But this storyline lets another key GOP group off the hook: The supposedly reasonable Republicans — the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatists, whatever you call them — who could end this madness now if they chose but instead are enabling the crisis.
The White House wants a “clean” debt limit increase, allowing the government to pay for what Congress has already appropriated with no conditions. But GOP leaders are threatening not to pay our bills unless the entire federal budget is remade according to their radical vision — even though Republicans raised the debt limit without incident three times under the last GOP president.
That’s absurd. But it would not be possible without the complicity of all parts of the House GOP — the leadership, the far-right and the allegedly responsible center. If the supposed moderates wanted to, they could join Democrats to support a clean increase.
Yet in much of the coverage, their role has receded into the background. That’s puzzling because this bloc of Republicans is the focus of an underappreciated shadow war underway between the White House and McCarthy.
Take McCarthy’s newly released budget plan: It would raise the debt ceiling temporarily in exchange for drastic measures, including reducing spending to 2022 levels to most programs, imposing work requirements on assistance to poor people, clawing back funding for the Internal Revenue Service and capping future spending.
The White House is blasting McCarthy’s plan by highlighting this point: The GOP budget’s closely mirrors priorities articulated by the far-right House Freedom Caucus. As White House spokesman Andrew Bates argued, the plan shows McCarthy “caved to the most extreme MAGA hardliners.”
At bottom, this seems to be all about pressuring less extreme Republicans, which include 18 Republicans from districts Joe Biden won in 2020, self-described “governing” Republicans and members of the “Problem Solvers Caucus.” If they fear association with MAGA and the Freedom Caucus, they might ultimately support a clean debt limit hike rather than tie themselves to extremely unpopular budget cuts being used as a tool of extortion.
There’s a ways to go on this front. The “pragmatic conservatives” in the Republican Main Street Caucus are sticking with McCarthy, claiming that his budget’s core principles “unify the conference rather than divide us.” Translation: Moderates are not spooked enough to admit to any daylight between themselves and MAGA.
McCarthy has to keep things this way in that shadow war over moderates. He keeps saying he merely wants negotiations with Biden over the conditions for a debt limit hike — repackaging an absurd extortion demand as a quest for compromise — to persuade the public that Republicans are flexible and Biden is inflexible.
The essential question is whether McCarthy can keep moderate Republicans convinced that this is a winning message with swing voters. This is why McCarthy keeps demanding private negotiations with Biden: Then he could say, “See, we’re reasonably meeting with Biden and reasonably offering concessions, but the White House won’t budge!” And voters would have no way to determine exactly what Republicans are offering.
To veterans of the 2011 and 2013 debt limit fights who now work for Biden, that’s a key lesson of those battles. One senior Democrat familiar with White House thinking says Biden must avoid getting into a room with McCarthy, to deny him that opening. As that Democrat tells us, this would help him “whip up this illusion that they’re politically in a great spot, to reassure the moderates.”
Denying McCarthy this opening has worked in some ways. It might have helped prod McCarthy to release his own plan, showing his hand and opening it up to attack.
It’s possible, as GOP strategist Liam Donovan suggests, that one route to getting moderates to move is for the White House to offer concessions on spending cuts that are mostly meaningless but give them cover to argue this wasn’t a cave.
But at some point, the “reasonable” Republicans will have to step up. As Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) told us, Democrats “have 213 votes ready,” and a clean debt limit hike would certainly pass if it “comes to a vote.”
The lack of media focus on moderates has consequences. By allowing them to avoid commenting on the extreme nature of this GOP extortion, it whitewashes that effort into something more like ordinary politics. It relieves pressure on them to join Democrats to do what’s necessary to pay the country’s bills — whether cleanly or with fig-leaf concessions.
As long as all the attention is on the extremists, it’s all the easier for non-MAGA Republicans to hold out on the country. There will be no pulling back from the brink of disaster without them.
