Hating the Opposing Party More Than You Love the Country (Updated)

The editors of the Washington Post, donning their rose-colored glasses, urge Democrats to join with Republicans to break the impasse over the appointment of a Speaker of the House:

This is Republicans’ mess. But it hurts the whole country. If Republicans change course — for example, by nominating a better candidate — Democrats should be willing to help them clean it up.

The best — and, given the three weeks of paralysis, perhaps the only — ways to unfreeze the House involve Democrats doing more than watching Republicans fail. This would require at least some tacit understandings between the two parties, which neither side has seemed eager to develop. That has to change.

concluding:

The fact remains that, if just a handful of Democrats had voted “present” on Mr. Gaetz’s motion to dethrone Mr. McCarthy, the House would have been at work for the past three weeks and Mr. McCarthy would have felt freer to govern without constant worry that hard-right obstructionists would take him down for keeping the government open, as they eventually did. Something more like the national interest would have prevailed. At some point, it should.

The question that the editors fail to ask is should the Democrats bail out the Republicans without exacting a pound of flesh for their support and why? They imply that it should be done for the good of the country but, realistically, doing things for the good of the country is in pretty short supply these does. The Republicans should move forward for the same reason but see above.

Also omitted is that

1. It hasn’t always been like this. At first the Speaker of the House was a parliamentarian full stop. The power of the speaker has grown over the years until today we have an imperial speaker. The members of both caucuses seem to like it that way.
2. The present situation is in part an artifact of representatives selecting their constituencies rather than the other way around.
3. Wouldn’t reducing the power of the speaker be more in the national interest than electing yet another imperial speaker?

Imagine for a second that speakers were selected by lot. That wouldn’t violate the Constitution. IMO in that case the power of the speaker would be greatly curtailed. That should provide a hint.

Update

The Congressional Republicans have elected a new Speaker of the House, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana. The vote among Republicans was unanimous and without any help from Democrats.