House Republicans haven’t been terribly successful at many things this year. They struggled to keep the government open and to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt. They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning. But they have been very good at one thing: regicide.
On Friday, Republicans dethroned Jim Jordan as their designated Speaker, making him the third party leader to be ousted this month. First, there was Kevin McCarthy, who required 15 different ballots to even be elected Speaker and was removed from office by a right-wing rebellion at the beginning of October. Then, after a majority of Republicans voted to make McCarthy’s No. 2, Steve Scalise, his successor, a number of Republicans announced that they, too, would torpedo his candidacy and back Jordan instead. Finally, once Republicans finally turned to Jordan as their candidate, the largest rebellion yet blocked him from becoming Speaker. After losing three successive votes on the floor, the firebrand lost an internal vote to keep his position as Speaker designate on Friday.
The US is an outlier among our so-called peer democracies in having a functional (as opposed to purely ceremonial) upper house. Everyone else has done away with it and they seem to have improved for it. I don’t find any of the arguments in favor of keeping the Senate convincing. They all seem to amount to a version of institutional inertia, or, “it’s the way we’ve always done it and I’m scared of change!”.
They’re all much smaller, both area and population wise. Hence why I suggested those decisions happen at the State level.