Commentary: Finding the Republican Liz Truss

Now that the sedevacantistmotion has passed, rendering empty the chair of the speaker of the House of Representatives, the search for Kevin McCarthy’s successor is under way in earnest.

It may be instructive to look across the pond to the Republicans’ sister party, the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (more colloquially, the Tories), who have had to find such replacements four times since the emblematic referendum victory for Brexit in 2016, most recently installing Rishi Sunak into office as Britain’s prime minister.

One key difference is the date of the election: The United States has dates constitutionally set in stone — unforgivingly every two years for our honorable subject of analysis, the members of Congress. In Britain, it is possible to govern with a majority you didn’t campaign for, as Theresa May did with David Cameron’s 2015 cohort and both Liz Truss and Sunak did and are doing with Boris Johnson’s massive 2019 intake.

The difference between the current leader of the British Conservative Party and his immediate predecessor is the manner in which they assumed the post: Liz Truss was directly elected by the members of the British Conservative Party in a nationwide ballot, while Rishi was appointed by his peers among the elected members of Parliament from his party — the closest analogue to the speaker’s election we can offer in this exercise.

In the United States, the closest thing to such a party referendum would be the presidential primary. But even that vote is mediated by the representation of state delegates, to say nothing of states that allow non-party members to vote in a party’s primary.

And so we arrive at a thought experiment: What might happen if the Republican Party opened up a nationwide ballot for party members like the one that installed Theresa May and Liz Truss as Tory party leaders?

For one, Republican Party membership would skyrocket (not the worst outcome leading up to a big election year). The requisite exercising of campaign muscle — mass formation of little platoons at all levels of party organization — would undoubtedly be worthwhile on its own, independently of who won the contest. It might even lay the groundwork for policy consultations of the sort that have served other European parties quite well, particularly in Italy and the Netherlands.

Certain caveats might well be in order: Even the Tories only use the membership ballot to narrow down the list to the top two contenders for further suffrage among the elected representatives in the House of Commons. In the United States, some deference to federalism and the 50-state structure is always necessary.

Who might emerge victorious from such a contest? Any American citizen is theoretically eligible to serve as speaker of the House, though it seems trite to point out a pre-existing national profile would be necessary. Getting the congressional Republican caucus to tie their hands and respect the result might require some heavy lifting.

More to the point, the alignment of incentives would turn away from serving Beltway-heavy wranglers of federal spending (lobbyists) and redirect the people-pleasing power in the direction of the American people — or at least the slice of it that registers Republican.

Who knows, the Republican National Committee might even find something useful to do with the airtime they’ve reserved for “presidential debates”! It would be a win all around!

Felipe Cuello’s past service includes work at the United Nations’ internal think tank, the International Maritime Organization, the European Union’s development-aid arm, the office of a Brexiteer member of the European Parliament, and the Senate of the Dominican Republic. He is also the co-author and voice of the audiobook of "Trump’s World: Geo Deus" released in January 2020, back when discussing substance and principles was the order of the day.