What Kevin McCarthy has not said about the New York Senator, the final report of the House GOP Caucus Committee, or the 2020 presidential campaign to overturn

What McCarthy said has been what he has not said. He’s remained utterly silent on the scandals enveloping incoming GOP Rep. George Santos of New York (who Greene has vociferously defended) and the revelations in the final report from the January 6 committee that multiple members of the GOP caucus were intimately involved in then-President Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election. (The committee especially singled out incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan as, in its words, “a significant player in President Trump’s efforts.”)

The Biden administration continues to rely on a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule, known as Title 42, that allows border authorities to turn migrants away at the US-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere, US border encounters topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. More than 1 million people were turned away under Title 42.

“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. It doesn’t mean that something won’t be used at other times.

McCarthy supports Ukraine. I think there needs to be accountability going forward. You always need a check, but make sure the resources are going to where you need them. Congress must have the ability to debate it openly.

Again asked how he’ll handle members of his own party who spread dangerous conspiracy theories, McCarthy responded: “I’ve watched people on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “If I’m speaker, I’ll be the speaker for the whole House. So it won’t be looking at just Republicans. We will be looking at the Democrats as well.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, made a vow that he wouldn’t leave, even if the fight goes to many votes on the floor.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: If Congress is Going to Go Beyond the Border Wall, What Will She Do? Democratic Democrat Rep. Karen McCarthy tells CNN about the Mexico Immigrant Crisis

The controversial policy where migrants were forced to remain in Mexico while they wait for their immigration proceedings in the United States has led to calls for a new policy.

McCarthy said that first you have to stop the poison from coming from China and then give the resources that the border agents need, and make sure that anyone who wants to move it can.

Most bills will be primarily messaging endeavors, unlikely to overcome the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, though they would have to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the national borrowing limit at some point next year. McCarthy signaled that Republicans are willing to risk a debt default if they demand spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling.

“If you’re going to give a person a higher limit, wouldn’t you first say you should change your behavior, so you just don’t keep raising and all the time?” he said. You should not say, “I’m going to allow you to spend money.” Nobody should do that in a household.

McCarthy acknowledged Republicans were willing to raise the debt ceiling under Trump, but said the calculus is different now because Democrats spent trillions of dollars under Biden.

When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You don’t want to be in a default.

To that end, McCarthy has vowed to reinstate freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to her committee assignments, despite being stripped of her assignments by Democrats last year for her inflammatory remarks.

When asked if he has any restrictions about which committees Greene can serve, McCarthy – who will have a direct say in doling out those assignments – said “no.” Greene has previously told CNN she wants a seat on the House Oversight Committee, which will play a key role in GOP-led investigations in a majority.

“She’s going to have committees to serve on, just like every other member … Members request different committees and as we go through the steering committee, we’ll look at it,” he said. “She can put through the committees she wants, just like any other member in our conference that gets elected.”

What is the right strategy for a speaker? Greene’s frustration at the GOP-controlled Speaker’s race in Georgia and the Five Families

Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was upset that 19 Republicans decided to blow up the speaker’s race, because she felt that the party was going against its goals. (Greene backs McCarthy).

“The first thing I’ll ask the president to do is not to call half the nation idiots or say things about them because they have a difference of opinion,” he said. “I think leadership matters, and I think it probably starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

There needs to be a “frank conversation” about who they choose for the top job after hearing that multiple of their friends and acquaintances question the wisdom of proceeding forward with that leadership.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line.

The Freedom Caucus, a group that includes dozens of hardline members, have been meeting in Washington, DC, this week for their new member orientation, where they have begun to plot out their strategy for the speaker’s race. With a slimmer-than-expected majority, they see an opportunity, and are planning to use their leverage to get more power in a GOP-led House.

McCarthy’s Friday afternoon call was with the so-called “Five Families,” who represent the various ideological groups in the House GOP. The California Republican outlined some of the demands from the right he was willing to give in to, such as establishing a broad investigative panel to centralize probes into the Biden administration.

How Will We Get What We Want: CNN Update on the House of Representatives After the Midterm Debacle and its Report from the Senate Minority Caucus

CNN has yet to project which party will have control of the House of Representatives, though as of Friday morning, CNN has projected that Republicans have 211 seats to Democrats’ 198.

According to Norman, the group is hoping to make a longer list of rules changes. They are also pushing to delay next week’s internal leadership elections, though there is no indication McCarthy plans to do so.

When asked whether McCarthy should get credit for delivering the majority, Norman responded: “The taxpayers that voted the representatives in deserve the credit.”

The argument McCarthy supporters have posed is that there is no serious alternative, no mystical consensus candidate that has 218 votes locked up, waiting in the wings. A new speaker will be chosen on the second ballot after Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who is against McCarthy, said on Fox News that he would vote against McCarthy.

Gaetz said that the C team should be starting with a slim majority. “We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.”

House and Senate Republicans are gearing up for a tense series of closed-door meetings this week as the GOP grapples with what went wrong in the midterms and decides the political fate of its current leaders, who are under fire following last week’s disappointing election results.

And in the Senate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling his colleagues over the last several days to shore up his support as his team plans to plow forward with leadership elections on Wednesday despite grumbling by a faction of dissenters who are trying to slam the brakes after their midterm debacle. On Tuesday, they will have a GOP air clearing session.

GOP sources with knowledge of the situation said that the Arizona lawmaker, a former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, is considering challenging McCarthy in the leadership elections on Tuesday. McCarthy’s team has been prepared for this possibility.

Rick Scott is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial committee and said that it makes no sense to have the Senate leadership election this week.

What is our plan, what are we doing? What do we stand for?” Scott said Sunday on Fox News. The leadership in the Republican Senate tells us that we cannot have a plan and will run against how bad the Democrats are. They actually fall into the Democrats. Now they want to quickly vote in the election. We haven’t even finished what’s happened in Georgia.”

The race for House GOP whip – a position that will only open up if Republicans win the majority – was already competitive, though Rep. Tom Emmer, who chairs the House GOP’s campaign arm, was seen as having the edge since he was likely to be rewarded if they had a strong night.

They are putting out an agenda, they have been measuring the drapes. They haven’t won it yet,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “After the election is concluded, depending on who was in the majority, there’ll be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward.”

With the full House and Senate coming back to Washington this week for the first time since the elections, it is likely that the finger pointing will intensify.

But others in the party have placed the blame squarely on Trump, whose hand-picked candidates failed in key Senate races that determined control of the Senate. McConnell’s group spent more than any other group in Senate races, but Trump’s group spent less than the other groups.

“There’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses,” said retiring Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. “I think my party needs to face the fact that if fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, we’re probably not going to do really well.”

McConnell and Scott have also been publicly at odds all election cycle when it comes to strategy, with McConnell sounding the alarm about candidate quality while Scott opted to take a hands-off approach in the primaries.

When pressed on whether he would challenge McConnell for the top spot, Scott didn’t rule it out — even though he would have little chance of succeeding.

“Well, we’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “And the difficulty here is that you know, we are the only Republican entity stopping the Biden administration. We are going to be the only ones who can go forward. It would give the committee time to set up, and it would take time to get the work done.

The senior Republican told CNN that political physicists say you cannot appease the moderates and HFC at the same time. “If you straddle that fence, you better hope it’s not barbed wire.”

A shakeup in House Democratic leadership: a candidate forum and election results for the Republican caucus chairman Candidate, J. D. Scalise

Scalise, who is in line to serve as House Majority leader, released an agenda for the first two weeks of January. He pledged the House would vote on measures to cancel the boost in funding to hire more IRS agents, and bills dealing with border security and abortion. The House committees cannot form until the new session starts, members cannot be sworn in until then, and the rest of the business is held up until there is a speaker.

It would set the stage for a major shakeup in House Democratic leadership and mark the end of an era for Washington if Pelosi didn’t run for the leadership post. The move would kick off a fight for her successor that could expose divisions within the party as other prominent members of the party look to move up the leadership ladder.

A candidate forum and leadership elections for the Republicans will be held on Tuesday, November 15 according to a schedule shared with CNN.

The first election on November 30 will be for the next House Democratic Caucus Chair and whoever is elected to that role will administer the rest of the leadership elections.

To be elected to any position in Democratic leadership, a candidate needs to win a majority among those present and voting. The candidate with the least votes after the first round will be eliminated and the candidate with the most votes will go through to the second round. That process continues until one candidate wins a majority.

But if enough members of the Freedom Caucus withhold their support, it could imperil his speaker bid or force him to make deals to weaken the speakership, something he has long resisted.

Emmer said he doesn’t know if a smaller majority will impact his bid. McCarthy made a similar pitch to members.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. And Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia, the current deputy whip, is also vying for the post, arguing that his experience on the whip’s team will be even more valuable in a slimmer majority, where the chief vote counting job will be crucial for governing.

Of course. Well, you know that I’m not asking anybody – people are campaigning, and that’s a beautiful thing,” the California Democrat told Bash. “And I’m not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

Neither Hoyer nor Clyburn are Democrat Causal Chairs: McCarthy vs. Green VP Mitch McCann

Currently, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer serves as the No. 2 House Democrat, in the role of House majority leader, and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn serves in the role of House majority whip. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark serves in the role of assistant Speaker and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries serves as House Democratic caucus chair.

The co-chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee in Colorado, Joe Neguse, will run for caucus chair to replace Jeffries, who is term limited.

The race to lead the party’s campaign arm, DCCC chair, is starting to take shape up after the current chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York lost his reelection.

Democratic Rep. Tony Cardenas of California announced his race for the spot on Friday but others are being floated as well including Reps. Ami Bera and Sara Jacobs of California.

Despite an anemic election performance, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is aiming to be the next speaker of the house despite a search for a challenger.

Idaho GOP Rep. Mike Simpson supports McCarthy for leader, because the GOP gained seats in the last two elections. “He’s done a good job,” said Simpson.

In recent weeks, part of McCarthy’s pitch to his critics has been warning that if they don’t unify, then Democrats could theoretically band together and peel off a few Republicans to elect the next speaker.

According to a source in the room, Bob Good complained at the leadership candidate forum that McCarthy didn’t call to congratulate him when he won the primary because a Super PAC aligned with him opposed some pro-Trump candidates. McCarthy replied that he directed $2 million to Good for his race. Good had to be given down in order to cut him off from speaking, so that they could ask the next question.

But McCarthy’s allies have recently attempted to convince moderate Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar to switch parties in hopes of padding their slim margins, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. It was flatly rejected by Cuellar. (McCarthy’s spokesman said the GOP leader was not involved if these conversations took place and said this is not in any way part of their strategy for the majority or for his speakership bid.)

A source on the call said that Scalise embraced his role as the incoming majority leader and even mentioned McCarthy as the speaker in a private call on Sunday.

At the private forum, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the National Republican Congressional Committee chair, was pressed on his vote in support of a bill to codify same-sex marriage earlier this year, according to a source in the room. His response was “These divisive social issues should not be brought to the House floor.”

Kevin McCarthy: The Republican Party’s First Attempt at Replacing the Tea Party: Why he vowed to run for the Presidency

Kevin McCarthy has said that his political career started when he gambled in the California lottery at a young age. I scratched off my first three tickets. The most money you could win was $5,000. All three of them said $5,000, and I scratched three of them. And I had never played the game before so I go back up to the checker and say, ‘You know, as I read this: Did I win?’ McCarthy spoke with high school students recorded by CSPAN and said he was one of the first winners. That lucky break led him to invest that money, use it to open up a deli named Kevin O’s, and then sell that business to help pay his way through college. After 15 years of working for Bill Thomas, he moved to another place. In 2002, he ran and won a seat in the California State Assembly where he was immediately elected party leader. I refer to myself as the Republican leader, even though I never like to be called the minority leader. He said at the time that he was proud of his party. McCarthy succeeded Thomas when he retired from Congress. In his campaigns since, McCarthy only ever faced token opposition for the seat representing his hometown, and he’s never won a general election with less than 62% of the vote.

In 2010, Republicans rode the Tea Party wave to win control of the House, but the cost was steep. Five years of failure to raise the debt ceiling and get much else done annoyed John Boehner as speaker, despite the fact that it had been routine and protected US credit.

Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election realigned the political interests of the Republicans. Tea Party style opposition to spending fell way to loyalty tests to the new leader of the party. McCarthy had good things to say about Trump despite the fact that Ryan and Trump were at odds on a lot of things. He once bragged to The Washington Post that after noticing Trump’s favorite Starburst flavors were the red and pink ones, he made a point to deliver a jar of them to the president as a gift.

That’s why McCarthy didn’t believe he could stick to his criticism of Trump after Jan. 6, heading down to Trump’s Florida home just weeks after the insurrection and posed for a photo with him.

With the increasing likelihood that the speaker’s race could go to multiple ballots – something that hasn’t happened since 1923 – McCarthy’s allies and foes alike are starting to quietly game out the next steps if he can’t get the necessary 218 votes on the first round and they move into uncharted territory.

“Our initial plan is vote for Kevin and let him fight this out repeatedly. … But if they think they’re going to use this to infinity to drive him out, well, we’re not going to bend to their will,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican.

“There is no reason not to vote for Steve. It is not about whether Steve is better than Kevin. If you give the gavel to the guys, what will happen to the Congress? One Republican was upset. “Steve Scalise isn’t going to have any more fun than Kevin McCarthy.”

It was not a good idea for Scalise to be more adamant about his support for McCarthy or to insist that he stick with him no matter how long it took. If he tries to become speaker now, the Republicans say it will hurt him.

“Obviously our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3,” he told CNN. “And there’s a lot of conversations that everybody has been having, Kevin, surely, with the members who have expressed concerns.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, the conservative set to become the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, went even further, ruling out jumping into the race even though Gaetz and other hardliners have urged him to seek the speakership.

“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. You will see more of it.

Their list of demands – which shows the work McCarthy needs to do to get to 218 – includes a promise that leaders won’t play in primaries, restoring the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, placing more conservatives on key committees, giving members at least 72 hours to read bill text before a vote, and committing to using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to demand more spending cuts, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN.

But McCarthy still has additional levers he could pull. Conservative hardliners are pushing for more representation on the powerful House Rules Committee, a leadership-aligned panel that decides how and when bills come to the floor. A person familiar with the matter says McCarthy was urged to take a harder public stance on policy issues in the coming year after meeting with a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

McCarthy has been adamantly opposed to restoring the “motion to vacate the chair,” and a majority of the House GOP voted against the idea during a during a closed-door meeting last month. McCarthy was asked if he’d visit the issue by CNN, but he didn’t reply.

According to Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, the impact of a January red wave was the idea that people are tired of the fighting and are sick of the noise. Wherever I go in my district, I get that, “Why can’t you guys just get things done?”

Tuesday’s vote may create a kind of drama that was common in the House during the 19th century but has virtually disappeared since. Before the Civil War, when party allegiances were more fluid, the House failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot 13 times, according to the House historian’s office. The most arduous struggles occurred in roughly the decade before the Civil War, as the existing party system crumbled under the pressure of the escalating conflict between the North and South, and the newly formed Republican Party supplanted the Whigs as the major competitor to the Democrats, then the dominant party. There was a speakership election during that decade that took 133 ballots and took two months to resolve.

Putting a Democratic Speaker to the Test: Cuellar, Westerman and the New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries

Some Republicans have approached Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas, about the idea, he told CNN.

Joyce said that members had reached out to him about running, but he dismissed it. Kevin will be the new speaker at the end of the day.

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next House Democratic leader, said, “there are no behind-the-scenes conversations” that he has had with Republicans to put up an alternative candidate. If McCarthy could not secure the necessary votes, his caucus could help choose the next speaker.

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let us know what happens on January 3.

A bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair who voted in favour of impeachment of Trump was one of the possible consensus picks.

That would need agreement from every Democrat and the help of five Republicans. He said he will be skiing and that he won’t be in Washington that day.

But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. This case was brought to the attention of Westerman’s colleagues at a meeting this week.

When Congress meets the Internet: Reply to Westerman’s Call to the Speaker of the House Minority Caucus on January 3

“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.

The discussion about changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”

McCarthy has not shared with his leadership team a plan he has come up with to win the speakership race, which some believe is a display of paranoia. He has been spotted around the Capitol with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist who is close to him.

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 wasn’t sure who he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not respond to requests for comment.

When Nancy Pelosi in 2018 found herself about a dozen votes short of what she would need to secure the speaker’s gavel, she quietly picked off defectors, methodically cutting deals to capture exactly enough support to prevail. Ms Pelosi won over her sole challenger by agreeing to limit her tenure, and by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, as well as seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure.

The California Republican made a number of pledges 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, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.

He seems to understand just how damaging Trump and the cult of personality around him has been to the GOP – his private phone calls made in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, made clear that he worried that members of his own party were endangering other lawmakers with their rhetoric – but then chooses to empower those dangerous members anyway.

Do you need a whip? Sen. Laura McCarthy’s frustrations with the Greene-Mike-White-Hole collapsing

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. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.

For a long time, the California congressman wanted to be speaker. He seemed willing to do a lot of things to get the job, including burrowing into former President Trump’s good graces.

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.

McCarthy said that she thought she was being facetious, when she was asked by CNN on Tuesday about Greene’s inflammatory comments. 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.

Roy and 12 other Republicans sent a letter to GOP senators on Monday saying that if the government funding bill passes, they would oppose and whip against “any legislative priority of those senators who vote for this bill.” McCarthy tweeted in response to their letter saying “Agreed. Except no need to whip – when I’m Speaker, their bills will be dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people.”

That does not bode well for the Republican Party’s ability to govern, and instead suggests that the next two years might be characterized not just by intense partisan divides, but by a profoundly dysfunctional GOP heading into a contentious presidential election.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that five conservative hardliners have not budged in their opposition to his speaker’s bid, offering dire warnings that their hard-fought Republican majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

McCarthy’s dire warning comes as the five GOP members – Gaetz, Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have warned they may vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning they’ll all vote the same way.

“Remember, this is a presidential year, so you only have so many months to really get out there and govern,” McCarthy said. You would like to get to the ground running. You do not start strong if you lose a quarter every day. So you don’t get new, stronger candidates. You don’t get more resources to be able to supply those candidates to get the message out.”

He said that the emotions are high. “We’re running up against a holiday, trying to deal with this issue of funding the government and there are different opinions about how best to do that. I get that. But in the end, I think it’ll get done and I think it will set the stage for next year and it seems to be at least in the House next year, that would be an advantage for them. They will start with a clean slate.

“We’re enduring the silly season of a campaign. After you get elected, that is over for most of us. He thinks the silliness is still evident because he is running for speaker.

When the California Republican had made a number of concessions in order to win the Speakership, he tried to persuade his critics that they would back him.

With one day to go, a group of at least nine Republicans have made clear that they are still not sold, despite McCarthy giving in to some of their most ardent demands during a Sunday evening conference call.

“To be honest, we are preparing for a fight. Our new majority does not want to start out in a way like this, but you can’t negotiate against the position of giving us everything we ask for and not guaranteeing anything in return. Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, a member of the centrist-leaning Republican Governance Group, told CNN.

I give a lot of credit to Kevin. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. A way of making the place run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s in deal-making mode, working the phones with critics and supporters alike to find consensus on rules changes designed to win over holdouts.

The Rules Package for Reply to Corresponding Speaker James McCarthy (R-McClenna): Counting Tears from the Conference

He has only four votes to lose on the House floor, and so far five Republicans have said they will vote against him, with almost a dozen GOP lawmakers saying they are still undecided.

Legislators worked over the weekend on the rules package. Ultimately, McCarthy informed Republicans on the conference-wide call Sunday evening that he agreed to the five-person threshold on the motion to vacate – which he billed as a “compromise.”

McCarthy released the final rules package later that evening and also put out a “Dear Colleague” letter making one last pitch for the job, which included additional promises about how he’d govern as speaker – including ensuring that the GOP’s ideological groups are better represented on committees.

Moderates on Sunday said they wouldn’t swallow the concession if it would get McCarthy’s votes. During the call they were concerned that some hardliners wouldn’t come through in the end, and were worried that they wouldn’t negotiate in good faith.

The group is pushing for a single member to be able to vote to oust the speaker, which is what they used to do, and they are also trying to get a commitment that the leadership won’t play in primaries.

The letter, obtained by CNN, says no way to measure whether promises are kept or broken because of missing specific commitments.

McCarthy delayed races for committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have input in the process, but other members believe it was a way to insulate himself from potential criticism from members who end up losing their races.

The South Carolina office of the Republican is flooded with calls from people who have received calls from someone who tells them what could happen if McCarthy doesn’t become speaker. Those campaigns, Norman’s aide told CNN, have done nothing to influence the congressman’s position, but it does reveal the lengths some McCarthy backers have gone to exert maximum pressure on detractors.

McCarthy’s defenders made a vow to him and each other during the holidays to keep a small group of members out of the conference.

McCarthy’s opposition, however, has also been working in tandem – and they are far more practiced in playing hardball, though the Freedom Caucus has been openly divided over McCarthy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-struggle/index.html

The Bizarre Game of Chicken: The Case for a Speaker Who Cannot be Responsible for Government Remittances, Student Loans, or the Debt Ceiling

The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week outlining the practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. Without an approved House Rules package, the memo outlined that committees won’t be able to pay staff.

The same memo was obtained by CNN and warned that student loan payments wouldn’t be released if a rules package wasn’t adopted by January.

It is one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could prevent the House and the GOP majority from operating efficiently in their opening days.

Even with the race far from settled, boxes from McCarthy’s office were spotted by CNN being moved into the speaker’s suite last week – a standard protocol, but a sign he’s committed to seeking the job.

“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.

A failed vote would badly weaken Mr. McCarthy or whoever the new speaker will be. The speaker of the house has power because they have the ability to get the 218 votes needed to pass a bill. If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will show that they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities, such as funding the government or preventing a credit default by lifting the debt ceiling.

The Nebraska Republican said that McCarthy has been trying to be very supportive. He has been public about his support for McCarthy. He wants to be a speaker someday. so he’s got to be tactful.”

The KMC Threshold: Is It Still Far From Washington? Commentary on House Speaker Jayson Good, Michael McCarthy, Steve Scalise and other members of the House Intelligence Committee

But some of the hardliners are not satisfied, pushing to lower the threshold to just a single member who can call for such a vote – something that other House Republicans fear would be a recipe for chaos and have vowed they wouldn’t support.

If it becomes clear that no matter what, KMC will not get their votes, people are going to be more against rule and operational changes, said another GOP member.

Indeed, asked if Scalise would need to agree to the same concessions as McCarthy, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz told CNN: “Of course. The McCarthy concessions are a baseline for anyone.”

“We shouldn’t be in a hurry to make a bad decision,” Good said, promising a new candidate would emerge on Tuesday. He declined to specify the member and also declined to comment about Scalise.

There is a group of Republicans that want to make the GOP conference more open and transparent, and they are behind a Shadow Candidate that will be used to assault Republicans in the new Congress.

According to Johnson, members are growing frustrated with the inflexibility of some of the holdouts.

One GOP lawmaker said people shouldn’t believe it was a noble cause. “No one should believe that this is anything other than self aggrandizement. They want to give themselves more power in order to get procedures that aren’t cared about outside of Washington.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/mccarthy-floor-fight-steve-scalise/index.html

The death on the next two years has been cast on the left, and what will we learn from the next biden administration? Congressional Integrity Project analyst Leslie Dach says

Mullin, a Republican and member of the House of Representatives, met with McCarthy on Monday. Mullin said that they have been encouraging McCarthy with a simple message: “stay put.”

No matter how they resolve Tuesday’s vote choosing the next speaker of the House, Republicans appear poised to double down on the hard-edged politics that most swing state voters rejected in last November’s midterm election.

Dent, like Davis, believes that aggressive investigation will produce worthwhile revelations, including some that are inevitably uncomfortable for the Biden administration. Dent admits that the hearings may backfire on the Republicans if they focus on far-right grievances and conspiracy theories. The tone of things is important, says Dent. They will want to jump on that and it won’t play well. [with the public]. The speaker will have to resolve these disputes constantly.

The only time a single ballot was needed to select their speaker has been in 1923, when Republicans held a narrow majority and only nine ballots were needed to choose their speaker. Some left-leaning progressive Republicans resisted Speaker Frederick Gillett.

“I think he prevails because there is no other candidate with his experience and fundraising ability and at the end of the day the party base will close ranks because nothing happens until you have a Speaker: No investigations… nothing,” former GOP Rep. Tom Davis, who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote me in an email. “And the vast majority of the Conference is loyal to him.”

“In some ways, win or lose [for McCarthy] it doesn’t matter,” says Leslie Dach, a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-aligned group established to respond to the coming House investigations of the Biden administration. “I think the die on the next two years has been cast by giving these people the power and the podium.”

By ensuring that hardline Trump allies such as Jordan and Greene will be highly visible – and authorizing them to pursue conservative grievances like the charge that the FBI has become “weaponized” against the right – Dach and other Democrats believe the House majority will reinforce the GOP’s image as the party of Trump precisely as more party strategists, donors and elected officials are insisting Republicans must move beyond him.

Dach claims the real show is going to be these people who are extreme. It’s a bad day if they are on the committee and they are on television.

Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, notes that the GOP has cumulatively lost enormous ground in those states since Trump took office.

In his first speech as president, he mentioned only one Democratic governor in the five states he mentioned, four Democratic senators, and no speaker of the state assembly in those states. In a month, nine of 10 senators are Democrats, four of the five states have Democratic governors, and three of the state legislative chambers are led by Democrats. Since 2016, he adds, Democrats in those places “have done nothing but win because those states are not going to elect MAGA” Republicans.

“It was two midterms happening at the same time – depending on whether you were in a place where that new bubble of Democratic voters believed they had to come out to beat MAGA again,” Podhorzer argued.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/politics/right-house-speakership-election/index.html

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That’s unlikely to create many problems for Republicans in the places where they are already strong. In the election of November, the Republicans consolidated their control over the country, and held onto governorships in many of the states that have been conservative over the past two years.

Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Scott Perry, a leading McCarthy critic who signed onto a letter with nine other Republicans circulated on New Year’s day, tweeted: “nothing changes when nothing changes.” The letter stated that the times call for a radical departures of the status quo and not a continuation of the past.

But nothing else can happen in the House of Representatives until a speaker is elected. It’s the only leadership position mentioned in the Constitution.

There are discussions about trying to get around consensus candidates, but McCarthy’s allies have been pushing the idea of “Only Kevin.” There is potential for the process to drag out for hours or even days if McCarthy is unable to convince some of the holdouts to back him.

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. “Never backing down.”

The scramble for a speaker in the House of Representatives after the midterm elections: CNN’s Julie Filipovic takes us to the polls

A candidate for speaker needs to win the votes of the majority of House members in order to be elected. If no one skips the vote or votes present, that equates to 218 votes.

The second ballot had 203 votes for McCarthy and 19 for Jim Jordan. McCarthy, nominated by Jordan, was the one who got the nod on the second ballot. That move did not deter McCarthy critics from voting for Jordan, however.

But when a red wave never materialized in the November midterms, the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans empowered a small band of conservatives – long distrustful of McCarthy – to make demands.

The last two months have seen an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has included strategy sessions with allies on Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and phone calls with members.

The author of “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left behind” is a journalist based in New York. Follow her on Twitter @JillFilipovic. The opinions she expresses in this commentary are her own. You can look at more opinions on CNN.

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Despite finding themselves in the minority, it was Democrats who were jubilant on Tuesday, voting unanimously for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the first African American to lead a major party in Congress, as speaker. Nancy Pelosi was the first female Speaker of the House, leading House Democrats for two decades.

But the Republican House majority is a narrow one, and Republican candidates far underperformed expectations in the midterms, as a promised red wave was more of a small but toxic red tide. Voters generally rejected Republican extremism, but the party has unfortunately moved so far toward conspiracy and the cult of former President Donald Trump that many of its most untethered members – including but not limited to Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio – were reelected.

A “furious” Greene was one of the few on the Republican far right to cast her vote for McCarthy. These are people with views extreme enough and divorced enough from reality that they would have once been called “fringe.” But how fringe is that view if there are more than a dozen congress members?

It’s difficult to say how hard Trump tried. He hasn’t posted anything on his social media platform in the days leading up to the vote, and he hasn’t post anything on the day of it.

Now, he’s reaping the consequences of helping to reshape his party in the image of Trump. The destruction of the institutions that kept the country stable and the rejection of decency and moderation were two of the hallmarks of Trumpism. His congressional followers have embraced the spirit of envy and burn-it-all down rage.

CNN Observations of Quintessential Rebellions and the Road Ahead for the Presiding Speaker’s Seat in the House of Representatives

Nobody knows how this will end. Catch up with CNN’s live updates from the day. Lawmakers, needing to regroup after a third round of voting for a speaker, adjourned until noon Wednesday.

It is a tale of how 20 Republican lawmakers will not support the man even though they received most of their demands from him. The first two votes started with 19 holdouts, but grew to 20 in the third vote.

Some small cracks in McCarthy’s support were starting to show in the third vote, after 4 p.m. ET, when Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida jumped camps from supporting McCarthy earlier in the day to backing Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Donalds joined the original 19 and others who are equally committed.

The CNN analyst, centrist Republican and former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania stated that Jim Jordan, the ring leader of these types of rebellions, has trained these guys well.

He wants these guys to back off, but they won’t. Dent said, “This is the most strange thing I have ever seen on the House floor, because he was the quintessential rebel and he can’t control them.”

Gaetz, in nominating Jordan before the second round of voting, stood right in front of McCarthy and accused him of having “sold himself” in the quest for the speaker post.

If you think so, this drama is a sideshow that will make a difficult year for the speaker of the House of Representatives to raise the debt ceiling.

“The Republicans have to at some point figure out what are we going to do here,” said the CNN anchor John King. “We are supposed to be the governing party of the House of Representatives and we cannot come to a consensus on who should lead us. So never mind about immigration, what we’re going to do about inflation, what we’re going to do about the border, America’s place in the world.”

That’s all on hold until they find a leader. Meanwhile, as House Republicans wrestle with how to convince members with no interest in the system to support them, there will be a photo opportunity in Kentucky on Wednesday about bipartisanship.

Senate Republican Leader McConnell and the state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, will announce new funding for the construction of a bridge connecting their state to the country. There will also be an Ohio Democrat and a Republican on hand.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by congress in 2021 includes $600 million for a bridge project in Kentucky. Beshear stated that the bridge will help the region’s economy and update a critical piece of infrastructure.

There is nothing partisan about the bridge according to Beshear. He said the bipartisan quintet would announce that they did the right thing for their people. It is pretty refreshing.”

He will have to find a way to work with the Republicans who decide to be their speaker and the lawmakers who won’t agree to a government shut down.

The Republicans have regained power after two years, when ex- President Donald Trump quit in disgrace.

On a surreal day, the 118th Congress opened with Republicans fighting Republicans, while Democrats – who should have been mourning their lost majority – were joyous at the GOP circus they beheld.

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McCarthy didn’t think that he would get any more productive by continuing on the day. He said he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race.

He said that it was not going to happen and that he could only get 11 more members to vote for him.

The rise of intransigence among a hard-right group in the GOP can be traced back to the Tea Party and its support for Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Gaetz made a dig at McCarthy, saying the speaker of the house might not be a person who has sold shares in himself for more than a decade.

Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state – who voted to impeach Trump, lost a primary to a rival backed by the ex-president, who then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat – told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday the rebels were in it for themselves.

— And Democrats are already trying to make political capital out of it, seeing vindication for their claims that Republicans are still not fit for power and should be kicked out at the first opportunity in the next election. “I just watched House Republicans plunge into utter chaos on the House floor,” Jeffries told Democratic donors in a fundraising email. This changes everything for the Democrats. We have a chance to take over and show what we can do.

We have an agenda and we can either be the conference who comes together to implement that agenda or we can let some of them keep us from doing that.

But nothing has been enough. Congress went past one round of voting in 100 years without McCarthy as speaker, after three votes on Tuesday.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said on Fox News. A select committee and a special committee were put together. Today, what are her numbers? Her numbers are dropping.”

The ostensible reason for the GOP-led Benghazi investigation was to find out what happened in an attack on an American embassy in Libya, where four people died – not to hurt Clinton. Clinton, who was secretary of state in the Obama administration, was seen as the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Dems in disarray”: Trump’s failure to pick a leader after his 11th hour in 2022 midterms

Trump maintained his power with the base and endorsed scores of candidates in the 2022 midterms. They did well in primaries, but many lost in competitive swing districts.

At the 11th hour, he tried to play tough guy, threatening the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments. That appeared to have the reverse effect of what he and his allies were intending.

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?