For a brief moment, Fox News had secured a “debate” between at least three House Speaker candidates, including Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. Just hours after the announcement, though, the event has been canceled.
That comes after Kevin McCarthy was booted from the role, opening up a schism within the Republican party. How things end is anyone’s guess.
Fox News will no longer air a “joint interview” with the three major Republican candidates to succeed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House on Monday.
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) had been scheduled to join Bret Baier on Special Report Monday to make each of their respective cases for serving as the next leader of the GOP conference in the House, but all three candidates have thought better of attending the forum.
The nationally televised event had been scheduled to precede a meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, when they are expected to officially select who to nominate to serve as the next Speaker, but members expressed concern about the wisdom of the event.
From an entertainment standpoint, this is a bit of a letdown. Certainly, it would have been nice to see someone like Jordan lay out his vision as well.
With that said, taking a broader view of the matter, this was a really, really dumb idea. The Speaker of the House is not elected by a national popular vote. Whoever holds that position is an internal issue for Congress to decide, and a candidate whispering sweet nothings into the ears of the masses may not actually be the best person for the job.
Being Speaker of the House is primarily about two things: Maintaining caucus cohesion and fundraising. The former means you will see compromises along the way in order to win the majority over so it can operate as a monolith when necessary. Without that, the majority ends up ceding the governing power to the minority (assuming they can hold together, and Democrats always hold together). That’s a fine line to walk.
Fundraising also can’t be discounted. McCarthy, whatever his flaws as a leader, was an extremely good fundraiser, and without his effort, we would not have a House majority right now. The next speaker has to take that role seriously. The position isn’t one where a person just has the luxury of grandstanding for the cameras all the time. There’s actual work involved and a real skillset required.
Simply put, a red-meat debate wasn’t going to do anything but set unrealistic expectations as various candidates made promises they knew they wouldn’t be able to keep. A waste of time comes to mind.
The last reason this cancelation is good news is that I see no reason to continue to prop Fox News up in such a regard. What exactly has that network done in the last few years to earn that kind of deference from the GOP? The last primary debate was an abject disaster, with an MSNBC-style pro-illegal immigration hack asking questions while one of the other moderators suggested that being pro-life was an electoral liability. I think Fox News should be shown the same respect they show conservatives, which isn’t much.
