This week, a group of Republicans in the House took historic action to punish their own leader by voting Kevin McCarthy out of his speakership. As Republicans try to deal with the aftermath of the speaker-less House, the extraordinary vote to fire McCarthy has only led to greater instability.
The exceedingly implausible concept that former President Donald Trump will go to Capitol Hill on Thursday and serve as speaker for a “short period of time” was stoked by reports that he had mentioned the possibility. Then, out of nowhere, he abandoned those intentions and instead declared his support for Representative Jim Jordan.
Fox News announced on Friday morning that Jordan and Majority Leader Steve Scalise would participate in a candidate forum that would air on Monday. Both had withdrawn from the event by lunchtime due to the ensuing outcry from regular GOP members.
McCarthy even supplied his own whip! On Friday afternoon, rumours began spreading that he would step down once a new speaker was elected. He swiftly refuted rumours that he intended to resign before his term ended.
After one of the most turbulent and extraordinary weeks in House history, Republicans will return to Washington, DC, next week in the hopes of electing a new speaker and moving on. However, the Republican Party shows no signs of recovering from the internal dysfunction and rifts that precipitated McCarthy’s historic demise.
The Republican conference will hold a secret ballot next week to determine who will be the next speaker, and in the past four days, both Scalise and Jordan have amassed endorsements from their allies in an effort to position themselves as the consensus GOP candidate. However, they are running into the fact that the next GOP speaker will need practically every Republican to unite behind them in order to get the 217 votes necessary to win the speaker’s gavel, regardless of who wins the conference vote.
Many Republicans are still fuming over what happened to McCarthy, and opinions within the party are all over the map on everything from who should be the next speaker to House rules and the impending budget and Ukraine disputes.
“A lot can happen between now and then because it’s politics, but the history isn’t good,” said Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican from Nevada. A speaker before the end of next week would be lightning speed.
In spite of the confusion, Republicans may take a deep breath of relief because Trump has decided againsat visiting the Capitol next week, a notion he had toyed with before. Despite this, many sources told AWN that since endorsing the Ohio Republican, Jordan, for speaker, Trump has started making calls on his behalf.
According to those familiar with the former president’s thinking, Trump is also keeping a close eye on another leadership race: House GOP Whip Tom Emmer’s bid to succeed Scalise as majority leader. In part because of his advice to candidates last year to avoid discussing Trump on the campaign trail, Emmer has garnered the ire of the Trump universe. Sources say Trump has worries about Emmer’s candidature, but it’s uncertain if he’ll come out publicly against the only declared candidate so far.
As the drama unfolds in the House of Representatives, Democrats can only sit back and watch. After playing their hand on Tuesday by declining to come to McCarthy’s rescue, Democrats are left with few options as they wait to see who emerges as the next speaker – and their bargaining partner – with the possibility of a shutdown still lurking a little over a month away.
While moderate Republicans are still angry with Democrats for failing to save McCarthy, there is currently no effort underway that would indicate that a bipartisan solution to fixing the House is possible.
A “high-profile public humiliation”
Since McCarthy’s unexpected resignation, many Republicans have begun planning for a lengthy speaker’s election, which may delay floor proceedings until a contender emerges with 217 votes.
Neither Scalia nor Jordan appear to have secured that position at this time. Given the embarrassing 15-vote marathon in January before McCarthy won the speaker’s gavel, some Republicans have encouraged interim Speaker Patrick McHenry to shield the conference from further displays of public dysfunction, preferring to settle their internal divisions behind closed doors.
We believe it is best to resolve this issue in private. A 15-round session is unnecessary. When there was an obvious winner in the past, everyone would rally around them, but now, “we have a small group of whack jobs who do their own thing,” one Republican put it.
Another participant remarked, “There are a lot of us who think we better know when we walk on the floor – we have 217.” There’s no silver lining here, but many of us don’t think putting on such a public display of defeat is helpful for the conference or the country.
On Wednesday, before the floor vote, Republican members will meet in private to select their candidate for speaker. Since the contest is currently neck-and-neck between two candidates, whoever wins will likely not have the 217 votes necessary to pass on the House floor right away, despite the fact that he or she only needs a simple majority of the 221-member conference.
One possibility under consideration is holding many rounds of secret ballot voting until a winner is determined on the floor. The time of the actual floor vote is typically determined by the candidate who receives the most votes for speaker-designate. A leadership source has suggested that while McHenry technically will call for the floor vote, he will likely defer to the speaker-designee.
Scalia and Jordan present their cases
Over the course of the last few days, both Scalise and Jordan have been making their cases to various factions within the Republican conference. Winning over moderate Republicans is especially important since they are wary of both candidates’ politics and are still bitter over the far-right rebels who ousted McCarthy.
Trump’s endorsement of the Ohio Republican gave Jordan’s speakership bid a boost.
Given that Jordan was one of Trump’s closest allies and most visible attack dogs in Congress while he was president, the endorsement doesn’t come as much of a shock. While closed-ballot party campaigns are often marked by internal jockeying, Trump’s intervention has shown that there is more at stake in the fight for speaker than simply that.
Jordan has presented himself as the candidate who can unite the competing wingnuts within the Republican Party. Jordan told AWN’s Manu Raju on Friday, “Someone has to (run) who can bring the team together and can go communicate to the country,” and that’s why he’s running.
One of the most successful fundraisers for the Republican Party, Scalise has served as House Majority Leader McCarthy’s number two. According to sources, he has argued to members that he has more conservative bona fides than McCarthy and the expertise, staff operation, and institutional understanding to rule the Republican conference.
He made his case for the speakership on Friday, laying out his platform and highlighting some of his main goals, including the so-called weaponization of government, expenditure cutbacks, and border security, all of which are major problems on the right.
The rules of the House may also spark a fight.
There’s more at stake in the speaker’s campaign than merely finding the best person for the job. The GOP conference is still deeply divided over how to deal with the looming prospect of a federal shutdown next month, the call for more help to Ukraine, and the House rules that were used to remove McCarthy.
McCarthy’s supporters are pushing for rule changes that would make it more difficult for Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who filed the “motion to vacate” that led to McCarthy’s resignation, or other staunch conservatives, to take such action against a future speaker.
Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) announced last week that he wants to debate rule changes before holding speaker elections, saying, “I think before we have a single discussion about the speaker, we’ve got to discuss the functionality of the position.”
As the interim budget deal that McCarthy helped pass with Democratic votes expires in mid-November, some Republicans are worried about what will happen, especially those in vulnerable districts that President Joe Biden carried. There is little agreement within the House GOP on what to do about more help for Ukraine, while conservative hardliners are seeking severe expenditure cutbacks that are non-starters with Senate Democrats and the White House.
The Democrats are sitting on the bench.
On Friday, while expressing his willingness to work with whoever is elected speaker of the House, Vice President Biden took aim at House Republicans.
Stop playing around now. At a White House gathering on Friday to celebrate the economy’s better-than-expected job results, Vice President Joe Biden remarked to Republicans in the House, “It’s time for you to do your job.” The American people are waiting and watching, so let’s get to work for them.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has virtually no chance of being elected speaker if the Democrats have any say in the matter. Biden and Senate Democrats, who have made preventing a government shutdown and approving further aid to Ukraine high priorities for the next fall, will have little time to hash out these issues once Republicans pick on a party leader.
Both will be more challenging for McCarthy’s replacement, whoever wins the speakership.
Jeffries defended the Democrats’ choice to vote out McCarthy in an opinion piece he penned for the Washington Post on Friday. He argued that Republicans have rejected consensual revisions to House rules. Jeffries advocated for a House reform to make it easier for members of both parties to work together.
The Democratic leader argued that the House’s rules should reflect the “inescapable reality” that Republicans need Democratic backing to carry out core governmental functions. We shouldn’t let a few radicals derail our efforts to work together.
It’s possible that some Democrats and Republicans could work together to elect a compromise candidate for speaker. As a result of the Democrats’ inability to save McCarthy, many Republicans are considering leaving the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group formed to find bipartisan solutions, in anger.
