The House is slipping on Israel support without a speaker - but the holdouts don’t seem to care

The House Republican conference experienced just its latest faceplant on Thursday evening when House Majority Leader Steve Scalise withdrew his nomination for speaker of the House.

The announcement was not entirely surprising. The House GOP conference is still incredibly split following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Plenty of conservatives who supported Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) and others had objections that they just otherwise couldn’t articulate, a sign of how much just simply opposing anything leadership supports has become a feature of being a rank-and-file House Republican.

At this point, no Republican has a clear path to reaching the required 217 votes to get the gavel in the House. Ever since January, media reports have popped up about a handful of swing-district Republicans teaming up with Democrats to vote on a consensus speaker. But these stories are always as plausible as the idea of a contested presidential nomination at a party convention; they are catnip for political junkies but almost never come to fruition.

But while the temptation for schadenfreude may be strong, the GOP’s inability to find a speaker has real-life consequences. It comes as Congress is unable to address multiple crises on the domestic and international front and seriously risks jeopardizing the United States’ standing.

Perhaps the biggest challenge the United States faces is how to respond to the recent attack by Hamas in Israel, both in how to support Israel after the attacks that led to the deaths of hundreds, the taking of hostages and the killing of children, as well as how to ensure that Israel follows international law.

Many Republicans seem to know that the speaker’s crisis makes it hard to support Israel, which is a core tenet of conservative ideology given how many conservative Christians support Israel as part of end-times theology and their general belief in a hawkish foreign policy.

“The world is looking at us right now in this basement room of how we're going to move forward,” Rep Mark Alford of Missouri said.

If Republicans had a speaker right now, they likely would be attempting to pressure President Joe Biden to give greater support to Israel, despite the fact the president has thrown his support robustly behind the country. Indeed, when your reporter tried asking the former speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday about what message this sends given that the Middle East is on fire, he tried to blame Mr Biden.

“We have continuity of government here, I think it says more that it takes the president too long to come out and talk,” Mr McCarthy said. During his speakership, Mr McCarthy traveled to Israel and invited President Isaac Herzog to give a joint address to Congress. Republicans would ideally like to criticise those Democrats who boycotted the speech earlier this year in protest of Israel’s record on human rights. But the speaker’s crisis makes it hard to do so.

But the holdouts don’t seem that flustered. Rep Andy Ogles (R-TN), who opposed Mr Scalise said Israel could handle its own issues.

“Israel does not need our resources,” he told The Independent on Thursday. “They're well equipped to take care of their own business. I think what quite frankly, we need to stop meddling in their foreign policy and let them do what they have to do which is wipe out Hamas.”

Similarly, Reps Chip Roy and Troy Nehls of Texas both said that the House included aid to Israel in the defence spending bill it passed before the coup against Mr McCarthy and that the Senate should take it up. But that bill was always a non-starter given the conservative riders.

Speaking of which, the House still needs to pass spending bills. Remember, the whole reason the House is in this mess is because a handful of Republicans revolted when Mr McCarthy passed a continuing resolution to keep the government open for 48 days.

It’s been 13 days since that stopgap bill passed and instead of passing those bills, the House is fighting about a speaker, and given that Republicans prefer to pass individual spending bills instead of one major omnibus spending bill, that makes appropriations take much longer.

And this is to say nothing of the fact that they would eventually need to negotiate with the Democrat-controlled Senate in conference to create compromise bills, which would inevitably infuriate conservatives and likely lead to another mutiny not unlike what just happened – or the government might just shut down right before the holidays.

There are few options that the House has at this point. Currently, Rep Patrick McHenry (R-NC) serves as speaker pro tempore, but it is unclear what exact authority he has and whether he can actually pass legislation. Most Republicans have vetoed the idea of empowering the pro tempore position, arguing the best avenue is to simply pick a speaker.

That may sound ideal, but given that no Republican can get to 217 votes, it seems daft to close that possibility.