Oh, to which fable should we turn to explain this sequence of events? Al Wilson? Casablanca? Let’s start with Lev Nitoburg and his tale of the scorpion and the frog.

House Republicans partnered with Democrats to form the “Problem Solvers Caucus” (PSC) in January 2017, as a counter to the supposedly extreme-MAGA agenda of Donald Trump. For the most part, the Problem Solvers offered nothing much but cheap virtue-signaling by its members over the last six-plus years. The conceit played well in the competitive districts its members represented, but the caucus has never produced any successful legislation. It exists to fluff itself and to vaguely scold everyone else on the benefits of bipartisanship and defense of institutions.

And Democrats kept scolding on that point, right up until the point that every last PSC Democrat voted to oust a sitting Speaker for partisan purposes. Suddenly, the Republicans in the caucus are shocked, shocked — no, wait, wrong analogy — are surprised to find out that the scorpion they’ve carried on their backs acts like a scorpion:

GOP members in the group are furious at their Democratic colleagues who voted to remove McCarthy. The Republicans say he was punished for “doing the right thing” after advancing a stopgap funding bill on a bipartisan basis.

Frustrated members said that Democrats in the group, which is aimed at finding bipartisan solutions, sparked chaos for political gain despite many Republicans in the group having faced primaries for crossing the aisle and taking difficult votes.

A draft letter obtained by Axios took aim at Democrats for siding with “Gaetz and a single digit number of chaos agents in the Republican Conference.”

“It is unfortunate, for America and the institution of Congress, that Democrats in PSC chose not to risk the smallest amount of political capital or show the minimal courage necessary to merely vote against the Motion to Vacate. Instead, they voted for the chaos and now hope to benefit politically from it,” the draft memo said.

Under other circumstances, this would be hilarious. What exactly did these geniuses think would happen, especially after six years of posing without a single substantive accomplishment? The PSC was nothing more than a PR move by savvy Democrats intended to split the Republican caucus, paint the rest of the GOP as “extreme MAGA” by comparison, and if possible slow down or stop progress on the GOP’s agenda. During the Biden era, the PSC did little or nothing to restrain the sharp left turn taken by Joe Biden.

Oh, wait, I did forget about the PSC’s singular procedural accomplishment. They negotiated a rules package with Nancy Pelosi after the 2018 midterms that included a very key change relevant to what happened yesterday, emphasis mine:

Other reforms were promoted by the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, which conditioned its support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on her support for some changes. She agreed to ease consideration of bipartisan amendments, create a “consensus calendar” to reserve time for bills with wide bipartisan support and make it harder for extremists on the House’s wings to threaten to oust the speaker. The hoped-for effect will be to promote legislation through compromise and limit the kind of showboating that blocked achievement during the recent Republican rule.

In fairness, House Republicans took Democrats at their word about their desire to protect the Speaker’s position, and it was McCarthy who bargained that rule change away. But clearly, PSC Democrats only wanted to protect Democrat Speakers, not the institution itself. As soon as the time was right, the scorpion struck.

Now House Republicans plan to exit the PSC en masse, and for good reason, but the question should be why they were there in the first place. All they did was serve the Democrats’ narrative and provide cover for their partisan attacks and progressive agenda. If Democrats want to negotiate on policy, they can and should negotiate with all members of Congress, not whimsical “caucuses” with delusions of power. Voters elect 435 Representatives to the House, after all, not a star chamber of a few dozen to issue dictates to the rest.

Now that they’ve been stung, the frogs of the House GOP might learn a lesson about ad hoc ‘bipartisan’ caucuses and ‘gangs.’ Since they didn’t learn the lesson from the 2005 Gang of 15 and Harry Reid’s scorpion sting in 2013, though, I’d guess that the same group of naifs end up falling for the same gag, probably sooner rather than later.

Maybe the late, great Al Wilson can give them a badly needed education. They’re certainly snake-bit enough these days.

The front page image is an illustration by Kurzon of the classic fable The Scorpion and the Frog. Via Wikimedia Commons.