The Magic Number for Speaker: Campaigning against Poincare and Trump’s Pandemic Emergency Rule in the Biden and Ryan eras

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told reporters that “no one currently has 218” votes for speaker, which is the magic number McCarthy would need to secure the speaker’s gavel on the House floor in January, and said he wants McCarthy to list in greater detail his plans for a wide array of investigations into the Biden administration. And Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona complained that McCarthy seemed to backpedal on whether he’d be willing to launch impeachment proceedings into President Joe Biden or members of his Cabinet.

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 the fiscal year of 2022, US border encounters more than doubled to over 2 million. More than 1 million were turned away.

“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. It does not mean that it wouldn’t be used at another time.

And with the MAGA-wing calling to cut off funding to Ukraine while the GOP’s defense hawks vow not to abandon the country amid its war with Russia, McCarthy attempted to reaffirm his support for Ukraine while saying they would not automatically rubber stamp any additional requests for aid.

McCarthy’s Republican Party secured only 222 seats in the 2022 midterms, leaving him little room for error to get to 218 votes – the number needed to achieve the speakership assuming all members vote. There is a long list of GOP lawmakers who have said they will vote against McCarthy.

Remember that McCarthy has been close to the speakership before. He was ready to become speaker when John Boehner stepped down. Paul Ryan became speaker after the California Republican’s caucus couldn’t rally around him enough to get a majority of votes.

Sen. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a candidate for the House Oversight Committee, has not asked for a default under Trump

He said that if you were to stay in Mexico you would have to wait for your immigration hearings in the United States.

McCarthy said to help stem the flow of Fentanyl coming across the border, you need to attack China first and provide the resources that the border agents need, and then make sure that anyone that wants to move it, you can.

The president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold are likely to be the two main obstacles to overcome for most bills in the upcoming year. McCarthy, however, signaled Republicans will demand spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, teeing up a risky fiscal showdown that could lead to a disastrous debt default.

If you want to give a person a higher limit, wouldn’t you first tell them to stop raising and doing other things? he said. “You shouldn’t say, “Oh, I’m going to let you spend more money.” No household should do that.

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.

McCarthy insisted that he was not willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip. You don’t risk 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.”

Greene’s Challenge for the Speaker’s Race: How the Freedom Caucus Becomes a Tool to Strike Back against McCarthyism

Even Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, known more for embracing conspiracy theories than stable governance, complained that the party was thwarting its own goals “because 19 Republicans decided to blow up the Speaker’s race.” (Greene backs McCarthy).

He said that he would request the president to not say anything about the other half of the nation because of their differing opinions. I think leadership matters and probably starts with the president. The speaker will be the first to start.

There needs to be afrank discussion about who they choose for the top job because multiple of my voters think the wisdom of proceeding is questionable.

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.

While in Washington, DC, this week the Freedom Caucus, a group that includes dozens of hardline members, have begun to plot out their strategy for the speaker’s race. They see an opportunity, and plan to use their clout in order to get more power in the GOP-led House.

The GOP sources who spoke on the call described the exchange as a glimpse into McCarthy’s eleventh-hour negotiations in his quest for speaker. He is willing to bend to become the next Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

What Does the GOP Really Do about the Left? Defending Donald Trump in the House of Representatives with a G.O.P. Wave

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.

Norman said the group wants to formalize a larger 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.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the five “hard no” votes, said on the call he would not be backing McCarthy, despite all the demands that he has given in to. And not long after, the separate group of nine hardliners put out a letter calling some of McCarthy’s concessions insufficient, though they did say progress is being made.

Gaetz said the C team shouldn’t be starting because of 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.”

Some of the Republicans have supported Mr. Trump before, either through public support or silence. While they long privately claimed to disdain Mr. Trump’s politics, they were fearful of crossing the party’s base.

Now, the party is reaping political consequences. Several House races from Alaska to North Carolina, as well as key Senate races, were lost by Trump-backed candidates. On Saturday, Democrats clinched control of the Senate with a hard-fought re-election victory for Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. In the House, despite predictions of a G.O.P. wave, neither party had secured a majority.

The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have both called on Murdoch to throw Mr. Trump out of office. A number of Trump allies, including Robin Vos, Assembly speaker of Wisconsin, said Mr. Trump should not be nominated for president in 2024.

Moderates in the GOP complained about the party’s rise into conspiracy theories that light up the right-wing media. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called for a return to classic fiscal conservatism. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said during a SiriusXM Radio interview Friday that Mr. Trump risked “mucking up” the party’s chances of winning in Georgia.

And Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who spoke at a Trump rally in Sioux City days before the election, said on Twitter that it was time to move on from Mr. Trump’s pet issue. “Quit talking abt 2020,” he wrote.

Similar recriminations are taking place across the Capitol, where some House Republicans are questioning their leadership’s embrace of the MAGA wing, lack of a cohesive message on abortion, and decisions to spend precious resources in deep blue territory late in the game.

McConnell and McCarthy will hold leadership elections this week, and the Senate will also have its weekly closed-door lunch on Tuesday, where the blame game will heat up.

But Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a conservative hardliner who is challenging McCarthy to be the most powerful member of Congress, doubled down on his commitment to stop the California Republican’s ascension.

Trump, the Partisan, the Democrat, and the Left: Why the GOP hasn’t won since the 2016 Midterm Elections?

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is among those calling for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it “doesn’t make any sense” to have them this week.

“A lot of people have called me to see if I’ll run,” Scott said. Is it still possible for us to win Georgia? I’m not going to take anything off the table.”

Trump’s advisers and allies have been privately critical of Tom Emmer, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, over the GOP’s lackluster midterm gains. CNN has not yet projected which party will control the lower chamber, though Republicans appear on track to gain a narrow House majority. Emmer is competing against Rep. Jim Banks, an ally of Donald Trump Jr., for the position of House GOP whip.

“They’ve been measuring the draperies, they’ve been putting forth an agenda. They haven’t won it yet,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union.” After the election, it is up to the leaders of the parties to decide how we are going to move forward.

Behind the scenes, the finger pointing has already begun, and those conversations are likely to accelerate as the full House and Senate return to Washington this week for the first time since the midterm elections.

Trump and his allies have tried to make McConnell the fall guy for the GOP’s lackluster midterm performance, accusing McConnell of spending recklessly in states where Republicans faced significant headwinds at the expense of candidates in more competitive contests.

Retiring Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey stated that there was a high correlation between loss and the candidates of the populist movement. “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.

Scott had little chance of succeeding in challenging McConnell for the top spot so he did not rule it out.

McCarthy said that they were still talking, but that they had not moved. The only Republican entity who can stop the Biden administration is us. We are the only ones that can move forward. But it would delay everything, getting committees up and running, being able to do the things that you know we need to get done from the very beginning.”

One senior Republican told CNN that political physics says moderates and HFC can not be appeased at the same time. “If you straddle that fence, you better hope it’s not barbed wire.”

It wasn’t clear whether Mr. McCarthy asked Mr. Trump to help his campaign or not. The former president has spoken with Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, and Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, among others. Mr. Crane and Mr. Norman were part of a group of seven current and incoming Republican lawmakers who signed a letter with a list of concessions they are demanding from their leaders in the next Congress, including making it easier to force a vote to remove the speaker — something that Mr. McCarthy has so far resisted.

A GOP source says that Trump wants to see which GOP lawmakers have endorsed him in the media and he has been trying to get them to do so. So far, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik has been the highest-ranking Republican to officially back Trump’s 2024 bid.

The vote for the next speaker will be held during the new Congress in January, but the House Republicans will hold leadership elections this week to pick a nominee.

If she runs for the top leadership spot in House Democrats, it will be known that Pelosi is still the leader of the caucus. Pelosi is seen as an effective leader within her party as she commands widespread support among her members.

The 2018 Republican Caucus Agenda: Speakership Requirements, Election Schedule, and Trump’s First Congressional Candidate Forum

Republicans are scheduled to hold a candidate forum on Monday evening, followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, November 15, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.

House Democratic leadership elections have been announced for Wednesday, November 30. Voting will take place behind closed doors via secret ballot using an app.

A candidate needs to win at least a majority of the votes to be elected to any position in the party. If more than two candidates run and no one wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes after the first round of voting will be eliminated and voting will proceed to a second round. That process continues until one candidate wins a majority.

If too few members of the Freedom Caucus do not back him, he will have to make deals to undermine the speakership, something he has resisted for a long time.

Emmer told reporters Tuesday he still plans to run and that he doesn’t know if a smaller majority impacts his bid. McCarthy had a similar pitch to members, saying, “we delivered.”

Emmer is running against Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana, the Republican Study Committee chair, and Drew Ferguson of Georgia, the chief deputy Whip, for the post.

The Freedom Caucus Meets the Defendant: Can You Make Sense of Mr. McCarthy? Rep. David H. Good (R-Chambert) and Sen. Lisa Pelosi

Yes, 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. I am not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

Jim Clyburn is the House majority whip and Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer is the House majority leader. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark serves in the role of assistant Speaker and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries serves as House Democratic caucus chair.

Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who currently serves as the co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has announced his 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.

Ami Bera and Sara Jacobs of California are both rumored to be running for the spot after Tony Cardenas made his announcement on Friday.

Several members of the Freedom Caucus met with McCarthy in his office Monday as they seek to extract concessions from him in exchange for their speaker votes.

Good said that they asked McCarthy to come up with a plan for running the House after he said he faces an uphill climb to become speaker.

Perry said that while their primary focus has been seeking rules changes that would empower individual members – and weaken the speaker – that is “not the limit” of their issues.

“We want to see this place change dramatically, to reflect the will of the people and to acknowledge how broken it is,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon anybody that wants to lead to kind of lay out their vision and how they would change their portion of it.”

But hard-right Republicans seized the opportunity to extract promises — and in some cases apologies — from their would-be leaders. Representative Steve Scalise asks if he would commit to investigating Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would support Mr. McCarthy.

Indeed, asked if Scalise would need to agree to the same concessions as McCarthy, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz told CNN: “Of course. Anyone can take the McCarthy concessions as a baseline.

The two people who spoke to me said that Mr. Scalise apologized, and said he should have waited until he knew more about the incident.

The House Minority Causal Causality Problem: Kevin McCarthy’s Call to the House and his First Public Hearing on Same-Sex Marriage

It was thought that voters were exhausted by the Trump years and didn’t want to give the Republicans everything they wanted in November. (While they fell short of a red wave in the House, the GOP failed to win back the Senate and Democrats grew their majority). The people that voted in the election in November did not like the extreme scenes in the House on Tuesday.

Tom Cole of Oklahoma said that it would be a narrow one. It makes it really important to have someone with excellent political skills. Someone that knows all of this conference.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is hoping to pass a crucial test on Tuesday in his campaign to become House speaker despite an underwhelming midterm election performance that launched a search among conservatives for a challenger.

Simpson said he would support McCarthy for leader, noting the GOP won two seats in the last elections. “He’s done a good job,” said Simpson.

McCarthy has warned that if the Democrats do not unify, they could potentially peel off a few Republicans to get the speakership.

Good said he would resist for a few more hours, which would allow him to comment on specific candidates. Kevin McCarthy is part of the problem.

Two sources familiar with the conversation say that McCarthy’s allies tried to convince Henry Cuellar to switch parties in hopes of padding their slim margins. The idea was rejected by Cuellar. McCarthy’s spokesman said the GOP leader was not involved if the conversations took place and that they were not part of his speakership bid.

In a private House GOP call on Sunday, Scalise embraced his role as the incoming majority leader by laying out the agenda and the bills that would come to the floor this week – and even referenced McCarthy as the future speaker, according to a source on the call.

A source says that at the private gathering, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer was pressed on his vote in favor of the bill to codify same-sex marriage. His answer was that these divisive social issues should not be brought to the House floor.

A Conversation With Kevin McCarthy: From the California Lottery to the House of Representatives: Five Years in the Life of a Hard Work for Donald Trump

As he likes to tell it Kevin McCarthy’s political career started on a gamble in the California Lottery when he was a young kid living in Bakersfield. “I scratched off my first ticket, all three. The most money you could win was $5,000. I scratch three of them and all three of them say $5,000. And I had never played the game before I went back up to the checker and asked if I had won. McCarthy said that he was one of the first winners when he spoke to a group of high school seniors. He used the money to open up a deli named Kevin O’s and then sold the business to help pay for his college education. There he started working for his then-representative, Republican Bill Thomas, for the next 15 years. He won a seat in the Assembly in 2002 and immediately became the leader of the party. “I never like to refer to myself as the minority leader, I refer to myself as the Republican leader. He said at the time that he was proud of his party. When Thomas announced he would retire in 2006, McCarthy succeeded his former boss in 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.

The cost of winning control of the House was steep, but Republicans rode the Tea Party wave. Five years of inability to get much of anything done, despite each other and the fact that the U.S. credit was protected, frustrated John Boehner as speaker.

The political interests of the Republican were realigned once more because of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. Tea Party style opposition to spending fell way to loyalty tests to the new leader of the party. McCarthy worked his way in to Trumps good graces while Ryan and Trump were often at odds on social media. 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.

McCarthy refocused his efforts to gain over Trump loyalists in the House and helped oust Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney from the leadership of the party for her criticism of Trump. Cheney has since never missed an opportunity to question McCarthy’s fitness for public office. She recently told NBC that McCarthy always chooses to serve his own political purpose when he has the chance.

Previous speakers have faced defections in the first vote of the session to install the top leader, but if McCarthy fails to get a majority on Tuesday it will be the first time in 100 years a speaker needed multiple ballots to win.

If a group of people refuse to play ball, then we will attempt to find an agreeable Republican. I hope that we don’t get there.

There is no reason not to vote for Steve. It is not about whether Steve is better than Kevin. How are you going to run the 118th Congress if you let these guys win? one Republican member lamented. “Steve Scalise isn’t going to have any more fun than Kevin McCarthy.”

But Scalise also has drawn some skepticism from the more moderate wing of the conference, including many who plan to stick with McCarthy and credit him and his fundraising prowess for powering them back to the majority for the first time in five years.

At one point, Ohio firebrand Rep. Jim Jordan, a hero of the right, stood to nominate McCarthy for speaker, only for 19 of the rejectionists to vote that he should have the top job that he insists he doesn’t want. (Jordan is more interested in lacerating Biden’s appointees as chair of the Judiciary Committee).

“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.

The seven Republican hardliners on Thursday put out a list of demands, but did not threaten to vote against McCarthy if their demands are not met.

The rules package for the 118th Congress was unveiled late Sunday night by House Republicans, which gives some of the concessions that McCarthy has agreed to. The House adopts its rules package only after it selects a speaker, which McCarthy has not locked down, so there could be additional compromises made in the coming days.

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. When asked by CNN on Thursday if he would visit the issue, McCarthy laughed and refused to answer.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. I get that wherever I go in the district, why can’t you guys just get things done?

As McCarthy scrambles to lock down speaker’s votes, he also delayed the GOP’s internal elections for committee chairmanships. The rumor was that if Buchanan does not win, he would retire early, making the math problem even harder for McCarthy. Buchanan strongly disagreed with the notion.

Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.

Joyce said he had not been reached out by any members to potentially run. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

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. But he refused to rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes.

“Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. The Republicans are trying to organize the conference. What will happen on January 3?

Some of the potential consensus picks that have been mentioned are retiring congressmen who voted to impeach Donald Trump and the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. According to CNN, he does not have a plan to be in Washington that day.

In his state more than 10 years ago, the minority Democrats joined with a small group of Republicans toelect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman made the case to his colleagues in a closed-door meeting.

Speakership Race in the GOP: Why he hasn’t spoken to Congress before January 3rd, or why he doesn’t want to hear from him

I am worried that we won’t be able to form a congress, organize committees, and push the policy objectives that we want to push on January 3rd.

Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. He said that he was not excited about any destructive movement.

Mr. McCarthy has not shared his plan with his leadership team, who he has cut out of his discussions about speakership race, in what is thought to be a display of paranoia. 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 wouldn’t speak about his call with Mr. Trump, which was described as a private conversation. He was unsure about who he would support for speaker. Mr. Crane did not reply to any questions.

When Nancy Pelosi failed to get the support she needed to become the speaker, she quietly picked off defectors to get the necessary votes. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.

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, 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 has threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. 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.

Anomalous Sensitivity to Trump’s Implications for the Future of the House Republican Referendum on the Senate Minority Reform

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.

There is a battle going on between the California Republican and the members who want to make it easier to get rid of a speaker.

McCarthy raised his voice and was animated as he teed off against his opponents and detailed concessions he has made, according to two sources. “I’ve earned this job,” he said.

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.

Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday about Greene’s latest inflammatory comments, McCarthy shrugged them off: “Oh, I think she said she was being facetious,” the possible future speaker answered. His attitude was predictable since he tried to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, and he said that 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. The House Republican leader lied about how many times Trump had condemned Felipe when he hadn’t done so before.

McCarthy said that a Republican senator who supported the omnibus bill would be dead on arrival in the House.

The split shows that Republican senators will be hard pressed to vote for a spending deal now that McCarthy is in charge in the House.

McCarthy said Friday that the five conservative holdouts – Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have not budged in their opposition to him and offered dire warnings that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow 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.

McCarthy explained that this is apresidential year, so you only have a few months to govern. “And you want to hit the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. 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.”

There are a lot of people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. The example is used by the speaker of the house to Paul Ryan. You understand what I’m saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

“It’s a very dangerous game. There are some bad things that could happen. He was a strange guy, but we ended up with Paul Ryan, who was ten times worse. “Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. He could be considered the worst speaker in history.

The House will be suspended until this standoff is resolved. And Republican allies of McCarthy are beginning to fear that the House GOP leader may not be able to pull off his gamble for speaker if the fight goes much longer.

Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”

“This is a lot of unfinished business this year that they would have to take care of next year and I know from having been over there, that wouldn’t be easy, especially when you’ have a narrow majority.”

We are enduring the silly season of a campaign. For most of us, that’s over after you get elected. But he’s running for speaker of the House, so the silliness is still evident,” he said.

The Dean Obeidallah Show: Blame the GOP Rep.-Elect George Santos for his Fake Acquaintance with Education, Work, Education and Family

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @[email protected]. His opinions are his own but not in this commentary. CNN has more opinion on it.

GOP Rep.-elect George Santos has been making headlines since December 19 — when The New York Times published its jaw-dropping article documenting his litany of false claims about his work experience, education and just about everything in between. Santos admitted to misrepresenting his employment and education background but he described it asResume Embellishment.

Santos also claimed that his grandparents fled the horrors of the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium — only to have this version of his family background contradicted by a review of genealogy records. Santos’ campaign did not respond to CNN’s request.

Adding to the firestorm are recent developments that federal and state authorities have launched criminal investigations into Santos over his finances and fabrications. He ran for Congress in 2020 and reported he had no assets, yet was able to give his campaign $700,000.

Yet not a peep about the Santos story — which even caused an uproar on Fox News on December 27 when former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as a guest host confronted Santos about his fabrications, asking: “Do you have no shame?”

McCarthy has also criticized the Biden administration’s border policy and played up accusations on Fox Business that the FBI worked to suppress news stories hurtful to Democrats.

McCarthy has the second-lowest net favorability rating among his own party members of all first-time potential speakers in the last 28 years. Gingrich had a lower + 24 points in 1994. Net favorability ratings were over 50 points for others, such as Nancy Pelosi.

His net favorable rating was greater than 30 points among Republicans. That is not bad. McConnell has low ratings among Republicans. But a net favorability rating of +30 points isn’t really good either.

The GOP angst is a decent consolation prize for Democrats after losing the majority in the House. If nothing else, they’re watching a Republican Party that can’t seem to get its act together after a historically bad midterm for an opposition party.

Putting a Manse in McCarthy’s Moose: Reconciling Promises, Implications for the House and Senate

McCarthy made one last pitch for the speaker job by releasing his final rules package later that evening, as well as putting out a letter to his colleauges which included promises about how he would govern as speaker.

Not long after Sunday’s call, a group of nine hardliners – who had outlined their demands to McCarthy last month – put out a new letter saying some of the concessions he announced are insufficient and making clear they’re still not sold on him, though they did say progress is being made.

“Thus far, there continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties, and thus, no means to measure whether promises are kept or broken,” the members wrote in the letter obtained by CNN.

Moderates who feared the motion to vacate would be used as arguments over McCarthy’s head expressed their annoyance during the call, sources said.

Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said he wasn’t happy with the low threshold McCarthy agreed to, though he indicated he would swallow it, but only if it helps McCarthy win the speakership. Other members made clear that the rules package that was negotiated will be off the table if McCarthy’s critics end up tanking his speakership bid.

McCarthy was asked if the concession on the motion to vacate would win him the 218 votes. McCarthy said earlier on the call that people were slowly moving in the right direction.

McCarthy was asked to answer the question by Carlos Gimenez of Florida. McCarthy told them that they had a couple of days to close the deal, according to sources.

Lawmakers worked over the weekend to finalize 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.”

The package released late Sunday includes giving five Republicans the power to call for a vote on deposing the sitting speaker; restoring the ability to zero out a government official’s salary; giving lawmakers 72 hours to a read bill before it comes to the floor; and creating a new select commit to investigative the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and the FBI.

The rules package does not change the process for discharge petitions, which allows lawmakers to circumvent leadership and force a bill to the floor if it has the support of 218 lawmakers.

The rules package makes it illegal to have remote hearings, allows the Ethics Committee to take ethic complaints from the public, and removes staffer unionization efforts.

Even though the California Republican had made a number of key concessions in order to get their support for his speakership bid, his critics still weren’t willing to back him. It was four days before the vote and he tried to persuade them to back him.

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

To be honest, we’re preparing for a fight. Not the way we want to get started in our new majority and we cannot negotiate against this position of giving 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 Kevin a ton of credit. He’s brought everyone in and worked really hard to figure out a way forward. A way to make this place better. I feel that some people aren’t 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.

Angry Republicans: When the House is not going to settle: The battle for the next speaker in the House of Representatives, Sen. Paul McCarthy, has been relentless

He can only afford to lose four votes on the House floor, and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with nearly a dozen other GOP lawmakers publicly saying they’re still not there yet.

That group is still pushing for a single member to be able to call for a vote toppling the speaker, which is what it used to be before Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the rules, and they also want a commitment that leadership won’t play in primaries.

In another strategic move, McCarthy postponed races for any contested 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.

In phone calls and text messages during the holidays, McCarthy’s defenders vowed to him and each other they wouldn’t let a handful of members control their 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.

A letter from the committee in charge of administrative matters outlined the practical implications of a drawn out speaker’s fight. Committees won’t be able to pay staff without an approved House Rules package, according to a memo.

The same memo, which was first reported by Politico and obtained by CNN, also warned that student loan payments for committee staff wouldn’t be disbursed if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January.

It’s just one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could paralyze the House and the Republican majority from operating efficiently in their opening days with some of the harshest penalties falling on rank-and-file staffers.

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.

One member said of the standoff between the pro and anti-McCarthy groups that it was a weird game where the steering wheel had been ripped off and both sides were going to pedal to the metal.

The challenge of getting a new speaker: The floor fight of Steve Scalise and the ill-preparedness of the Kamloops chamber

Yet another complicating factor: It is far from clear whether Scalise himself could get the 218 votes to win the speakership, underscoring the prospects that Tuesday could devolve into a long and drawn-out floor fight the chamber has not experienced in 100 years and one that could undercut Republicans’ ability to govern just as they come into power in the 118th Congress.

Don bacon is a supporter of Steve McCarthy and he said that Steve is trying to be supportive. He has been public about his support for McCarthy. I think someday he wants to be speaker so he’s got to be tactful.”

“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.”

Hardliners in the House of Representatives want to lower the threshold for a vote so that only one member could call for it, something other Republicans don’t like because it’s a recipe for chaos.

One GOP member said that if McCarthy becomes clear that KMC won’t get their votes, people will be against rule and operational changes.

“We shouldn’t be in a hurry to make a bad decision,” Good said, promising a new candidate would emerge on Tuesday. He wouldn’t say who the member is and wouldn’t comment on Scalise.

According to Mr. Johnson, it’s incredible that the same members in favor of more transparency in the GOP conference are now behind ashadow candidate who is going to be a blow to Republicans in the new Congress.

Johnson said that members are growing more frustrated with the intransigence of some of the holdouts.

“Folks should not believe this is some noble cause,” said one GOP lawmaker. No one should believe that this is anything but self aggrandizement. They are trying to give themselves more power in order to get procedures that no one cares about outside of Washington.

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

Markwayne Mullin and the Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives: “It is Time for a Breakdown of the Establishment”

Sen.-elect Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican and outgoing House member, met with McCarthy in his office on Monday. Mullin, who has been helping to lobby House members to back McCarthy, said he and others have been encouraging McCarthy with a simple message: “Stay put.”

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 refers to “the times call for a radical departure of the status quo, not a continuation of the past and ongoing Republican failures.”

Until a speaker is elected, nothing else can happen in the House of Representatives. The Constitution only mentions the leadership position.

McCarthy’s allies are pushing a strategy of “Only Kevin” as they discuss trying to rally around a consensus candidate. If McCarthy can’t convince some of the holdouts to back him, the process could take hours or even days.

If anything, McCarthy got weaker with each roll call, even if one senior GOP source told CNN he would never back down and “we’re going to war.” Some GOP members are now referring to the rebels as “the chaos caucus” or “The Taliban 20,” CNN’s Manu Raju reported.

Rep. Byron Donalds Revisited: Rebuilding the House from the First and Second Votes in McCarthy’s Decay

A speaker needs a majority of members in the House to be elected. If no member skips the vote or votes present, that’s 218 votes.

McCarthy got 203 votes for the first speaker vote, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates. The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. In the third round, 20 Republicans voted for Jordan and 202 for McCarthy, with Rep. Donalds joining 19 other Republicans who had voted against McCarthy.

A small group of conservatives who had distrust of McCarthy were given the go-ahead to make demands after the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans in the November elections.

There has been an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has involved strategy sessions with allies, intense negotiations over rules changes and constant phone calls with members.

The House ended up in an absurd limbo after the debacle in which McCarthy appeared to have no strategy other than a beat-the-head- against-a-brick-wall approach. A group of people who traveled to Washington to see their new lawmakers were bored and disappointed. The house will resume at noon on Wednesday, even though there is little sign of a break in the stalemate.

“People are committed to this and they’re sick and tired of the tail trying to wag the dog, which is what these 19 think they’re going to do,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, who backs McCarthy, told CNN’s Jake Tapper after the second 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.

By backing Jordan, Donalds joined the original 19, including people like Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who are equally committed.

“The irony of what we’re witnessing here today is the fact that Jim Jordan was always the ringleader of these types of rebellions and he’s trained these guys well,” said the CNN analyst, moderate Republican and former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania.

He is attempting to get these men to back off, but they will not. And so, I mean this is the most surreal thing I think I’ve seen on the House floor in all the years I have been around, because he was the quintessential rebel and he can’t control them,” Dent said.

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.

Bipartisanship and the GOP Circus: A Picture of Bridges, Jobs, and the Predictions for The House Speaker’s Role in 2020

This drama – or sideshow, if that’s how you view it – does presage a very difficult year for the ultimate speaker in which the debt ceiling must be raised to avert an economic meltdown.

The CNN anchor said that the Republicans have to figure out what they are going to do. We can’t come to an agreement on who should be in charge of the House of Representatives. “Don’t bother about immigration, what we’re going to do about inflation, what we’ll do about the border, America’s place in the world.”

That’s all on hold until they find a leader. Meanwhile, as House Republicans grapple in a very unpredictable way with how to convince their members who have no interest in the system functioning, there will be a highly scripted photo opportunity about bipartisanship in Kentucky on Wednesday.

McConnell, along with the state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, and the country’s Democratic President, Joe Biden, will be in Kentucky to announce funding for a new bridge. Ohio Republicans and Democrats will be at the event.

Beshear told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Tuesday that the bridge project will help the region’s economy and update a key piece of infrastructure with $1.6 billion passed through Capitol Hill in 2021 in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

“I think it is also a great statement that there is nothing partisan about a bridge,” Beshear said. He said the five Democrats and five Republicans would announce they had done the best thing for the people. It is pretty refreshing.”

He’ll have to find a way to work with whomever Republicans ultimately choose to be their speaker and to find a way around the lawmakers who have no problem grinding the government to a halt.

After Donald Trump left politics in disgrace, Republicans have regained some power.

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.

The Case for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler During the 2017 Republican Primary: “We’re gonna have a lot of problems coming up”

“I didn’t think we were going to get any more productive by continuing on the day,” McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday. But he insisted he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race.

He said that he had enough votes to get a number of members to vote present, which would lower the threshold he would need.

— The GOP civil war, which erupted with the Tea Party backlash to the Obama administration, is far from burned out. It was responsible for the departures of Republican House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner and was put into overdrive by Trump. As the party regained power, radicals started to destroy a party establishment that has already shifted to the right to appease them.

“Maybe the right person for the job of speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of themself for more than a decade to get it,” Matt Gaetz, the hard-right Florida congressman, said on the House floor before nominating Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for speaker before a second round of voting Tuesday.

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.

Democrats are looking at the political capital it will provide them, as a sign that Republicans should be kicked out at the first opportunity in the next election. In an email to Democratic donors, Jeffries said that he watched House Republicans plunge into chaos. “This changes everything for Democrats. We have an opportunity to do something now that we’re in.

The Utah Republican said on Tuesday that the conference can implement the agenda they have if they want to or they can allow a few people to keep it from happening.

The House without a speaker cannot move forward, no other votes can be held, no legislation can be considered. How this gets resolved is a question that’s open, either McCarthy wins over the hard- right members who want him out or he bows out and someone else takes his place.

“Everyone thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said on Fox News. A select committee, and a Special Committee in regard to the situation in Libya. What are she numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

The GOP’s intent was to find out what really happened in the attack on the American embassy in Libya and 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.

Why a Republican Speaker of the House isn’t Trying to Fix Problems in the House, despite he’s Beating Critics of Trump

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.

He tried to be a tough guy at the 11th hour, threatening the defectors with stripping them of committee assignments. That appeared to be the opposite of what he and his allies were intending.

It’s not just for McCarthy but for anyone with ambition and has to make choices between their beliefs and what they’re willing to compromise, was it worth 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?

McCarthy and his allies are holding active discussions about adjourning the House until Thursday – but it is uncertain if that would be possible because they may not have the votes to pull it off, according to multiple sources.

Democratic sources say they would fight against a motion to adjourn because it would require 218 votes. Plus some Republicans would likely vote against it as well.

On McCarthy, Trump, and the Truth Social Campaign: Paul Gaetz’s Rejection in the House GOP Conference on Tuesday (after Trump) blasted by Brian Fitzpatrick

Talks continued Tuesday evening, with McCarthy in his office making calls, sources said. Brian Fitzpatrick is one of the emissaries that he sent to try to get a deal with his opponents in the House GOP conference.

The same member said a statement made by former President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning that reaffirmed his support for McCarthy and urged Republicans to back him was basically a wash – while it was more helpful than if he had blasted McCarthy, it wasn’t expected to move the needle.

Another member warned that after Tuesday, it’s clear that the opposition to McCarthy is personal – meaning there may be little that he can do to turn the tide at this point.

“This changes neither my view of McCarthy nor Trump nor my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.

Long a staunch Trump ally, Gaetz’s refusal to bow to Trump’s desire for a McCarthy speakership raises new questions about the former president’s dwindling influence over Republicans in the midst of his third presidential campaign.