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Once again I'm astounded the Republicans don't do the thing everyone else in the world does where they have an internal party vote and then everyone is bound to vote for the winner on the floor of Congress or they get expelled from the party.
Because unlike Westminster systems where the party as an apparatus actually matters Americans get politicians who only have to a win a primary to be their parties candidate and the election for the seat. At best, the regional party committees exercise some influence but no formal power over who can and cannot be the candidate. They cannot stop someone they absolutely do not want from running, becoming the candidate and then getting elected. It's gotten even more chaotic with the recent trend towards open primaries where the candidate for a party can be elected by any registered voter.
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The problem is that, in this scenario as with McCarthy's ouster, the threat would be empty because carrying it out would not actually serve the interests of the people carrying it out. Maybe the threat of doing so would, but it's actual execution wouldn't. Either the 20 Representatives are just expelled from the Republican Conference, in which case they are still Representatives and much less likely to vote Jordan for Speaker, or they are expelled from Congress altogether, in which case Democrats would now have the majority.
Well you obviously have to accept the potential for losing a few members who call your bluff. That happens from time to time, and it theoretically can cost a government its majority. But the alternative is what we're seeing - the potential for half a dozen people in a party room of over 200 to completely derail your agenda and plunge you into a situation where you can't even elect a speaker. That's completely untenable.
Frankly I think the US has only just started to move towards getting serious about playing hardball politics in the last 10 years or so, and that's why they are only just now confronting issues that everyone else experienced and dealt with ages ago. The filibuster is still alive, for goodness sake - something like that doesn't ever survive in a genuinely ruthless political culture.
My impression is that Republicans would rather have the formal majority, and so be "in power", rather than actually be able to enact any particular agenda via legislation. There are lots of things (committees) you can operate even if you can't win a vote on the floor. I think there's also a perception that a substantial part of the Republican base support these holdouts and so there would be electoral backlash of unknown magnitude by expelling them. Maybe you get party discipline but if you lose the majority and potentially future majorities by doing so you definitely won't be enacting your agenda.
They don't have the Senate and they don't have the Presidency, so they can't enact anything via legislation anyway.
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Because everyone who didn’t want to go along would just be an independent who runs as a Republican in the next election.
How likely are they to win in that scenario though? E.g. in a world where Matt Gaetz can't put an R next to his name, does he beat the Republican candidate? Presumably the party brand is worth a lot, I don't see too many independents in US politics.
This is the wrong way to figure this out, but....
On August 30, 2016, Gaetz won the Republican primary with 35.7 percent of the vote to Greg Evers's 21.5 percent and Cris Dosev's 20.6 percent, along with five other candidates.[37] This virtually assured Gaetz of victory in the general election; with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+22, the 1st is Florida's most Republican district, and one of the most Republican in the nation.
In the November 8 general election, Gaetz defeated Democratic nominee Steven Specht with 69 percent of the vote.[38] He is only the seventh person to represent this district since 1933 (the district was numbered the 3rd before 1963).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Gaetz#U.S._House_of_Representatives
Just for spit balling, let say he keeps 35.7 % of the republican vote as a 3rd party candidate
.357 x .69 = .246 for Gaetz .643 x .69 = .444 for Republican Gaetz replacement 1 - .69 = .31 for Democratic Replacement
That looks like they should threaten to kick him out
running the numbers if he keeps 50% of the Republican vote
.5 x .69 = .345 for Gaetz and his Republican replacement .31 for his Democratic replacement
That looks like risking turning a safe district blue
I suspect the people whose careers are riding on these decisions, can get better data to run the math on if they want it
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Gaetz would, presumably, run as a Republican and win the primary. Republicans in particular have a problem with non-establishment approved candidates winning primaries.
Could they, theoretically, ban him from a Republican primary? Sure, but the most likely result of that is that he runs as an independent, the Republican base in his district is split, and a democrat gets elected, so they won’t.
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It really depends. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) won a write-in campaign for Alaska Senate in 2010 after losing the Republican primary. Depending on the particular makeup of their district "expelled from the Republican Conference for refusing to elect Jim Jordan" might actually be a good thing.
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I was under the impression that this was a specific trait of Leninist parties, which might contain the answer as to why the US Republicans don't do it.
No, this is how political parties work in many countries. In the UK, MPs can be expelled from their party for voting against the whip.
Precisely - the whole point of a party caucus is that everyone is expected to vote in line with the majority of the caucus, at least on important procedural votes like Speaker elections. You accept a degree of party discipline in order to get the benefits of being the majority. The details are different in Parliamentary systems, but the principle that anyone who votes against their party on a confidence motion (or who fails to show up for the vote without a good excuse) is kicked out of the caucus ("has the whip withdrawn") is utterly mundane. The last time this happened in the UK was to pro-European rebels against Johnson, and the time before that was to Eurosceptic rebels in the Major era. In both cases rebels were kicked out even though it left the government without a majority.
Right now there is no majority caucus in the House, because the Republicans lack the party discipline to be a real caucus, and neither the mainstream nor the MAGA factions are anywhere close to 218. The reason why this has become a clown show is that the Republicans are still acting like they are in the majority, even though they are not.
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It's incredibly normal in parties on both the left and right around the world. Eg in 2018 the (right wing) Australian Liberal party changed PM following a 40-45 split in a leadership contest while they had a one-seat majority.
I just don't see how you can expect to control the floor in a finely balanced legislature unless you enforce some party discipline.
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Or you could just have no say when you get whipped in the House of Commons in the UK.
Getting whipped in the house actually has a very different meaning in thr U.K. due to the English moral traditions.
The British sex scandal anthology series on Amazon is currently in production on season three, AFAIK.
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