Moderates and Democrats say a ‘coalition’ House speaker could end stalemate

AUSTIN, Tex. — Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), the unofficial spokesman for moderation within his party, has said for days that the Republicans might well need Democrats to bail them out of their leadership crisis. Last week, he floated the idea of "a bipartisan coalition to elect the next speaker." This past Saturday, he repeated himself.

"It's a possibility," said Dent on MSNBC's "Up." "If we can not get 218 Republican votes on the House floor, then of course the Democrats will have an impact on who the next speaker will be."

What Dent could have said, but didn't, was that some like-minded moderates used October's congressional recess to see who could be sold on the "coalition" idea.

"There are calls being made," said Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Tex.) after a panel at the weekend's Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. "It's an unlikely outcome. Maybe it's a plan B or plan C, but contingencies are being worked out."

Texas, which pulled in a number of legislators for the annual event, was a perfect place to have the conversation. In 2008, when the Obama-Biden ticket's coattails helped Texas Democrats surge to their biggest legislative minority in years, they helped moderate Republicans unseat then-Speaker of the House Tom Craddick. Eleven Republican legislators conspired to put a colleague, Joe Straus, in the job. He won it with a pledge to give Democrats a proportion of committee chairmanships. And he's defeated conservative challengers even as Republicans have won smashing victories, rolling the minority party back.

So in Austin, Democrats kept bringing it up. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) used some of his time on a bipartisan panel with fellow members to confirm that he could back a coalition candidate. In an interview with the Texas Tribune's Abby Livingston, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sounded warm to the idea.

"I think in our caucus there is interest and support — there’s an openness to a bipartisan approach to this,” Pelosi said.

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Republicans, who have been buffeted with questions about the "disarray" of their party, were less enthused. "When Republicans have the biggest majority in 90 years, they'e going to give more power to the Democrats?" asked Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) sarcastically. "That sounds like a great idea."

It is just an idea, but part of Dent's mission is to get it discussed. With a push, some congressman's back-of-napkin scheme can become a buzzy "plan C." The ever-multiplying pundits who consider Washington to be broken by partisanship might be intrigued by a plan to temporarily end partisanship.

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"I think it’s a terrific idea," said Peter Ackerman, a businessman who co-founded Americans Elect, an (unsuccessful) 2012 effort to draft an independent candidate for president. "You’d have to work out a lot of operating details to go forward, but it’s very innovative. I think the country needs something like that. I feel, as do many Americans, that the extreme elements of both parties are wielding too much influence in our politics."

Greg Orman, a 2014 candidate for U.S. Senate in Kansas, agreed with Ackerman — though both men thought an actual crop of independents in Congress would be preferable. "I believe that reaching across the aisle for support might go a long way towards ending the zero-sum politics in the House," said Orman. "A Republican speaker, elected with Democratic support, would be obligated to take the minority party views into account when crafting legislation. Unfortunately, the problem with Washington today is that it strongly discourages constructive behavior in favor of pure partisanship."

Other advocates of the plan said the same thing, and acknowledged that partisanship would hardly disappear if the Democrats cut a deal with moderate Republicans. At the festival, Pelosi deferred to even name her favorite "coalition" candidate.

"Do you want him to be totally destroyed in his caucus if I mentioned who I thought would be good?" Pelosi asked, tongue only partly in cheek. "That would be the end of him."

David Weigel is a national political correspondent covering the 2016 election and ideological movements.

LINK: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/19/moderates-and-democrats-say-a-coalition-house-speaker-could-end-stalemate/