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The ongoing drama over electing a speaker of the House is not about governance. It’s about giving Republican voters the drama-filled reality show they voted for and want to see—even at the expense of the country.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Self-checkout is a failed experiment. What conservatives misunderstand about radicalism at universities Hezbollah watches and waits. Four misconceptions about the war in Gaza

What the Voters Wanted

Like many Americans, I have been both fascinated and horrified by the inability of the Republican majority to elect a new speaker of the House. I admit to watching the votes like I’m rubbernecking at a car wreck, but perhaps that’s not a good analogy, because I at least feel pity for the victims of a traffic accident. What’s happening in the House is more like watching a group of obnoxious (and not very bright) hot-rodders playing chicken and smashing their cars into one another over and over.

As I watch all of this Republican infighting, I wonder, as I often do, about GOP voters. What is it that they think will happen if Jim Jordan becomes speaker? Jordan has been in Congress for 16 years, and he has almost nothing to show for it. He’s never originated any successful legislation, never whipped votes, never accomplished anything except for appearing on Fox and serving up rancid red meat to his Ohio constituents and MAGA allies.

And therefore, as speaker, he would … what? Order up more impeachments, perhaps of Biden-administration officials? Shut down the government? Pound the gavel and prattle on for hours in his never-take-a-breath style? (Jordan’s the kind of guy who probably would have interrupted the Sermon on the Mount.) Perhaps from a position of greater power, he could more effectively assist Donald Trump in undermining yet another election in 2024.

Maybe that’s why Trump endorsed him for speaker.

Is that what Republican voters really want? Apparently so; as my friend Sarah Longwell, the founder of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, told my Atlantic colleague Ronald Brownstein, “Even if he doesn’t make it, because the majorities are so slim, you can’t argue that Jim Jordan doesn’t represent the median Republican today.”

And that is the part we tend to overlook when we’re focused on the drama inside the Capitol: The disorder in the GOP caucus is not some accident or glitch triggered by a handful of reprobates, but rather a direct result of choices by voters. The House is a mess because enough Republican voters want it to be a mess.

This accusation might seem unfair: Jordan is just one member from a super-red (and blatantly gerrymandered) district, and many of his Republican colleagues are furious about this humiliating bungle. But right-wing voters have shown no inclination to punish people such as Matt Gaetz and other political vandals; indeed, Gaetz and his like-minded colleagues are rapidly becoming folk heroes in the Republican Party.

It’s not much consolation to recognize that the Republicans are now the party their voters want them to be. Their antics endanger us all, especially during multiple international crises when the United States needs to be unified and effective both at home and abroad. But to treat the GOP as merely dysfunctional is worse than a distraction; it is a fundamental error that offers the false hope that a mature and governing majority is somehow within reach, if only Jordan or Gaetz would get out of the way.

The real problem is that many Republican voters have now completely internalized the cynicism of Trump and the GOP opportunists around him, and they draw no connection between national politics and the ongoing health and security of the United States. These voters rely on everyone else (including those Americans they deride as the “deep state”) to keep the country functioning. They vote for masters of performative nonsense, such as Jordan and Gaetz, who do nothing for the “forgotten” working families in the places that the MAGA movement claims have been left behind by the rest of us.

The twists and turns of the Trump years, in which many elected Republicans became big spenders, critics of law enforcement, and apologists for the Kremlin, illustrated that MAGA voters have almost no interest in anything like conservatism, or even in coherent policy. Instead, they want to indulge resentments and grievances that have little to do with government and everything to do with boredom and dissatisfaction in their own lives. A few years ago, I wrote a book about how such voters project that anger and sourness onto everything around them. Their ennui spurs their desire to see chaos, so they argue that the existing order needs to be shaken up, or burned down, or defunded.

They think this way because they have never had to live under a government that has actually been shaken up, burned down, or defunded. Jordan and his colleagues (who have made entire careers out of encouraging such nihilism) are poor leaders but good politicians. They deliver what their voters really want: show trials and passion plays, and, mostly, to see other people unsettled and angry. These citizens vote not for determined legislators with complicated plans—that stuff is just so boring—but for entertaining rogues who can liven up the Fox prime-time hours.

Years ago, I thought that Republican voters would demand changes from the party if the GOP lost enough elections. But even losses don’t seem to matter in a party that is clearly more comfortable with performance art centered on imaginary grievances than with actual governing. The shenanigans of the past two weeks might even cost the Republicans control of the House in the next election—that’s one reason Jordan’s colleagues are trying to stop him—but that political collapse might not matter to right-wing voters. They’ll get another episode of their favorite show—and for them, maybe that’s enough.

Related:

The threat to democracy is coming from inside the U.S. House. Jim Jordan could have a long fight ahead.

Today’s News

President Joe Biden visited Tel Aviv and backed Israel’s claims that it had no involvement in the al-Ahli Arab Hospital attack in Gaza City. A 4.2-magnitude earthquake struck Northern California, affecting Sacramento County and sections of the Bay Area. The Venezuelan government and opposition party have struck a deal to work toward fairer elections in 2024.

Dispatches

The Weekly Planet: The insurance industry’s climate math is brutal, Zoë Schlanger writes. Sometimes, an uninsurable town can become uninhabitable.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Courtesy of Matthew Cox / The Atlantic

The Con Man Who Became a True-Crime Writer

By Rachel Monroe

Last April, I received an odd email from a man named Matthew Cox. “I am an inmate at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida,” he wrote. “I’m also a true crime writer.” He had one year left on his sentence and was “attempting to develop a body of work that will allow me to exit prison with a new career.” He included a story about a fellow inmate who’d been ensnared in a complicated currency-trading scam, hoping that I’d write about it for The Atlantic.

“This is fascinating,” I replied. I didn’t mean the currency-trading scam, which was too procedural for my tastes, but Cox’s own trajectory. He described himself as “an infamous con man writing his fellow inmates’ true crime stories while immersed in federal prison.” I’d never had a possible subject pitch his own tale so aptly. I wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

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Culture Break

Illustration by Ben Kothe. Source: Getty.

Read. In Wellness, Nathan Hill recounts a love story, but also much, much more.

Watch. Wes Anderson’s renditions of Roald Dahl’s short stories (streaming on Netflix) ask us to think actively—even skeptically—about what we’re seeing.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

Lately, as I’ve been indulging my habit of watching vintage television from the 1960s and ’70s, I’ve noticed how often I encounter William Windom. He was a mainstay of my childhood television days, and when I mentioned him on social media, I realized how many folks out there remember him as fondly as I do. He was a remarkable character actor (the other night, I saw him on both Mannix and Barney Miller), and he even brought some gravitas as the president in Escape From the Planet of the Apes. Many of us of a certain age, however, remember his starring role in My World and Welcome to It, based on the humor and cartoons of James Thurber, which ran for only one season yet is still beloved by many.

But I will always have a soft spot for Windom because of two roles. One, famous among Star Trek nerds like me, was his 1967 turn as Commodore Matt Decker, the tormented Starfleet officer who loses his ship and crew to an alien doomsday machine. He was also the star of one of Night Gallery’s best stories, a 1971 segment titled “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” about a man facing loss and nostalgia as he enters middle age. “Tim Riley’s Bar,” written by Rod Serling, was a different kind of episode for Night Gallery, and it was nominated for an Emmy.

Movie stars are great, but give me a solid character actor like Windom any day.

— Tom

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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