Clarence Page, syndicated columnist

The “clown show,” as some call the power struggle among Republicans in the House, has brought a special joy to Democrats. For a change, somebody else is being called “the party in disarray.”

That’s obvious after Kevin McCarthy on  Tuesday became the first speaker of the House in history to be voted out of the office. The House now needs to do what got them into this mess: elect a new speaker. That is, if anyone wants to subject themselves to the job of being spear-catcher.

That’s what the job has become for a Republican House caucus taken over by a power-hungry minority, the far-right faction led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who seem to prize attention over governance.

The trouble began when House Republicans narrowly averted a government shutdown but were angry about it. They were upset because McCarthy had committed what the new factional leaders call the mortal sin of compromising with some Democrats to win just enough votes to — horrors! — keep the government’s lights on until at least mid-November.

To win their support for his pursuit of the speakership, the dissident Republicans forced McCarthy to accept changes in the procedure known as “motion to vacate,” a resolution that is used to remove a presiding officer from a position. The maneuver has been tried before but never successfully — until now.

Under the old rule passed by a Democrat-controlled House in 2019, only a party leader or a majority of one party could hold a vote to force a motion to vacate. The new Republican-backed change put McCarthy on an even shorter leash. It empowered any single dissatisfied member to hold a vote to force McCarthy out.

Gaetz, who seems never to have found a TV camera or microphone that he didn’t like, thrust himself in front of the media as leader of the rebellion. What was McCarthy to do? As the deadline for passing a short-term funding bill neared, he did what he had promised his fellow partisans that he would not do. He welcomed the votes of Democrats to pass the short-term funding bill, keep the government’s lights on, and the paychecks for government workers and their families flowing.

Gaetz was predictably livid. He decried McCarthy’s betrayal with the addition of a little Donald Trump-style conspiracy theorizing to spice up his argument: He claimed that McCarthy had struck a side deal on the sly with President Joe Biden on aid for Ukraine.

But at least some members of his own conference had had enough of Gaetz’s antics.

“Wake up, dude,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, said to CNN host Jake Tapper on Monday, referring to Gaetz. “This is absolutely ridiculous, and it’s just him trying to latch on to something else to create chaos and try to use it as a vehicle to remove the speaker.”

Gaetz’s shenanigans are actually getting in the way of Republican efforts to work with the House speaker to cut spending and advance other conservative causes.

“The American people should understand that what he is doing is not conservative,” Lawler said. “It is not conservative Republicanism. He is a charlatan.”

Harsh. But not inappropriate. It’s also contrary to the wishes of the far-right-winners-take-all extremists.

As the new week began, you didn’t have to be a liberal or a Democrat to sound fed up with Gaetz and Co. Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, who was an iconic conservative as House speaker in the 1990s, called Gaetz an “anti-Republican who has become actively destructive to the conservative movement” in a commentary published by The Washington Post.

Instead of hopping from one TV talk show to another, Gingrich suggested, House Republicans should get serious and focus on such timely Republican beefs as immigration policy, border security, spending cuts and advancement of their impeachment inquiry into Biden.

Sure, that impeachment inquiry appears to be shedding a lot more heat than light. (Benghazi, anyone?) But I suppose it is easier to talk about Hunter Biden’s scandalous drunk-guy photos than to mention the four criminal indictments containing a total of 91 felony charges against Trump, the GOP’s presidential front-runner.

I don’t blame the MAGA crowd for being embarrassed by their standard-bearer. But, Democrats can’t afford to get too comfortable about GOP misfortunes. Disarray seldom stays in just one party for long.