The House Speaker Crisis and the Transformation of the Republican Party
The last two times members of the House of Representatives had to resort to multiple ballots to elect a House Speaker tell us a lot about the present crisis. Both times the crisis resulted from a major shift in US politics and either the rise of a new party or a major shift in the role of an already existing one.
1858-9
In 1858, the Republican Party, which had suddenly emerged, won a plurality in the House. It in effect replaced the Whig Party, which contained both pro and anti-slavery forces. But by 1858 the issue of slavery had become so hot that a party combining both sides of the issue could not survive. While the Republican Party was not overtly anti-slavery, it was the political center of anti-slavery elements. Because the Republicans didn’t have an outright majority, they could not elect their own Speaker without support from another party. This battle over House Speaker indicated a fundamental realignment in US politics. That realignment could only be settled by war – the US Civil War, and the Speaker battle was a warning of that coming Civil War.