Can Scalise move House Republicans away from ‘failure theater’?

Winning politics is about addition. Adding to your coalition while splitting and subtracting from the opposition wins elections and power. Losing politics is everything congressional Republicans have been doing. The House Republican Caucus has not only been the most dysfunctional majority in at least the last 100 years, it’s been the most thoroughly politically incompetent ever. 

But maybe, just maybe, electing Rep. Steven Scalise to the Speakership will change that. 

Jordan and Comer: Failure theater 

Believe it or not, Matt Gaetz is right. Republicans have been engaged in “failure theater.” Their entire legislative and oversight agenda is purely for entertainment purposes, and it’s been a colossal failure. Propelled by the stubbornly self-righteous Jim Jordan and Government Oversight Committee Chairman “Clueless” James Comer, they seek only to entertain the loudest, most obnoxious cranks in the GOP. That might get you interviewed on OANN, but it doesn’t win elections.  

The main priority of Comer and Jordan has been impeaching President Biden. And in this, they have failed spectacularly. While there is smoke around Biden and perhaps enough reason to investigate his possible involvement in his dissolute son’s tawdry behavior, their efforts have mostly flopped. Setting aside the fact that there is zero chance of a Senate conviction, the Comer Committee’s star witnesses have been a mixed bag at best and totally embarrassing at worst. Not to mention the failure to make a persuasive case harms any credibility should they finally come up with convincing evidence. 

Comer thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes, but he’s really Inspector Clouseau.  

Not only have Republicans failed in their investigation, they have failed to arouse even the slightest bit of public interest outside the small faction of “failure theater” cheerleaders and shrieking talk show hosts. There is no evidence that impeachment has advanced Republicans in polling or dinged the Biden administration in the slightest. Biden’s terrible polling is a mess of his own making, with House Republicans benefiting despite their incompetence. 

And now former Speaker Kevin McCarthy has enabled this bad behavior. He has spent much of the last year wheeling and dealing, patching up and bailing out just to hang on to the Speakership. But compromising and cajoling is not leadership and eventually McCarthy ran out of rope. 

Wasted opportunities 

What should infuriate Republican voters and donors is that the House GOP has been handed stick after stick of political dynamite and then thrown every single one away. Whether the FTX crypto scandal, the fentanyl crisis, Biden’s drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or deficit spending and inflation, Biden has given Republicans a cornucopia of opportunities. 

And what makes these issues better than impeachment failure theater is that this list of issues matters to the public — and Biden and the Democrats have no answers for them. Consider the FTX crypto scandal. Sam Bankman-Fried bilked customers out of billions while showering Biden and the Democrats with a fortune in campaign contributions. Even worse (or better, for Republicans), his mother, Barbara Fried, is the founder of Mind the Gap, a major Democratic dark money campaign fund — and it appears she may be deeply and possibly criminally complicit in the FTX fraud. All in all, a tailor-made scandal for Republicans.  

If Republicans must have a Biden corruption fix, they should focus on Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes and the rejected sweetheart plea deal. The public knows what happens when you short the IRS even a dollar, so the idea that the million-dollar-earning son of the president gets offered an easy deal is sure to resonate. But no, Clueless Comer would rather chase his impeachment white whale than reel in the fish just waiting to be hooked. 

Turning the tables 

Republicans need to pull a “Truman” on Biden. Facing near-certain defeat in 1948, Harry Truman called Congress into session and fed them an unpleasant diet of politically popular legislation that he expected to be voted down (and it was). In doing so, Truman contrasted himself with a do-nothing, complaining Congress. The result was a thumping win. 

The GOP Congress should do the same. With the Biden administration on the wrong side of public opinion and having no answers for uncontrolled immigration, inflation and energy prices and lacking any real national security policy, Republicans are perfectly positioned to seize the issue advantage for 2024. 

The question is, does the House GOP have the imagination, intelligence and the will to win?  

The fractious caucus has far too many publicity hounds who would rather get a 5-minute hit on Steve Bannon’s podcast than expand their majority and accomplish anything. They are in love with losing and whining, while the Democrats are willing to do what it takes to win and wield power. 

If Republicans want to win in 2024, they need to settle on an issue agenda that resonates with the American public, bench Jordan, and put Comer somewhere where he can’t do any more damage. The Ethics Committee sounds about right. He will have nothing to do. After all, ethics is the one thing that doesn’t exist in Washington. 

Keith Naughton, Ph.D., is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm. Naughton is a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant. Follow him on Twitter @KNaughton711.