money that Trump was toying with at the end of 2020 came from the Senate, came from Mitch McConnell, who started saying, you know, really, we're going to send out another

round of checks? So it just happened. Again, as I look over the last 30 years, I see that these rebels kind of go dark when there's a Republican president around. Now, what's interesting is that Republican president needs to be popular among the party. So yeah, I would say during, you mentioned the post, the global financial crisis, the first bailout vote, I mean, George W. Bush was still president. The first bailout vote went down in the House. Oh, yes. So Republicans voted against the proposed bailout by went down in the house oh yes yeah so republicans voted against the proposed bailout by the bush administration so that's a situation where you had a republican president who wasn't necessarily popular with the bays well he wasn't popular with anybody by that point he had a low

low 40s high 30s approval rating at that point and so yes so so you have to have some type of political capital. And you saw that starting to wane in the early part of George W. Bush's second term, when, you know, the Social Security proposal he had to introduce personal accounts to the Social Security program didn't come to a vote. His immigration reform never went anywhere because his approval was declining not only with the general public, but also within the Republican Party. Now with Trump, you know, Trump was never popular with the public. He had very stable approval ratings in the mid to low 40s. But among Republicans, Donald Trump, very popular, continues to be very popular. And so if he said something, people throughout the conference felt that they had

to take that into account. It is interesting to see the role that Trump played in McCarthy's elevation to Speaker. McCarthy invested a lot in maintaining the Trump relationship, not only during the presidency, but of course in the aftermath of January 6th. And Trump repaid that, as he usually does, by signing on and endorsing McCarthy. And yet that didn't really have an effect on the final six. This is the final number of rebels

who simply voted present, I believe on the 14th ballot, allowing Kevin McCarthy to become speaker. Trump couldn't convince them. And they included, you know, what you would call ultra-mega members like Matt Gaetz. Lauren Boebert.

Lauren Boebert, right? And Boebert even said in one of her speeches, I think nominating Byron Donalds at that point, it's like a dream, you know? It all kind of runs together now thinking that point, it's like a dream. It all kind of runs together now thinking about it. It's all a blur. Bovert was like, you know, my favorite president disagrees, but I wish he would, instead of calling me,

he'd call Kevin McCarthy and tell him to wrap it up. And that didn't happen. And then there was another great image that came out of the drama Friday night into Saturday morning leading up to McCarthy's win, where you see in the photograph Marjorie Taylor Greene trying to hand a phone to Matt Rosendale. And you see on the caller ID, DT. DT. DT. Which is interesting, because if he were in my phone, he's not in my phone. I would say DJT.

That's how I was, you know. But no, it's just DT. And Rosendale is batting the phone away. And the quote I picked up. So just to understand this image, when you see it, it it's clear i think it's hard to describe so there it's this chaos on the floor oh yeah marjorie taylor green has the president trump on the line it's like a live call it's not like a missed call or a return he's like he's sitting there trump is waiting to speak to this other oppositional member that should be a Trumpy figure and is, for all intents

and purposes, a Trumpy figure to take the call and be persuaded to vote for McCarthy. And Marjorie Taylor Greene's trying to hand Rosendale the phone. This is a congressman from Montana. She's trying to hand him the phone, say, OK, I got I got Trump on the phone. He's like, I'm not taking it. I'm not. And so Trump is imagining Trump sitting in Mar-a-Lago waiting for someone to take his call as they pass his phone around the House floor. It's just incredible. So it suggests there's some limit to Trump's influence.

I mean, McCarthy did thank President Trump after winning the Speaker vote. But I was also struck on a related note by the number of times Republican members invoked Ronald Reagan rather than Donald Trump during the week of debate. And it struck me that Reagan continues to exercise a real hold on the Republican imagination that even Donald Trump can't quite displace, as important as Trump is. I want to come back to the political implications for the right based on what we saw this week. But before I do, just on the process on the debt ceiling,

a topic I'm particularly interested in, there is a way with the discharge position you could get a majority of members if the democrats want to play ball you get a majority you get all the democrats and some republicans to pass a majority basically work around the rules committee right and and bring a debt ceiling increase vote to the floor i i think that's right. Then the question is, when will Democrats want to play ball? I think at this point, what we saw with the vote over Speaker is that Democrats don't want any part in the Republican game. And we have to remind ourselves— What do you mean by that? Explain that. They're not going to help. They're not going to help. They could have rescued McCarthy. Democrats could have said, by the way, I'm not, Democrats are watching, sitting there, you know, quietly amused, watching the, you know, being the responsible, behaving as though

they're the responsible adults in this entire situation, when in reality, they could have watched the chaos. For our listeners to understand, what before there was a vote on Speaker meant that there was no House of Representatives. We did not have a House of Representatives this last week when all this was going down. And there's real implications for that. I mean, if there were a national security emergency and the House had to vote on, you know, an act of war, had to vote on emergency funding for a security situation or a health care, a public health emergency, whatever. Pick your pick your parade of horribles.

There was no House. I mean, you you you actually you government was not functioning or at least an important part of government. Essential part of government was not functioning when all that happened democrats i'm not saying this is their i want to be careful here because i you know this is this is the rights mess not their mess so i don't i don't want to like impose on them responsibility for our mess but that said if they were so concerned about the institution any number of them could have stepped forward and said this is crazy mccarthy's going to eventually be speaker one way or the other. And if he's not speaker, we're in a world of hurt because God knows who's going to, you know, who's going to be the alternative.

And we can just step in and end this right now and provide McCarthy a few votes and get to business. And they didn't. Well, look at it from the Democrats' perspective. They dodged a bullet in 2022 politically because the electorate views the Republican Party as, or parts of the Republican Party, as extreme and dysfunctional. And so the Democrats who were sitting in that chamber for the past week knew that those C-SPAN cameras were showing a party that was dysfunctional and whose members, at least six of them, are extreme, you know, beyond reason. Because McCarthy gave away a lot and still those six

couldn't even bring themselves to vote yes they had to vote presence right so it's great politics for them and you know uh president biden weighed in and said it was embarrassing he loved that so i think that the democrats view the coming debt ceiling as another teaching teaching moment right where they can look at they can present the electorate with um a republican party that is dysfunctional, that can't raise the debt ceiling, probable government shutdown, endangering the bond ratings of the United States of America, and some of whose members, not the entirety of the conference, but some of whose members are extreme. So they're going into this fight, I think, with the sense of the conference, but some of whose members are extreme So they've they're going into this fight. I think with the sense the politics will work for them

So they're not gonna and they also think by the way That Obama would the last time we had to deal with this ten years ago. Obama was too eager to negotiate so I Don't expect the Democrats to walk into this fight saying, oh yeah, we'll negotiate spending cuts. I think they're going to run the typical playbook that the Republicans are going to cut public services and are playing hostage takers. and so they're not going to deal. Now, the question then is how long before we actually start feeling the real consequences of these decisions, of these standoffs,

and then you kind of collapse into some type of agreement. You mentioned earlier the bailout, the TARP, right? Mm-hmm. And it failed on the first vote in 2008 because Republicans didn't want to do it. You know who one of the leaders was in opposition? Mike Pence. Yes, yeah. And of course, Boehner and Ryan both voted for TARP. Right. voted for TARP. But when the vote went down, as you recall, and as I recall, the stock market had its worst plunge since 1987. And then it was, OK, well, enough people were

spooked by that, that they were able to pass it on the second attempt. We're playing with live rounds here. Exactly. And that's going to be the same thing when we reach the debt ceiling later this year. And so it's just a question of how much risk will Biden want to incur? I know that there are enough Republicans in this very small margin, right?

You can afford to lose four seats, right? Because it's 222 to 212 at the moment, probably 213 after the special in Virginia. I know there are enough Republicans who want to take the risk because of the anti-establishment feeling in the Republican Party is, yeah, we do need to burn it down. There are enough people who think that in the Republican Party. That's been the case since the bailout. That's my point, that the financial crisis had this, I think, effect. There's just, and Obama played into it too,

that government is so corrupt, who cares what the consequences are? That's not the whole of the Republican conference in the House, but there are enough members who think that way, that it's going to be very troublesome to get them to agree. But of course, Biden, you know, Biden doesn't want to be the president who presides over default. So you're going to, especially now that it seems he's going to run for reelection. So we're going to reach some moment. The question is, when is it? Right. Well, just, I mean, Biden won for president in 2020 by basically being not Trump.

We've had the chaos years for four years. I'm the sober, sensible, you know, I may not fire you up. I may not be incredibly charismatic. I may not be kind of a ball of fire, but I will. I'm in my basement. Yeah. Right. I may be in my basement.

Exactly. But I will return some normalcy to Washington. 2022, clearly the contrast with some of the Republican candidates, Republican nominees for office, you know, extended that contrast. And a lot of these nominees were Trump created or Trump endorsed and then nominated. And in fact, the Democrats tried to help a number of these Trump Act, ultimately unelectable in the general election. Republicans win their primary fights for this exact reason. So this contrast, 20-22, works for them. And to your point, let's let the debt ceiling get crazy. This is good now heading into 23 and 24 from the Democrats' perspective.

And, you know, again, looking at the 30-year window here, Republican houses have been good for incumbent Democratic presidents, right? Because when 1994 happened, as you remember, people assumed it was alude to clinton's repudiation in 1996 everyone was talking about this is it this is the realignment clinton was a fluke in 92 because of perot splitting the republican vote once we gather all our forces we just can see from this result clinton will be defeated in 96 that didn't happen why. Why? Well, one, there was the Oklahoma City bombing in the spring of 1995, where some of the comments made about that bombing helped Clinton and the Democrats portray certain groups in the Republican Party as extreme. Then, of course, there was the government shutdown at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996, where Gingrich miscalculated. Clinton was able to reap the benefits of that, again,

portraying himself as more responsible than the opposition party. And finally, I mean, this is what made Clinton unique, Clinton adopted the politics of triangulation that Dick Morris had been trying to persuade him to pursue and essentially decided okay I'm gonna move to the right on a set of issues welfare crime some social issues of course the defense of marriage act Clinton signed the you know the V chip that was called with the TVs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. School uniforms, right?

I'm going to do all that. I'm going to cut the capital gains tax, which he did in 1997, but I'm still going to hammer the Republicans as the opponents of the entitlement state, Medicare, Medicaid. Republicans are bad for the environment. Republicans are bad for education. So those three things helped Clinton actually win re-election. Medicaid. Republicans are bad for the environment. Republicans are bad for education. So that was, those three things helped Clinton actually win re-election, 49% of the vote in 1996.

Okay, then we go to 2010, right? Tea Party Congress comes in, huge Republican victory. Right, over 60 seats in the House. Exactly, yeah. Amazing. Obama, right? Obama in trouble, right? But Obama is basically... Obama's playbook is slightly different. He uses that debt ceiling crisis in 2011, again, to show that the Republicans are out of step with the country, are to the extreme. Then Obama also moves left. So he does the opposite of Clinton. He moves left, but what that does is reconnect him to the Democratic base, which is more liberal than it was during the Clinton years. And he's able to energize his forces there. And he eventually wins re-election. He also benefited from an economy

that was very slowly recovering. Of course, as you know well, Romney emphasized the very slowly part, but for most Americans, it was the recovery part that mattered most. And there was still the hangover from the 2008 global financial crisis and all that. Yes.

And Romney in many respects. I mean, I obviously was working for Romney and working for Paul Ryan at that time. I mean, the Obama campaign did a very good job of making Mitt Romney and his background and his career in private equity and all that represented or how they characterize it

as the villain in this story, the villain in the unfairness of the hangover of the global financial crisis. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, again, just putting it through the—thinking about it through the lens of the House, of course, the big product of that Tea Party Congress, when you think about it, was the Ryan plan, the Ryan budget, right? And then, you know, I was a strong supporter of that, as I am of Paul Ryan's. And nonetheless, Obama did use that to his advantage once Paul Ryan was not elevated to the ticket in 2012 as well. So you can kind of see how the, how, how Republican houses have helped, uh, democratic presidents in the past. Biden is banking on that to help him,

um, this time as well. Before we go, Matt, I, I want you to talk a little bit about what we've learned about intra-Republican politics, because I'm listening to the mainstream media coverage of the last few days, and I'm banging my head against the wall on these terms that are used to describe the different players, the different factions, their incentives. So just for the interest of time,

generally speaking, the 20 holdouts, or ultimately six, were described as the conservatives. And those around McCarthy and supporting McCarthy and his lieutenants were described as the moderates or the establishment. Now, let me tell you this establishment around McCarthy, who were some of his strongest supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik. I mean, these are people who have, let's just say, incredible Trump pedigree. And they were there, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene, really, like the voice of reason. She's a quote-unquote moderate. And then opposed to McCarthy leading the charges, we talked about Boebert, Perry, Gates. So can you just help get rid of this canard that this was like conservatives versus the establishment, or conservatives versus

the moderates? What was playing out these last few days? Well, I mean, part of the problem is that every new establishment becomes unsatisfactory to every new generation of conservative insurgents. So in many ways, the Trump establishment is now the establishment. I mean, you know, Trump was an insurgent leader in 2016. He took over the Republican Party. He changed the Republican Party. He became president, of course, but he's now the establishment. So he supported McCarthy too. And some of his closest, you know, you mentioned Elise Stefanik, a strong supporter of President Trump's, already endorsed his reelection bid in 2024. She was behind McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene. But now that establishment

also faces internal criticism from conservatives, and I think it's just important, Dan, to distinguish between the two sets of critics of McCarthy. There was this large group of 20 members, about, you know, 13 of them, 14 of them, were kind of represented, I think, by Chip Roy of Texas. Chip Roy of Texas was viewing this process as a means to an end. He had an end in mind that involved policy concessions by McCarthy, that involved structural concessions that we discussed about the rules committee. And he was using his opposition as a means to achieve an end. There are, however—

He had real process concerns. I mean, you can disagree with Chip Roy. He's a serious guy, and I actually think he came at this in good faith. He wanted to do something, and he wanted—that's fine. And I get it. And he's had these concerns for a while. He's been pushing these. Right. And he wanted, you know, that's fine. Yeah. And I get it. I mean, he's had these concerns for a while. He's been pushing these issues for a while. I get it. And he got a lot. Right. Then there's a smaller group, though. Their ends are not actually related to the business of the House of Representatives. Their ends are related to boosting their own profile within a certain media ecosystem.

Their ends are boosting their small dollar fundraising operation. and that you know i have trouble accepting that because i think even if you go into politics like i was saying like you know democrats are elected to do things and republicans are elected to stop things even if you're a conservative who just wants to stop okay that's that's your end and you can kind of see well what are my means to achieve that? And there is this group that's smaller. But again, because this margin is so thin, they matter quite a bit. They're not really interested in anything beyond their own brand or profile. And I think this is why you saw Mike Rogers of Alabama almost assault Matt Cates of Florida, who falls into this category. You see this frustration because at the end of the day, there is nothing you can do to convince them to get on board, to agree to certain concessions, because their ends are entirely

separate from the business of the United States Congress. This is a challenge. Again, if the Republicans had achieved in the midterm what many, including myself, expected them to do, which was double-digit gains in seats, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We're having this conversation because they didn't do that, and their margin is so thin. But paradoxically, of course, the representation of extremism, which led to Republicans' disappointment has now been amplified because of the smaller margin. So it's a big pickle. And I know that I always, people have said I'm relying on a deus ex machina from Florida here,

but I do think that you're not going to resolve these tensions until someone else, some outside force, is able to say, I have a direction for the Republican Party. I know what the Republicans in Washington need to do. Because it's not going to come in internally. It's not going to come from within the conference, not from this conference. Because you don't have a Paul Ryan there who has the agenda ready. You just don't. Do you think, finally, do you think Donald Trump looks weaker in all of this? I mean, it certainly appeared that he looked weaker following the results of the 2022 midterms when so many of his candidates lost. And then you had all this drama

going in the House, and he just seemed not that relevant. To your point, they were talking more about Reagan, not about Trump. Yeah, I do think that it would have been much worse for Trump had McCarthy gone down. So the fact that his candidate is the speaker of the House, I do think is good for Donald Trump. And yes, he was not as instrumental as many people would have expected. At the end of the day, though, he can say it's a win. We know how much he loves trumpeting that. I do think he remains a force in the Republican Party and it would be very foolish to just try to write him off. So we'll see. He continues to be the leader and he may be slowly waning, but it's not there yet.

All right, Matt, we will leave it there. Thank you for illuminating us through this chaos. Like I said, I'm very happy I had you on today rather than a day or two ago. Yeah, I know. And look forward to having you back on. Thank you, Dan. All right.

That's our show for today. Be sure to read Matt's piece in the Washington Post called Here You Go Again, House Republicans, and to order Matt's book called The Right, The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism. And also remember to send in your questions for Congressman Mike Gallagher and Mohamed El-Erian. You can send in your questions by recording a voice memo on your phone. Send it to dan at unlocked.fm. Again, that's dan at unlocked.fm. And please keep the voice memo to under 30 seconds. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.