The panel included regulars Donna Brazile and Chis Christie; Susan Page (USA Today); and author Maggie Haberman.
A. McCarthy's bid for Speaker.
Christie said Kevin McCarthy's victory, in a town where "winning is better than losing," he showed his toughness; he held onto 200 votes over the long slog, but now, he has to govern.
...the challenge is going to be, how do you lead a group like that to getting to 218 on a number of issues that you care about and a number of issues you want to play defense on? And that's going to be interesting to watch over the next two years.
Page noted that Nancy Pelosi won with fewer than 218 votes, too, but she did it behind closed doors - and without the concessions.
I think the new speaker's problem is, he didn't resolve the divide in the Republican Party, he empowered the insurgents so that Scott Perry... is almost as powerful as Kevin McCarthy in this next Congress.
Brazil, noting Perry referenced Frederick Douglass, had a Douglass line, too: 'it's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.' And, she maintains, McCarthy's caucus is broken.
It's broken because it has a split personality. The Freedom Caucus, unlike the Progressive Caucus that Nancy Pelosi could bring to the table, the Freedom Caucus held out because they want committee slots, they want to run the Rules Committee, which is a very powerful committee, they want to make sure that they're on... the Budget Committee. They are going to create havoc, not just for Kevin McCarthy, but for the United States of America.
Haberman was asked about her friend Donald Trump helping McCarthy across the finish line. She's not sure he had "a lot" of influence, but he definitely had some. She said Trump made his early "public push" for McCarthy not because wanted to, but "because he gave some mealy-mouth comment to an NBC reporter," but it didn't do much to shift the dial. In the end, though,
he did make calls to people like Matt Gaetz and he did have some influence there. That's a problem for Kevin McCarthy... it’s not just Scott Perry and the House Freedom Caucus, it’s this Matt Gaetz group. And Matt Gaetz he kept his folks together. And he is now in a pretty strong position with McCarthy.
B. Can they govern?
On the looming battle over the debt limit, Christie thinks negotiation will be necessary, no matter what President Biden thinks.
He lost the House. He's got to negotiate. And so, to say that the Republicans would be the obstructionists, well, now you have divided government and you have to -- both sides are going to have to give. Chuck Schumer is going to have to give. Joe Biden is going to have to give. And Kevin McCarthy’s going to have to give ultimately. So, if we have a fiscal disaster because of some of these things, it's going to be us judging who's been willing to negotiate and who hasn't.
I think Biden said is he's not willing to negotiate on Social Security and Medicare, which is not the same as "refusing to negotiate" on anything; we'll have to see what happens.
Brazile thinks it may be hard to get a majority of the House to come together on critical legislation.
I do believe that Kevin McCarthy is going to have a very difficult job maintaining the unity of the Republican caucus – I don’t even know why I can put “unity” and “Republican” in the same breath. I mean Hakeem Jeffries is going to have a unified caucus. I don't believe that Kevin McCarthy will be able to get the votes he need on the debt ceiling, on the functioning of government, which is to keep it funded, and on any major crisis that might come before us.
Page addressed the question of whether House & Senate Rs will be aligned. She said they don't often align "in either party," which I think we've seen to be true. She also said there might be a better question to ask than whether McCarthy can keep his caucus together.
Could there be a coalition of the more moderate Republicans and the more moderate Democrats to get things through in the House? That's not something we saw happen in the speaker's fight. I think that is possible that we could see it...
Stephanopoulos seemed doubtful, since it didn't happen during the Speaker voting, but I think that was a different situation. That was the Rs having a family feud; it wasn't anything as universally important as financing the government.
C. What about 2024?
Trump's in, of course, and Haberman thinks Biden's in, too: "I think anybody who is questioning that Biden is actually running right now is kidding themselves." She says Trump "definitely still has influence; he's definitely still important, but he's not president anymore, and he's not what he was." That was made clear when representatives didn't want to take his call last week.
She said she's "certainly never seen anything like this," where some declares their candidacy and "then basically does nothing."
...he is still commanding a decent chunk of the Republican primary electorate. So, you can't say that he's done. But he is certainly not being handed anything. And as we saw over the past week, he just doesn't have the same fear factor with his party that he had once upon a time. I don't know if it's going anywhere or not.
And, she said we won't really know until we find out if any of the investigations will yield charges.
Christie doesn't think any of this impacts people who might be considering running. He expects a "slow-moving race," and that Trump's early announcement gave everyone else time to wait and see what happens. He also doesn't expect a crowded field.
I don't think it's going to be more than seven or eight people, max. And so all that's going to take time to develop. I wouldn't expect a field to fully develop until the end of June. Because the RNC has said the first debates are going to be in July, in Milwaukee. And I don't think anybody is going to feel any compulsion to get in...
He thinks folks will wait it out, and he said "to go in early, huge political strategic mistake."
Feel free to chime in: who are your picks to challenge Trump and Biden? Will folks like Elise Stefanik - and Kevin McCarthy - continue to support Trump if any of the 'witch hunts' result in charges? Is Kamala Harris automatically the front-runner if Biden decides not to run?
See you around campus.
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