The House has a Speaker. Introducing, oh, who cares?

 In a series of posts while the Republicans dithered and dickered over the selection of a replacement for Kevin McCarthy, I argued that the specific replacement mattered in no significant way.  The underlying tensions and pressures that made McCarthy's ouster inevitable and utterly predictable will similarly make any replacement's job impossible to perform.  In the history of the House of Representatives, there have been some truly brilliant legislative tacticians, some of whom have buildings named after them.  It is at least somewhat ironic that Joe Cannon, most famous among legislative scholars for the 1910 revolt against him, stripping him of his powers as Speaker, has a building named for him.  There's Rayburn.  You can look up the buildings, and then read about their namesakes.  Partisan animosity will prevent the mutual recognition of Nancy Pelosi's brilliance as Speaker, and John Boehner was difficult to assess for anyone not steeped in legislative politics because seeing his skill required placing his actions in the context of the challenge of managing his caucus.  Yet, he was good.

Enter Jai Johanny Johanson.  No, that's not it.  Um, Rod Johnson?  No, gimme a minute.

Robert Johnson.  Lonnie Johnson.  Blind Willie Johnson.  Edith North Johnson.

No, Eric Johnson.

OK, the list of Johnsons is, to quote Top Gun, long and distinguished.  Somewhere on that list is... [checks notes]... Mike?  Yes, Mike.  Does it matter who he is?

No.  Once the party ditched McCarthy, nominated and un-nominated Scalise, nominated and defeated Jordan three times, played a funny game with Emmer, can anyone take this seriously?

And yet I warned you before any of this that the next Speaker would not really matter.  Put it in terms of the game of great speakers.  Could a resurrected building namesake manage the House GOP?  Could a party-swapped Pelosi, or Boehner?  No.

Simple-minded analysis would reduce explanations for history to either a "great man" theory or underlying social pressure, but shocker, both matter, and they interact.  It is almost like you are surrounded by pseudo-intellectual bullshit rather than acknowledgment of the complexity of the world!

Anyway, recall the basic model of conditional party government.  A congressional party will delegate power to its leader when a set of conditions are met, most importantly, internal ideological homogeneity.  It is more than that, of course, but the basic problem is that when a party is rife with dissent, it will not delegate power to its leadership.  The problem is that when business must be conducted, that may lead to an impossible job where the leader is assigned the task of an impossible task because the party refuses to delegate the power necessary to do the job.

When the party delegates power, the leader matters.  When not, the leader doesn't.

Right now, the Republican Party is too chaotic and fractious to delegate power to any leader, including, oh, who cares what his name is?  Yet, don't-bother-me-with-his-name still has the impossible task that McCarthy could not do.

McCarthy was ousted merely for passing a continuing resolution.  That's it.  That is all it took.  The new guy, same as the old guy, still has to get spending bills passed.

The House Republicans demand a shutdown.  At some point, they will have to cave.  Gavelly McFire-me will have to cave because when the GOP shuts down the government, all of this lunacy will just make it even more clear who takes the blame.  So they will have to cave.  What then?  Does he offer them a Biden impeachment as their dummy prize?  He'll probably impeach Biden anyway, but the basic problems are the same.  He faces the same constraints for the same impossible job.  He shuts down the government, he has to cave, and what then?

If he didn't demand the biggest bribe ever for taking the gavel, the man's a fool.

Junior Brown, "Doin' What Comes Easy To A Fool," from Guit With It.