No. of Recommendations: 4
I posit that the House is a mess because the nation is a mess because a LOT of people get misleading, or false, information. It's not that they are bad people, they are just misinformed. Garbage in, garbage out.
There have always been ignorant and misinformed voters.
The reason the House is a mess is because political parties - as institutions - have been weakened to the point of near-powerlessness. It's a combination of campaign finance rules (which diverted a ton of money away from parties), the internet/social media (which enabled massive fundraising outside of parties), and House procedural changes such as the elimination of earmarks and the neutering of rank-and-file members. Someone like Matt Gaetz can tell Kevin McCarthy to **** off, because the GOP can't do anything to Matt Gaetz. They can't cut of fhis funding, they can't deprive him of campaign infrastructure, they can't block him from getting funding in his district, and they can't threaten to ice him out of the legislative process - because the political parties don't have the ability to do those things any more.
In years past, if a Speaker needed someone to take a tough vote, they could shower them with perks (a new highway in their district, materially important extra funding from the national party, clearing the deck of any primary challengers) or threaten them with consequences (the reverse of all that). No longer. Matt Gaetz doesn't need money, there's no pork being shoveled around, the GOP doesn't control whether he has trouble getting nominated, and backbenchers have been iced out of legislation since Gingrich's time.
There are pros and cons to political parties. They're the framework for backroom deal-making, quid pro quos, logrolling of legislation and the allocation of pork. There are definitely negative aspects to all those things - but they're also the lubricant that allows large coalitions (like a national party) to cohere and work with unity towards larger goals.
