What now in the house?

The lengthy speakership battle in the House of Representatives this month ended with both sides able to declare victory. This is the best outcome for the Republicans, who probably couldn’t have afforded either alternative: a crushed rebellion or a crushed mainstream leadership.

Thanks to the concessions won by the right-wing rebels, the House is more likely to function as a true legislative body. Fiscal conservatism might finally become a major force in Congress again, as Republican voters had every right to expect given the GOP’s new majority. But at the same time, this slight, vulnerable majority will have an experienced leader to whom (despite his necessary nods in that direction over the years) MAGA-Trump politics are foreign.

Distrusted though he is by the kind of Republicans who vocally despise most of their party’s leadership class while seeming hostile to any long political experience, Kevin McCarthy as Speaker may nonetheless indirectly help move the party beyond its weakening, but still toxic, addiction to the unpopular ex-president who embarrasses it almost daily. In stark contrast, a MAGA-ish speaker, had the rebels been able to impose one on the 85% of GOP members who backed McCarthy in the November conference vote, would have been labeled a junior Trump figure and become a fresh target of Democratic rage.