The headline in Business Insider was blunt:
House Freedom Caucus pushes McCarthy to force vote to oust Pelosi as speaker
The story by reporter John L. Dorman said, in part, this:
“The House Freedom Caucus on Friday called on GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to force a floor vote to oust Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi from her position after she rejected two Republicans who were tapped to serve on the Jan. 6 select committee.
In a letter, the group, which is composed of some of the most conservative members of the House, asked McCarthy to bring up a privileged motion by July 31 in order ‘to vacate the chair and end Nancy Pelosi’s authoritarian reign as Speaker of the House.’
“Speaker Pelosi’s tenure is destroying the House of Representatives and our ability to faithfully represent the people we are here to serve,’ they wrote. ‘Republicans, under your leadership, must show the American people that we will act to protect our ability to represent their interests.’
The group also alleged that Pelosi ‘has no interest in representative democracy’ and lamented proxy voting and the installation of metal detectors to access the House floor.”
Hmmm. Both America and the House of Representatives have been here before with authoritarian, out-of-control iron-fisted Speakers of the House – twice. And it didn’t end well for those two Speakers either.
The first was Speaker Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, nicknamed “Uncle Joe.” A Republican, Cannon was so powerful and ran the House in such an iron-fisted fashion that when one congressman was asked by a constituent for a copy of the House rules the congressman replied by simply sending back a photo of Speaker Cannon.
The Speaker’s authoritarianism so antagonized members of his own party that with his opposition set to explode politically there was a resolution introduced by Republican reform Congressman George Norris of Nebraska. The simple explanation was that the resolution would remove control of the House Rules Committee from the Speaker and give it to an alliance of Republicans and Democratic anti-Cannon members.
The Speaker knew in a blink the real objective: It was designed to overthrow him. As author Booth Mooney wrote in his history of four Speakers of the House called, fittingly enough, Mr. Speaker, the resolution would so restrict the Speaker’s power that he “would become simply the presiding officer, his power restricted to placing motions before the House and declaring the results of vote.”
Newspapers “all over the country played up the drama taking place in the halls of Congress. Telegrams poured in by the hundreds, many of them pleading with the Speaker to resign in order to save the Republican Party.”
The long and short? Cannon kept his job – but he was not only severely weakened in his control of the House, he became the very symbol of a politician abusing their power. In 1910, the next House election after the efforts to strip Cannon of his power, Cannon’s Republicans lost the House. The Cannon era was over.
But old Joe Cannon is not the only House Speaker to become a symbol of what’s wrong in Washington. Decades later Texas Democratic Congressman Jim Wright became Speaker. And he too would finally be forced out of power because of his alleged, authoritarian-style abuse of his power.
Like Speaker Cannon, Wright was the subject of a book written in detail about his abuse of power as Speaker. The Ambition and the Power: The Fall of Jim Wright details in chapter and verse yet another story of a Speaker out-of-control. Author John Barry notes that in the two and a half years of his Speakership, Wright:
“…exercised more power than any other member of Congress in this century, perhaps ever.At the peak of his power he dictated to the White House what would happen in foreign policy, and dictated to Congress what legislation it would pass. At its end, he became the first Speaker in history to be forced from office, charged with violating House rules sixty-nine times.”
And as with Republican Joe Cannon in 1910, Democrat Jim Wright became the personification of the opposition party’s depiction of political corruption in the House – which eventually resulted in Republicans taking control of the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.
Now? The announcement by the GOP’s House Freedom Caucus that they want House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to lead a move to end what they correctly described as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “authoritarian” rule over the House is nothing less than the newest version of the Cannon and Wright stories.
America has been here before – and in neither case did the story end well for both Speakers Cannon and Wright, not to mention the political parties they led.
As the 2022 elections approach, Nancy Pelosi has become the personification of authoritarian political corruption.
Will Pelosi learn anything from this?
Of course not. Authoritarians never do.
Stay tuned.
