We have a rather odd situation in the House of Representatives right now. Last I checked, Kevin McCarthy failed his first vote to become Speaker of the House, with over a dozen Republicans voting against him. Apparently, the way that it works is that the speaker is elected by majority vote, so naturally all the Democrats are voting against him. Normally it is not a problem for the party in power to elect a speaker, but when you have a narrow margin of majority as the Republicans currently do, a few defections can block a speaker. This failure to elect a speaker on the first vote last occurred 80 years ago, in 1923, so it’s a fairly exceptional occurrence.

I’ve observed plenty of Hot Takes one way or the other on Twitter about this. Many people are saying that it is foolish of these hardliners to tank McCarthy’s speakership votes like this, even many personalities who are themselves considered hard-right, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. Given that this has produced disagreements within people who are basically always on the same team, it’s worth thinking over in a bit more detail.

One of the objections to this behavior is that the people doing it have no clear alternative to McCarthy. That was true at one point, although they have now apparently coalesced around Jim Jordan. Jordan is himself backing McCarthy for speaker though, so I’m not sure if this is really any better. Either way, I think we can grant that the hardliners, as I’ll call them, don’t actually have any realistic expectation that they can get a conservative elected as speaker—or if they do, they’re probably kidding themselves.

I would defend their actions in spite of this. The point of this exercise is to punish “moderate” Republicans, not to actually replace McCarthy with someone better. Of course, it would be great if we *could* replace McCarthy with someone better, but even if we can’t, punishing him for his lack of spine is worthwhile in and of itself. It is reprehensible that we must tolerate the presence of so-called “moderates” within the supposed “conservative” party in the United States, but this is an unfortunate reality of our political system.

Since we are stuck with this reality, the job of conservatives operating within it is to exert as much influence as they possibly can to kick said moderates into line. This is quite possibly a more important job than simply opposing Democrats. Democrats are likely beyond the reach of conservative influence by any means, and are simply going to do what they are going to do regardless of what conservatives say or do. Likewise, on issues where moderates and conservatives agree with each other and disagree with Democrats, unity between them comes naturally.

The point at which conservative influence has the greatest potential to matter is when moderate Republicans agree with Democrats and not with conservatives, or when said moderate Republicans are waffling and wobbling between the two, unsure of which path will prove politically safer. In this case, conservatives must do everything in their power to make it clear that it is not politically safe to cross them and side with Democrats. By destroying McCarthy’s speakership bid for the sin of being a RINO, conservatives are showing commitment to that course of action. They are putting skin in the game.

This is where we get to the other common objection against the hardliners. Don’t you want a Republican as speaker?! He’s better than a Democrat!! Do you really want to let a Democrat become speaker?!?! I would argue, quite possibly, yes—the most credible threat is one which you are willing to carry out even at the cost of your own destruction. Let’s suppose for a moment that the hardliners’ refusal to vote for McCarthy ultimately leads to a few weak-kneed moderates crossing over and electing a Democrat as speaker for this Congress.

This would indeed result in short-term losses for conservative goals, as it is true that a Democrat speaker would be even worse than McCarthy the moderate. However, the message will have been sent: If you are a Republican and you want to be speaker, you had better appease the conservatives. If you don’t, they simply won’t let you have it, at any cost. No amount of hand-wringing or breathless pleading will sway them.

This is a strategy that appears irrational in the short term so as to establish a credible threat in the long term, obviously something one would consider doing in a game that is played in repeated iterations over and over again, as is the case with our congressional elections. If forced to choose, who are you more likely to appease? Someone who will, if crossed, pursue your destruction at any cost even if it also destroys them, or someone who is not willing to go that far? It’s not a hard choice.

This is one reason why progressive social justice activists have gained so much ground despite often engaging in behavior that appears hysterical and irrational—it is precisely those traits which convey their willingness to destroy you if you upset them.

I have observed this behavior in certain “free-for-all” style board games that I’ve played, and if you’ve played these types of games, then you’ve probably seen it too. A player will begin to take an action which “screws over” another player. The threatened player counters with the threat that, if screwed over, they will have lost the game anyways, so they will spend whatever resources they have left trying to counter-screw the first player. If you play the same games with the same group of people over again, the group will remember who follows through on such a threat and who does not.

Another comparison I’ll make is to a common scenario on the show Burn Notice. Burn Notice is a spy drama involving lots of deception, espionage, use of leverage, and the like. It’s silly and fun, but it also puts some real power dynamics on display. A common tactic in the show is setting up a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) threat in order to force concessions from an otherwise superior opponent. This is accomplished, for example, by having explosives rigged up in the area on a dead-man switch, meaning that if the person who placed the explosives is shot or otherwise harmed to a certain degree, everyone goes boom.

This tactic is deployed by both the heroes and the villains at different times and always succeeds. It translates quite well into real life when we observe the dynamics of nuclear proliferation, from which I borrowed the term MAD. Of course, the current Ukraine conflict may be challenging the notion that nuclear-armed states will always avoid war due to MAD, but that’s a topic for a different post. The point is, what the hardliners are doing is the political equivalent of this.

And unlike with nukes or hidden explosives, you don’t have to actually die when following through on this particular threat. That’s not to say that it won’t be painful. Watching your team, the Republican party, burn itself on the national stage is not fun. It is painful, and it is humiliating. And that is the point. In this sense, I find it better to view the Republican party, as thankfully many people now do, as not “your team,” but rather as the less evil option out of two options that are both pretty evil.

Your job as a conservative is thus to corral and direct that lesser evil by whatever means you can. Obviously it would be nice if we could bring it around to actually being good, but when we are faced with the reality that we can’t, we must have a big stick at the ready with which to hit it. This is the job that is done by destroying McCarthy’s speakership.

Another unfortunate reality of our politics is that any amount of infighting among Republicans will naturally hinder conservative policy goals or help Democrats to some degree. Moderates count upon this fact to try and beat conservatives into doing as the moderates would prefer. But if conservatives cave to this pressure, they are effectively giving up on having any influence over anyone at all. If you as a conservative make some kind of threat against the moderate wing, but ultimately back down when it is pointed out that doing so would help Democrats, then why would moderates take any future threats seriously? They wouldn’t. You’ve shown them your belly.

I’ll caveat that I could be completely wrong on all of this and maybe this ends up being a terrible play that accomplishes nothing, or worse than nothing. Certainly the big risk here is that moderates end up deciding that they would rather play ball with Democrats than conservatives, as McConnell did recently with the $2 trillion omnibus bill. But I think it is a good bet that this will not prove viable in the longer term. McConnell is consistently ranked as one of the most unpopular, if not the most unpopular senator. He can compensate for this because he has been around for 5 million years and thus has a lot of institutional inertia behind him, but the same is not likely to be true of his eventual replacement.

Still, even if the hardliners make a losing bet here, I think it was a bet worth making, because it speaks to the divide between different wings of the right at large. Personally, I am far past tired of Republicans serving as little more than speed bumps in the path of leftist “progress,” and I am at the point where, if Republicans cannot do better, then I legitimately do not see why I should bother voting for them. The future trajectory is more important than the current situation. The hardliners are at least attempting to alter the future trajectory, even if it means worsening the current situation.