At the instigation of Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a small group of revanchist republicans combined with the House Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy from his post as Speaker of the House in revenge for his having worked with the Democrats last week to extend funding for the government and avoid a weekend shutdown. The revanchists have no plan to replace Mr. McCarthy and appear to have believed that their Democratic colleagues would stand behind Mr. McCarthy and vote to keep him in office.
Their plan has both succeeded and failed spectacularly. Their plan succeeded in that they won the vote and demoted Mr. McCarthy to the rank and file. Their plan failed in that they have shown the nation that they have no plan, no agenda, and no goal other than to throw a spanner in the works, as the British say.
That delightful British phrase reminds Isaac of another odd British phrase, this one from the Parliamentary sphere, which points to how the republican leadership should respond to Mr. Gaetz and his cohort if they wish their party to again be taken seriously by the public. Each party in Parliament appoints a number of its members, called "whips," to communicate the leadership's wishes to the members and to instruct them on how to vote on matters important to the party. The title "whip" derives from fox hunting; the Oxford English Dictionary defines "whipper-in" as an assistant to a huntsman "who keeps the hounds from straying by driving them back with the whip into the main body of the pack." The Parliamentary whips similarly keep the backbench members from straying by driving them back into the main body of the pack, the word "whip" having morphed from meaning the instrument itself into meaning the person who wields it. A party can discipline a recalcitrant or obstructive member by "withdrawing the whip," effectively expelling the member from the party until the leadership decides to "restore the whip."
It's past time for the House republican leadership to do the American equivalent of withdrawing the whip from Mr. Gaetz. Remove him from all committees, expel him from the caucus, withdraw all funding . . . and if he does not reform, recruit and fund a candidate to oppose him in next year's primary. The others will fall in line rather than be pushed overboard to join him in Congressional limbo.