TX Democrat Joaquin Castro on GOP Speaker Chaos

GOP Congressman Kevin McCarthy shocked political insiders by dropping out of the race for Speaker. The representative from California was plagued by his admission that the Republican Benghazi hearings were simply a tool to bring down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.

Turns out that the overtly political Benghazi committee hearings finally took down a politician - but it was a Republican.

Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro responded to the breaking news with a series of tweets:

(1) The legislative branch is basically broken. The last two sessions of congress were the least productive in American history.

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 8, 2015

(2) The Speaker election is an opportunity to break through the gridlock. But tradition in Washington must change to achieve it.

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 8, 2015

(3) In TX & other state legislatures Rs and Ds work together to elect a Speaker from the majority party who will govern fairly, effectively.

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 8, 2015

(4) I hope that a Republican w enough support among Rs and a willingness to work with Ds will emerge that we can consider supporting.

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 8, 2015

Rep. Castro has made similar remarks before, in an interview with the Texas Observer in May 2014:

TO: If you could change that, do you really think we’d see a change in the way Congress works?

JC: I think you could make changes that would be conducive to bipartisanship and to productivity, yeah. I’ll give you a perfect example. Look at what happened in 2009 in the Texas Legislature. In 2009, there were 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats [in the House] and about 60-something Democrats teamed up with 11 Republicans and elected a moderate Republican speaker. Here, you vote by party—Republicans vote for Boehner, and we, of course, vote for Nancy Pelosi.

It’s crossed my mind that we could essentially do what we did in Texas that time. If you were able to get a group of moderate Republicans to vote with Democrats, you could elect a new speaker of the House. The challenge is, of course, the traditions and customs of this place are so partisan that, at the moment at least, that seems beyond the vision of many folks.