As I write this, the House of Representatives is engaged in a battle over who will be its speaker. Back in January, we had our first hotly contested speakership fight since 1859, the year before the Civil War. This year’s fight lasted five days and 15 ballots, resulting in Kevin McCarthy becoming speaker. To win, McCarthy had to make all sorts of compromises with a hard-right faction of his party. These compromises proved to be his undoing.

First, McCarthy agreed to allow any single lawmaker the power to force a vote to vacate the speakership. When he agreed to this rule, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it an “incredibly shrinking speakership” that works against Congress. McCarthy also agreed that the ultraconservative faction of 21 members could have approval over a third of the seats on the Rules Committee. Finally, he agreed to have spending bills be subject to open debates in which any lawmaker could force votes on proposed changes.

The rules of the game affect the outcome of the game. When basketball instituted a 3-point shot, the entire game changed and the likes of Damian Lillard became dominant, while the likes of Carmelo Anthony faded away. Pelosi is not wrong that agreeing to these rule changes resulted in a speakership that would no longer function well for Congress. This month, McCarthy was removed due to the way he negotiated a stopgap funding measure, which violated one of his concessions, causing Rep. Matt Gaetz to use another one of the concessions, where one member can force a vote of no confidence, to oust the speaker. We’re now in the second phase of trying to replace McCarthy; as I’m writing this, Steve Scalise has stepped down, Jim Jordan does not have the votes and other names are bubbling to the surface. Those rules have made the House of Representatives completely dysfunctional.

While I’m very interested in how rules affect the outcomes in Congress, today I want to focus on what I think caused McCarthy to have to give away so much in the first place: the state of the Republican Party nationally. A number of media outlets have reported on a recent summit that Sen. Mitt Romney hosted in Park City, in which he and his former vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, spoke about their party. Romney invited four GOP presidential candidates to speak at the event: former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Romney said any of them would be a better choice for the Republican nominee than former President Donald Trump.

None of these four could serve as speaker in the House of Representatives right now. If anyone floated their names, there are not enough rule concessions in the world to make it so that Gaetz or Rep. Lauren Boebert would support them. At that dinner, Romney said Republicans have a “multiple personality disorder,” and Ryan said they were battling a cult of personality around Trump. Both said Republicans don’t know who they are, or what kind of conservatism they uphold.

Hopefully, when you have an identity crisis, you have it in private. You decide that maybe what you used to be is not who you are now, and you do the work to forge that new identity. Unfortunately for Republicans, this is happening on a world stage. Everyone is watching them fail to govern themselves, meaning they’re incapable of governing the nation. They cannot deliver on any of the expectations of the American people and are incapable of meeting the challenges of the global disorder we find ourselves in. They will eventually choose a speaker and, just as we all predicted in January, if that person has to give away everything to allow an intransigent 21 people to have their own way on everything, then the House will not function. We’ll be back in this exact spot when the stopgap measure expires in a month.

I’m not sure whether I’m persuaded by Ryan that it’s a cult of personality around Trump or whether Romney is correct that Republicans don’t know what conservatism is anymore. What I’m sure of is that this nation is built on compromise and we cannot allow 21 people who don’t understand the meaning of the word to have so much power. What I’m also sure of is that Republicans and Democrats serve in the United States House, the people’s house — and, as servants, they should put the country above their petty squabbling. Centrist Republicans should work with centrist Democrats to elect a speaker who represents the ideology of the vast majority of us: someone from the middle who has their eye on governing rather than performative politics.

Leah Murray is a Brady Distinguished Presidential Professor of Political Science and the academic director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University.

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