Correspondence Between Donald J. Norman and the Deputy Speaker of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill & the Associated Lobbyists

If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not given it to his leadership team in order to keep them from speculating about the speakership race. Instead, he has been spotted in recent days around the Capitol and the Republican National Committee headquarters nearby with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is among his closest confidants.

Mr. Norman, who has described himself as a “hard no” against Mr. McCarthy, declined to discuss his call with Mr. Trump, describing it as a “private conversation.” He said he was still undecided about whom he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not respond to requests for comment.

When Nancy Pelosi was unable to obtain the necessary votes to become speaker, she quietly picked off the defectors, cutting deals to get the support she needed. Ms. Pelosi won over her only challenger by agreeing to limit her tenure, which she promised to implement, and she also won over a number of her caucus when she decided to create a subcommittee chairmanship.

The California Republican has already made a series of pledges in an effort to appease the right flank of his party. He traveled to the southern border and called on Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings. He promised Ms. Greene a spot on the Oversight Committee even though she was stripped of committee assignments due to her violent social media posts.

He promised to conduct public hearings on the security breakdown that led to the attack on the Capitol. He has been quietly meeting with ultraconservative lawmakers in an effort to win them over. And on Monday night, he publicly encouraged his members to vote against the lame-duck spending bill to fund the government.

In an opinion essay, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is running as a protest candidate in the speaker race, noted that Mr. McCarthy had said before the midterm elections that he did not see grounds for impeaching any Biden administration officials. Mr. McCarthy recently made a threat against the homeland security secretary.

McCarthy is acting in a way that might allow him to reach power even if the speaker requires him to violate democratic values because he is acting in a way most likely to allow him to reach power.

Trying to Make the Most Of Donald Trump’s Extremism: When Will McCarthy and Mayorkas Succeed to Make America Great Again?

The tiny GOP House majority that takes over in January, after a disappointing midterm performance, would mean a fragile governing mandate for any party at any point in American history. Even a more comfortable majority would have been more volatile because of the ideological fight being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party.

The California Republican is fighting a rearguard battle against members who want to make it easier to eject a sitting speaker and he’s appeasing ex-President Donald Trump’s extremism and that of acolytes like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to save a narrow political power base propping up his dream of running the House.

Once an avuncular and smooth-talking GOP rising star, McCarthy has adopted some of the confrontational defiance of the “Make America Great Again” movement, seeming to seek out soundbite clashes with the press as badges of honor.

This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.

The question now is whether it’s worth it for McCarthy but for anyone with ambition who has to make choices between their beliefs and what they’re willing to compromise.

So showing voters in 2024 that GOP governance addressed key problems like inflation and the economy will be important. But while he has announced he will form a select committee to examine China’s growing threat, which could unite both parties, most of McCarthy’s recent rhetoric has focused on a relentless set of investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives’ interest in impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

McCarthy replied that she believed she was being facetious when she said she was being inflammatory. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with his attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, for which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.

The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.

CNN’s Raju and Melanie Zanona reported Tuesday that McCarthy had signaled at the White House meeting that he’d be open to a large bill. The Senate Republican leader,Mitch McConnell, worked on the measure Tuesday, and declared it “broadly appealing”, but the Speaker of the House, McCarthy, told his members that he was against the measure.

It raises the possibility that it will become difficult for some Republican senators to support a spending deal now, as conservative media has taken up McCarthy’s line.

One thing the California Republican does have going for his dreams of the top job is the fact that there so far is not a strong alternative to his candidacy. GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, has launched a long-shot bid.

The inability to pick a speaker on the first ballot in a century raises an ominous question, “If lawmakers can’t pick a speaker, how can they deal with real issues like rising debt ceiling or responding to a potential recession?”

The Last Two Years of Speakership: What Happened to Sen. Jeff Sessions, Matt Gaetz, and Rep. J.McCoyne

For now, McCarthy remains defiant in the face of opposition, with people close to him summing up his mentality as this: “We’re going to war,” a senior GOP source tells CNN. It’s never worth backing down.

After all, the speaker of the House, in addition to conducting the House’s business and being a key cog in the process of passing legislation important to people, is also a leader in party messaging.

The second ballot was dominated by McCarthy, with 203 votes compared to 19 votes for Jim Jordan. Jordan, to show that he is not vying for the job, nominated McCarthy ahead of the vote on the second ballot. McCarthy critics still voted for Jordan despite the move.

Conservatives were given carte blanche by the Republicans to make demands when a red wave never materialized.

What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.

“Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House is someone who has sold their shares for a long time,” Matt Gaetz said before nominating Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for speaker.

None of it has been enough. Congress adjourned Tuesday without McCarthy – or anyone – as speaker after three ballots of voting, the first time the voting has gone beyond one round in 100 years.

The Benghazi Special Committee: Putting on steroids Tea Party Republicans and anti-Establishment intransigence after the Tea Party wave

It can be traced back to the Tea Party, and put on steroids by MAGA Trumpism, to the rise of anti-establishment intransigence in the GOP.

Republicans rode the Tea Party wave to win the House in 2010, but the cost was steep. Five years of trying to get things done, even with each other, frustrated John Boehner, who was the speaker and fought over raising the debt ceiling.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy is on Fox News. “But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are going down.

The purpose of the investigation was to find out what happened in the attack on the American Embassy in Libya, which left four people dead, not to hurt Clinton. But Clinton, who was secretary of state in the Obama administration, was the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146814718/this-was-supposed-to-be-kevin-mccarthys-moment-instead-gop-chaos-reigns

The Case of McCarthy’s “Burning Down the House: Speaker vote opening act for two years of tail risk” and what he’s telling CNN

McCarthy didn’t believe he could stick to his criticism after the insurrection, so he took a photo with Trump at his Florida home.

In the upcoming election, Trump endorsed more than one hundred candidates. They did well in the primary, but some lost in swing districts.

At the 11th hour, he tried to play tough guy, threatening the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments. It looked like the reverse effect of what his allies were intending had been done.

There is some question as to how hard Trump tried. He hasn’t posted anything on his social media platform in the days leading up to the vote and on the day of it.

At the end of the day, the job of speaker isn’t supposed to be about one person’s ambition but what they can get done to fix problems in the country, and this is taking place at a time when people are already cynical about the intentions of politicians in Washington and what they are trying to accomplish.

For all the talk in Washington of “Dems in disarray,” this is again another example of the chaos that continues to surround House Republicans. With just a four-seat majority, how can they govern if they’re going through all this just to pick a leader?

The drama playing out in Congress is a reminder that you should be careful with what you wish for. While gridlock might be good for markets and the economy, complete paralysis is bad because, every so often, government needs to get stuff done.

“This is not gridlock so much as a rudderless ship without a captain,” Chris Krueger of Cowen Washington Research Group wrote in a note titled, “Burning down the House: Speaker vote opening act for 2 years of tail risk.”

One New York Stock Exchange trader, a self-described conservative, told CNN on Tuesday the situation in the House is “disturbing” because it suggests lawmakers will struggle to get even more important things done.

It’s not real, it is a joke. There is no way the party can get its stuff together. It’s a disgrace,” said the trader, who requested anonymity to discuss the situation candidly.

The Debt Ceiling, the Jobs Report, and the First Three Years of the U.S. Senate Republican Reionization Resurrection

Congress is divided, and Republicans are skeptical about corporate America, which makes it hard to know how the debate over the debt ceiling will play out.

In the past, brinksmanship over the debt ceiling eventually gave way to a compromise, though often not until significant pressure was applied by business leaders, financial markets — or both.

“Our concern is that an increasingly populist GOP is less tied to big business influence, while a narrow majority amplifies their influence,” Benjamin Salisbury, director of research at Height Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

A recession and how long the Fed will fight against inflation are the biggest questions facing the US economy.

The jobs report will be the focus of investors later this week as well as McCarthy and efforts to cool down the labor market.

Andrew Frankel, co-president of Stuart Frankel, dismissed the House speaker race as a “big, fat nothing-burger” for the market and said it was “just noise.”

And yet the stalemate in the House underscores how hard it will be for lawmakers to aggressively respond to a potential recession or another crisis in the next two years.

A recession is the most probable outcome, according to former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.

Thomas Balcerski: A History of the House of Representatives: The 1923 Midterm Election of Nathaniel P. Banks

The Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor is Thomas Balcerski, who also is a Long-term fellow at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. He is the author of a book about two people: James Buchanan and William Rufus King. He tweets about presidential history @tbalcerski. The opinions that are expressed by him are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The House deadlocked 13 times prior to the Civil War, with the speaker’s job being up for grabs. The stalemates typically fell into two categories: those resulting from when the two-party system itself was in flux, and, less commonly but most tellingly for today’s moment, when a vocal minority within the dominant party refused to support the majority’s candidate.

In either instance, a compromise of some sort – whether by choosing a new candidate for speaker or by placating the splinter faction in some significant way – has usually been the result. If history is any guide, we may once again be living a version of one of these two scenarios.

The speaker’s race was its most serious challenge yet. Without enough Democrats or former Whigs to obtain a majority, a compromise candidate was found in Nathaniel P. Banks, a member of the nativist American Party. Banks, who became speaker after 133 ballots held over two months, defeated Democratic challenger, William Aiken, Jr., of South Carolina, whose backers hoped that a plurality resolution would once again capture the votes of competing factions. Instead, Banks defeated Aiken on February 2, 1856.

An emergency meeting was held between the Republican majority leader Nicholas LongWORTH of Ohio and the radical group, which was represented by Rep. John M. Nelson of Wisconsin. Gillett became speaker after the House agreed to a number of procedural reforms.

In 1923, the first choice of the western Republicans was challenged by a progressive group. The progressives think that the party’s existing orthodoxy was due to the results of the 1922 midterm election, in which Republicans had seen their majority reduced, when they wanted to change the House’s rules to allow more legislation to reach the floor.

From left, Representatives Bob Good of Virginia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida applauded after Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania nominated Byron Donalds for speaker on Wednesday.

The devil is in the details: Reply to Gaetz, Bishop, Donalds, and other senators asking for rewrite of the chamber rules

The monthslong effort by Mr. McCarthy to appease them has been a flop, raising questions about his vote-counting abilities, and whether they can ever be appeased.

Some have advocated that they can, and the California Republican has agreed to a number of their demands in order to break the logjam in Congress.

It appears particularly personal for Mr. Gaetz, who emerged from a closed-door meeting on Wednesday to declare the Republican leader “a desperate man” and pledge that he would “vote all night, all week, all month — and never for that person.” He voted for Donald J. Trump.

She went on television to support her stance against Mr. McCarthy even as pressure mounted from Mr. Trump. And she scoffed on Thursday at the notion Mr. McCarthy’s many concessions would be sufficient to deliver him the votes to become speaker.

Representative Bob Good of Virginia made itclear on Thursday that he wouldn’t be swayed by Mr. McCarthy’s side.

And there are some reports that a few of the lawmakers are angling to lead specific committees, though some of Mr. McCarthy’s supporters have pointedly noted that such decisions are up to a separate group of Republican lawmakers, not just the speaker.

The Representative who is the former chief of staff to Ted Cruz is one of the members who have called for a rewrite of the chamber rules. It also includes Dan Bishop of North Carolina and Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a second-term Republican who emerged as a consensus pick for Mr. McCarthy’s foes on Wednesday. (Mr. Donalds has openly said he does not want the position, but since joined negotiations.)

They included allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that would effectively codify a standing threat that Mr. McCarthy would be at the mercy of hard-right lawmakers at all times, and could be removed instantly if he crossed them.

The Representative of South Carolina has shown an openness to negotiation. When asked if he would be open to voting for Mr. McCarthy after the new round of concessions, he replied: “The devil is in the details.”

Several of the lawmakers who have declined to back Mr. McCarthy have not answered questions about what would be needed to convince them to drop their objections, or avoided a grilling from conservative media outlets.

The lawmaker who voted for someone other than Mr. McCarthy was Montana’s Representative Matt Rosendale, along with representatives from Illinois and Maryland.

Some of the lawmakers have pushed for votes on specific bills, like legislation requiring term limits for lawmakers. The Rules Committee is where legislation receives votes and when debate on the House floor takes place.

Why is Congress so big? John Farrell’s stories of the past 150 years, and his legacy as an advocate for a better future

The election is the longest in more than 150 years and Mr. McCarthy sent his emissaries Thursday night to finalize terms with the rebels.

What do they want? The right-wing rebellion against Mr. McCarthy is rooted not just in personal animosity, but also an ideological drive. The holdouts want Congress to make it simpler to limit the size of the federal government.

There is an alternative to McCarthy. A big factor in Mr. McCarthy’s favor is that no viable candidate has emerged to challenge him, but Republicans could coalesce around someone else. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican in the House, is seen by many as the most obvious backup.

How does this end? House precedent requires that members take votes until someone gets the majority to prevail. The House is meaningless until a speaker is chosen. Its members can’t swear or pass laws.

You’ve likely heard lots about how unprecedented the repeated failed votes for Speaker have been, or at least that it hasn’t happened in about a century. Is this a new level of problem for Congress?

To answer that question, we’ve turned to author and historian John Farrell. He wrote biographies of the former House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Senator Ted Kennedy while he was a journalist.

I think it’s part of a continuing deterioration of order on Capitol Hill that really dates back to the Berlin Wall coming down and the end of the Cold War. There was no need for us to stop fighting once we were free of the common enemy. The golden era of World War II through the 1950s and ’60s is over. We’re back to where we were during the 1920s, 1880s, or 1850s.

It’s not coincidental that the huge Speaker battles occurred in the four or five years before the Civil War, when America was struggling with big economic and regional issue like slavery. It has been very rare in the 20th century and so far in this century, but could be a sign of things to come.

When did America get its start? What did you learn from Nixon and Jordan when you were born a teenager? How did you grow up in a small world?

It may be a new low, but things were never golden, really. You had Richard Nixon coming to power as a young congressman by joining the red hunters in the McCarthy era. You had Newt Gingrich in the 1990s convincing the Republicans that they needed to be nastier. Jim Jordan, a regular member, began his career as a bomb thrower as a member of the Freedom Caucus.

Over time, these guys see a path in the institution and they become institutionalists. There’s always room for a more exciting member of the group to make their name.

I don’t think you should ever underestimate individual careerism. The different wrinkle this time around is that the social media and the cable news atmosphere seems to be providing almost a reward in itself. When you watch TV shows on cable, you write on social media, and you become popular on your own. You don’t need to depend on the Republican Party to get donations. Even though you are free of the constraints that were associated with a Gingrich era, you still had to be patient because of the big party donors.

If you’re a bar owner in Rifle, Colorado, that has a life of solitude and obscurity, and suddenly you are a national media person duking it out with Sean Hannity on Fox News, you might want to consider getting a business journal or an article written about you. And you don’t really care if there’s an ideological payback down the line.

I don’t think they are telling us a lot. I think that they tell us that in the short term, you can expect more chaos. We have just left a presidency in which the president was impeached twice. Politics was always intended to be a spectacle, therefore it’s a spectacle. The wisdom of the founders made politics in this country a game of mud wrestling and no one was going to walk away with power. Yes, we undertook a revolution against King George. But in the early days, the founding fathers were just as suspicious and worried about the parliament having too much power. It’s all supposed to be a balance. And balance means that there’s going to be lots of stalemates, and there’s going to be times of chaos.