Dem Demographic Implications for the Speaker’s Campaign: McCarthy’s Failure to Win in the Presidency of the House Minority

Aside from working to recapture the majority, McCarthy has also been campaigning to win the speaker’s gavel. And a key part of that strategy has been elevating potential critics and controversial Trump allies.

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 were turned away.

“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. If something happens to rise to the occasion, it will not be used at any other time.

McCarthy said that the GOP wouldn’t rubber stamp any additional requests for aid if they cut off funding to Ukranian.

McCarthy’s comments represent a sharp escalation in his public pressure campaign against the five members who have signaled they plan to deny him the 218 votes he needs to become speaker when the new Congress convenes in January. McCarthy has spent hours behind closed doors negotiating a series of rules that the hardline faction wants in order to weaken the speakership and empower their members.

McCarthy was the first candidate to fall short in a speaker’s race. Most poignantly, the impasse means Republicans are unable even to assume the control they won in the midterms as a new House can’t yet be sworn in.

Stay in Mexico, stay in the USA, stay there, stay here, and stay there: defending Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” he said, referring to the controversial policy where migrants were forced to remain in Mexico while they wait for their immigration proceedings in the United States.

To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”

Most bills will be not much more than messaging, though they might have to raise the national borrowing limit at some point next year because of the president’s veto or the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. McCarthy said Republicans would demand spending cuts if the debt ceiling was lifted, which meant that there would be a fiscal battle that could lead to a debt default.

“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 something about it. You should not just say that I’m going to let you keep spending money. No household should do that.”

McCarthy acknowledged that Republicans were open to raising the debt ceiling under Trump, but noted that the 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 have to.

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.

McCarthy won’t have any say in who gets where, when or how it’s done, so he doesn’t have any restrictions about which committees he can serve. She told CNN in the past that she wanted a seat on the House Oversight Committee which will play a key role in GOP-led investigations.

She is going to have committees that she will serve on. He says that members request different committees and the committee will look at it after the steering committee has finished its work. She can get elected to any of the committees that she wants, just like any other member.

Greene and the Freedom Caucus meet in Washington, DC, to discuss a re-elected Speaker of the House in the November r-term

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 supports 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 starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”

He told reporters in DC last week that there needs to be a discussion about whether he should be the speaker. “I think we should have a very frank discussion internally about where we’re going to be going forward.”

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. They see a chance to get more power in a GOP-led House with a slimmer-than- expected majority.

The Republican Governance Group, a band of centrist-leaning lawmakers, huddled with McCarthy on Wednesday in order to get a sense of where his head is at, according to lawmakers who attended. During the meeting, they told McCarthy they would have his back and were committed to voting for him on multiple ballots if it comes to that. The buttons were passed out in a nod to McCarthy.

The Tea Party’s Next-to-Leading Electoral Collider: Why Mr. Trump Won’t Win

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 hopes to formalize a lengthier list of all the rules changes they are seeking. 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. A group of hardliners put out a letter saying that progress is being made, but they did not say that McCarthy’s concessions were insufficient.

The C team should be starting with a slim majority, according to Gaetz. It is necessary to put our star players in position to shine so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.

Some of the Republicans speaking out now have previously enabled Mr. Trump and his policies, either through public support or silence. They were fearful of crossing the party’s base because they had long claimed to disdain Mr. Trump’s politics.

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

Since Tuesday’s election, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and The New York Post — owned by the conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch — have called for Mr. Trump to be tossed aside. Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee in 2024 according to Winsome Sears and Robin Vos, two important Trump allies.

Moderate Republicans complained about the party’s plunge into conspiracy theories and divisive issues that light up the right-wing media. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called for a return to classic fiscal conservatism. Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, said during a radio interview that Mr. Trump risked hurting the party by campaigning in Georgia.

The Senator from Iowa, who spoke at a Trump rally before the election, said it was time to move on from the pet issue. He wrote that he should stop talking in 2020.

Hawley, Scalise, and Gaetz: A Family Discussion about the Progress Made During the Midterms in the House and Senate

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.

A small, but vocal, group of GOP senators has been calling to delay their leadership elections so they can have a “family discussion” about why the GOP underperformed. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, said he would oppose McConnell for GOP leader.

Before Biggs’ announcement, McCarthy and House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, who is running to be majority leader, attempted to quell the tensions vibrating within the party on Monday. McCarthy met with several members of the House Freedom Caucus on Monday, and Scalise apologized at a meeting to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for privately criticizing him in the immediate wake of January 6, 2021, according to sources in the room.

Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said it wasn’t sense to have Senate leadership elections this week.

Scott said that many people called to see if he would run. “Here’s my focus, is we still got to win Georgia. I’m not going to take anything off the table.”

The frustration of Tom Emmer, John McConnell, and other GOP aides and allies: How far can we go in the midterm elections?

In light of the GOP’s lackluster midterm gains, Trump aides and allies have been privately critical of Tom Emmer, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. CNN has not yet projected a party’s control of the lower house, but Republicans are on track to win the majority. Emmer is competing against Rep. Jim Banks, an ally of Donald Trump Jr., for the position of House GOP whip.

They have been making plans, they have been measuring the drapes. They haven’t won it yet,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union.” Judgements on how we go forward will be made in the party that gained the majority in the election.

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.

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. Plus McConnell’s super PAC spent more than any other group in Senate races – while Trump’s group spent a tiny fraction of that – a realty not lost on the Kentucky Republican’s allies.

“There’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses,” said retiring Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. If fealty to Trump is the primary criteria for selection of candidates, we are probably not going to do 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.

McCarthy said they were still continuing to talk but they had not moved. We are the only Republican entity that has stopped the Biden administration. But we’re also going to be 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 they can’t appease HFC and moderates at the same time. “If you straddle that fence, you better hope it’s not barbed wire.”

The Tea Party of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the State of the Senate Minority Causal Causality in a Bisession with the Media

McCarthy has spoken with Trump many times, sources said, and his camp is hoping that by endorsing Trump they can win over some of the supporters who have been critical of McCarthy.

A GOP source says that Trump has been trying to get the support of Republican lawmakers in the media for his third bid for president.

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 will back McCarthy for leader, noting that the GOP gained seats in the last two elections. Simpson said that he had done a good job.

According to Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Callaway, if we don’t unify behind Kevin McCarthy, we’re giving the Democrats a chance to recruit some Republicans.

A source in the room said that Bob Good, a McCarthy critic, criticized McCarthy for not congratulating him when he won his primary, and for the fact that the SuperPAC aligned with McCarthy opposed some pro-Trump candidates. McCarthy replied that he directed $2 million to Good for his race. Good had to be gaveled down in order to cut him off from speaking so they could move to the next question, the source said.

Sources tell us that McCarthy’s allies have recently tried to convince moderate Henry Cuellar to switch parties in an effort to padding their slim margins. Cuellar flatly rejected the idea. McCarthy was not involved if these conversations took place, and his spokesman said that this wasn’t part of the strategy for the majority or his speakership bid.

No viable challenger has emerged, but if Mr. McCarthy continues to flounder, Republicans could shift their votes to an alternative, such as his No. 2, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

The source in the room said Tom Emmer, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was pressed on his vote in favor of the same-sex marriage bill. He said divisive social issues shouldn’t be brought to the House floor.

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 public vote on the House floor will likely showcase the GOP divisions and chaos. McCarthy’s allies insist they won’t vote for any alternative candidate, and even if it’s messy, they will stick with him.

The leader of the Republican Governance Group told CNN that the fight was holding them up from being able to get to work. “I have people who say they don’t care if it is 500 times, they are voting for Kevin. There isn’t anyone else.

“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). GOP lawmaker said, “Sclise would most likely be the guy.”

If GOP leader McCarthy cannot get the votes, there is no need for Scalise to jump into the race.

“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. Kevin has been talking with the members who have expressed concerns.

Jim Jordan, who is a hero of the right, was trying to get McCarthy to be the speaker, but 19 of his colleagues voted against him because he doesn’t want it. Jordan is interested in lacingrating Biden’s appointees as the chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The South Carolina Republican said after he left McCarthy’s office that he would vote for Andy for speaker. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

Following that secret ballot vote, where McCarthy won 188-31, a bloc of five “hard no” votes strategically began to trickle out their public statements of opposition. The pressure on McCarthy to cut a deal was intensified by an additional group of people writing to the Republican leader.

It’s unclear, however, whether moderates will actually be willing to follow through with the same hardball tactics often deployed by the far right – especially if it could wind up backfiring for McCarthy. GOP sources do not believe that McCarthy’s supporters would take down the rules package if they opposed it.

McCarthy also agreed to to change a rule that would allow a group of five members to offer a resolution to remove the speaker. He refused to lower the threshold on how many sponsors are needed because it would weaken the speaker’s power. McCarthy is able to afford a few defections since his margin is so small, but he has been pressured by the right.

“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. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘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. There was some speculation that one of the members competing for a gavel, Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, may retire early if he doesn’t win, which would make McCarthy’s math problem even tougher. Buchanan 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 also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

“Hakeem, Hakeem,” Democrats chanted as their new leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, earned more votes than McCarthy in the first three roll calls of the new House the GOP is supposed to control – although he too fell short of the 218 majority.

“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’s see what happens on January 3.”

Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.

It would take cooperation from every single Democrat and the assistance of five Republicans. In an interview with CNN, he stated that he wouldn’t be in Washington that day.

Bruce Westerman said this has happened in Arkansas before, where minority Democrats in the legislature joined with Republicans to choose a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.

The California GOP has a plan for their next legislative challenge: Westerman, Norman, Mayorkas, Greene, and his aides

“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.

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

If Mr. McCarthy does have a plan, he has not shared it with members of his leadership team, whom he has cut out of his deliberations about the speakership race in what some regard as a display of paranoia. Instead, he has been spotted recently with Jeff Miller, a Republican lobbyist, near the Republican National Committee headquarters.

An aide to Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said the South Carolinian’s district offices have been inundated with calls from constituents who have received robocalls and “been read a script” by someone warning what could happen if McCarthy isn’t elected speaker because of conservatives like Norman. 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.

There’s a slow motion, open-ended drama playing out on the floor of the House in which Republicans cannot come behind a speaker – one of the most powerful and important jobs in US government, and the prize they won with a slim House majority. Congress is not able to function until it has a House speaker.

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

He wants to investigate the House Select Committee and hold public hearings into security failures that led to the attack on the Capitol. He is meeting with ultra conservative lawmakers in a bid 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.

A Democratic Causal Campaign to Get the Speakership of the House of Representatives to the Midterm Referendum in January 2020: Why Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouldn’t be a Capitol Insurrection Witness

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.

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

The steps McCarthy is taking to try to secure the speakership – and the future complications that may entail – were evident on Tuesday when he gave Greene, the Georgia Republican, a pass for her latest effort to mock the trauma of the Capitol insurrection. The congresswoman had said over the weekend that had she been in charge on January 6, 2021, the riot would have succeeded and the mob would have been armed. She said that she was sarcasm after the White House objected that her remarks were against US values and law enforcement.

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 was asked by the CNN host if she believed she was being facetious when she said she was being inflammatory. His attitude was not a surprise; it was consistent with the attempts to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, in 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. After meeting Biden and other congressional leaders at the White House last month, the House Republican leader made up a story that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he had never done so before.

Thune’s Tales of a Narrow Divide: Addressing the Sensitive Concerns in the House and Senate Minority Leaders

Senate GOP Whip John Thune on Tuesday downplayed the threat by McCarthy that he would block bills in the next Congress backed by senators who vote for the spending package. He also suggested Republicans are doing McCarthy a favor by passing this year’s spending bill now rather than leave it to next year, when Republicans will take control of the House.

It is possible that the split will lead to tensions between Republicans in the house and McConnell in the future because it makes it more difficult for some Republican senators to vote for a spending deal now.

As frustration has grown over a small band of anti-Kevin McCarthy lawmakers, the idea of kicking them off their committees has been floated among some Republicans.

— 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. And as soon as the party had a sniff of power again, that strife burst into the open as radicals seek to destroy a party establishment that has already shifted far right to appease them.

“People need to recognize we don’t need to double down on failed policies and failed candidates,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican. “There’s a reason the midterms were the way that they were: people who are left of center, right of center were the most successful.”

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the handful of Republican lawmakers to come out in firm opposition to McCarthy as speaker, also acknowledged the reality of a narrowly divided House.

“We are in a community of common fate,” he told CNN. “We have to acknowledge that the ship isn’t going anywhere if five people won’t row in that direction. It is true on impeachment, it is true on the speakership vote, it is true on the budget and it is true on policy choices.

Some of the issues that remain unanswered include what other deals are going to be cut, and what guarantees are going to be made. Womack asked. We need to be careful not to give a lot of that leverage away.

Talks continued Tuesday evening, with McCarthy in his office making calls, sources said. He also has dispatched several emissaries – Brian Fitzpatrick, Garret Graves, French Hill, Patrick McHenry and Guy Reschenthaler – to help find a deal with his foes and present their demands to the rest of the House GOP conference.

Many members are still preaching unity as the process of making private deals continues, and emphasizing that the conference will come together when Congress starts January 3. To that end, the Republican Governance Group recently sent a letter urging their colleagues to unite behind McCarthy.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans are out there having conversations and talking about different points of view,” GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida told CNN.

Even amid the high-stakes negotiations, members from competing factions have had time to have some fun with one another. All of Capitol Hill came together for a Christmas party in the office of Burchett, who is an anti-McCarthy lawmaker. Amid the Mountain Dew fountain and “charcuterie plate” consisting of Cheez Whiz and Ritz crackers, Burchett at one point rode the skateboard of Gaetz’s wife.

Utah Republican Representative, who identifies himself as part of the governing wing, claims that the various groups actually agree on most things, and that they don’t think it will be tense next year.

Moore told CNN that there was not an enormous amount of drama. I talked to House Freedom Caucus members about what we agree on. It is an enormous amount.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy warned Friday that if conservatives don’t agree with him he will have a hard time keeping the Republicans in power.

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. “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.”

This year is mostly unfinished business, and it will be difficult for them to finish next year, especially since they have a narrow majority.

“We’re enduring the silly season of a campaign. For most of us, that’s over after you get elected. He said the silliness was still evident because he is running for speaker of the House.

Four days before the House speaker vote, when his critics were still noncommittal about their support for his speakership bid, even after the California Republican had offered a number of key concessions – including making it easier to oust the sitting speaker – he attempted to give them the hard sell.

A group of at least nine Republicans are still not sold, despite the fact that McCarthy gave in to some of their most ardent demands during a Sunday evening conference call.

“To be honest, we are preparing for a fight. Not the way we want to start out in our new majority, but you can’t really negotiate against the position of ‘give us everything we ask for and we won’t guarantee anything in return,’” According to CNN, the member of the Republican Governance Group is Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota.

I give Kevin a lot of credit. He brought everyone in and worked hard to find a way out of the mess. A way to make this place run better. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”

McCarthy worked the phones with everyone from critics to supporters to find agreement on changes designed to win over holdouts during the week after Christmas.

The Kochen-Carthy House Speaker Struggle: The Failure of Hard Linear Negotiation in the House, or What Happens if the Speaker goes to the Speaker?

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.

Lawmakers worked over the weekend to finalize the rules package. McCarthy agreed to the five person threshold on the motion to leave, which he billed as a compromise, after talking to Republicans on the conference-wide call Sunday evening.

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 the Sunday call said they would swallow the concession if McCarthy voted in favor of it. They worry some of those hardliners are not negotiating in good faith and fear they won’t come through in the end – a sentiment that was only reinforced during Sunday’s call.

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.

“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 letter, obtained by CNN, states.

In another strategic move, McCarthy postponed races for any contested committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was a way for freshman members to have a say in the process while other members thought it was to protect him from criticism.

McCarthy and his supporters vowed to not let a handful of members control their conference in holiday phone calls and text messages.

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 fight for the next speaker: Politico, CNN, and the Daily Mail – a critical note on the fight against McCarthy in the House of Representatives

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, 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.

The battle over the next speaker could paralyze the House and the Republican majority from operating efficiently in their first days in office with some of the toughest penalties falling on rank-and-file staffers.

CNN moved boxes from McCarthy’s office to the speaker’s room last week as a sign that he is interested in the job, despite the race far from settled.

The ongoing standoff between the anti-McCarthy group and the pro-McCarthy group is currently being described as a game of chicken in which both sides ripped off the steering wheel from the dashboard.

Scott Perry, a leading critic of McCarthy, wrote on New Years Day that nothing changes when nothing changes. He cited the letter, which states “the times call for a radical departure of the status quo — not a continuation of the past, and ongoing Republican failures.”

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

McCarthy’s allies are pushing a strategy known as “only Kevin”, which they claim is an “O.K.” strategy. 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.

An agenda for the first two weeks of January was released by the man in line to become House Majority leader. 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 can’t be formed, members can’t be sworn in and the rest of the business can’t be started.

The House will continue to be paralyzed until this standoff is resolved. If the fight for speaker continues much longer, McCarthy may not be able to pull off his gamble for speaker.

McCarthy became weaker if one senior GOP source told CNN that he would never back down and that we were going to war. In the past, GOP members referred to the rebels as the chaos caucus.

The Secret Life of Kevin McCarthy: A CNN View of the House Floor Scramble in the Second and Third Round of Voting for a Speaker

A speaker needs a majority of votes from members who vote for a specific person on the floor. That amounts to 218 votes if no member skips the vote or votes “present.”

The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan, to show that he is not vying for the job, nominated McCarthy ahead of the vote 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 led by strategy sessions with close allies on Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and ceaseless phone calls with members.

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

A small group of people has kept the House from moving forward and is threatening to kill Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.

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 as well.

CNN analyst and former US Representative Charlie Dent commented that Jim Jordan was the ring leader of rebellions and he was trained well.

He wants the guys to back off, they won’t. 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 accused McCarthy of betraying himself when he nominated Jordan before the second round of voting.

Bipartisanship in the House: The Brent Spence Bridge and the Future of the American Heart : Two Years After Donald Trump Recuperation

If you see it that way, this drama presages a very difficult year for the speaker of the house who wants the debt ceiling raised so that the economy can avoid a recession.

CNN anchor John King said that the Republicans have to at some point figure out what they are going to do. “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. In Kentucky on Wednesday there will be a photo opportunity about bipartisanship, as House Republicans try to convince members who do not want the system working that they want to work with it.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who just became the longest-serving Senate party leader in history, will appear with his state’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, and the country’s Democratic president, Joe Biden, to announce new funding to upgrade the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Kentucky to Ohio. There will be an Ohio Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, and an Ohio Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, also on hand.

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 that the bipartisan quintet would say that they had done the right thing for the people. It is pretty refreshing.”

He will have to try to find a way to work with Republicans if they choose to be their speaker, and also find a way around the scurries of the legislature who want to keep the government running.

Two years after ex President Donald Trump left Washington in disgrace, Republicans have regained some power.

While Democrats were happy to have regained their majority in the 118th congress, Republicans were angry with one another.

Rep. Doug McCarthy, Sen. Jaime Herrera Beutler, and the House Committee on the 21st December 2021 Insurrection

McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday that he didn’t believe they would get any more productive by continuing on. But he insisted he wouldn’t be dropping out of the race.

He suggested that he can get a number of members to vote for him, which would lower the threshold he would need to win.

On Tuesday, Gaetz jabbed at McCarthy, who sat a few feet away, suggesting the right person for speaker might not be someone who had 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.

After McCarthy developed amnesia about the January 6, 2021, insurrection and repeatedly paid tribute to Donald Trump, the former president has been trying to help McCarthy out. But the effort has not helped, according to Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Colorado Republican.

Democrats are trying to use it to make political capital out of their claims that Republicans should be kicked out of office at the first chance in the next election. Jeffries told Democratic donors that he watched House Republicans plunge into chaos on the floor. Everything is different for the Democrats. We now have a huge opportunity to step in and show what we can do.”

“This is a prelude of what’s going to come and the coming attraction when we get up to any big budget matter or the debt ceiling or anything else,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, a McCarthy-backer, said on CNN on Wednesday. 10% of our conference will be pushed and shoved by a crowd, and they are going to push and shove what they think is the agenda.

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.

Voting to adjourn would require 218 votes and the Democratic sources said they would actively whip against the motion to adjourn. Plus some Republicans would likely vote against it as well.

Rep. Ken Buck: Breaking the 20 anti-McCarthy Republicans in the Confrontation with the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution

The same member said that Donald Trump renewing his support for McCarthy and urging Republicans to back him was meaningless since it was not expected to upset McCarthy at all.

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.

Although Trump’s statement might not move the needle among the fiercest McCarthy foes, one of the sources said McCarthy world was worried about looking “weak” and like he was bleeding support, so they felt it was important to reverse the narrative.

“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.

Gaetz has been an ally of Donald Trump, and his refusal to bow to Trump for a speakership raises questions about the former president’s influence over Republicans in the midst of his third presidential campaign.

They’re getting some support. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana became the 21st Republican member-elect to not support McCarthy on Wednesday, although she voted “present” rather than voting for anyone.

“I think you need to break the 20 down,” the conservative Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado said on CNN on Wednesday. Buck had been viewed as a possible defector before this week, and he made clear that patience with these votes is waning.

He suggested McCarthy’s deputy, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, as a possible consensus speaker who could speak to three varieties of the 20 anti-McCarthy Republicans.

Others want different things. “There are some of the others … who want changes in the rules and there are some others who care about policy,” Buck said. “So I think if Steve (Scalise) meets those three needs, he will be able to move forward and take the speakership.”

Some want to shut things down. The South Carolina congressman has said he is not going to agree to raise the debt ceiling if McCarthy is willing to shut the government down. That suggests the kind of precarious future funding fights will pose to the economy.

These lawmakers want painful cuts now to end deficit spending. If the US were to default on its debt, it could cause the economy to tank, according to most economists. A government shutdown would be less severe than before but they have been unpopular.

Do We Live in Washington as a First Party? Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, M.D. Boebert, N.C. Bishop, P.B. C. Burris, J. J. McKay,

ScottPerry of Pennsylvania said that the American people will see that this process works. That it’s been 100 years since there was such a floor fight is a feature of the moment, Perry argued. We have made it clear that we don’t want any more of Washington being broken.

“I really think this is democracy in action,” Bishop said. “If you’re not satisfied with Washington as it is, then you can’t be satisfied with doing the same thing as we start this Congress, I’m convinced.”

“The fact is that you never see a specific agenda that you know Kevin McCarthy’s going to go to the mat for, as opposed to sort of pablum or poll-tested language, indicates the problem,” Bishop said. It has been like that for 14 years because he has been in leadership.

“Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us – even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off,” Boebert said on the House floor on Wednesday. “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”

If you watch enough Tucker Carlson on Fox or listen to Steve Bannon’s podcast, you’ll hear the argument that Republicans and Democrats aren’t that different. The term “uni party” is sometimes used by Carlson to blast funding bills. There’s some of that in the opposition to McCarthy, who has been part of the GOP leadership for years.

I think we need to operate differently in this place and that is why I am holding the line. Roy said on Tuesday that it was just something that he believed.

Roy said he’s among the fiscal conservatives who want to “stop the train of the swamp,” which he said is made up of Republicans and Democrats, “power brokers and the defense industrial complex.” He said the special interests came together to push the government funding bills that were passed last month.

Donalds joined the others who want a single member to be able to force a vote on whether to remove a sitting speaker in order to speak about the need for open amendments.

The appropriations process doesn’t allow for open amendments, so the government can’t do anything about it. She thinks that needs to stop.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/04/politics/mccarthy-gop-speaker-hardliners-what-matters/index.html

Reply to “Comment on ‘Electing a Democratic Speaker” Kevin McCarthy’s Remarks on the House Budget”

McCarthy did offer numerous concessions to the hardliners like Roy, including a pledge – which seems impossible given the slapdash way legislation comes together – to give lawmakers 72 hours to read a bill before it goes to the floor for a vote.

The current requirement that a majority of GOP members join the call for the removal of the speaker was changed by him.

One thing that can be tricky with finding a McCarthy replacement is that the person may see how difficult McCarthy’s concessions will be.

Donalds, who is getting votes from hardliners, said no when CNN asked if he wanted the job.

The majority of the spending bills are worked out by committees. Members can request individual spending items. It’s a complicated process and pretty much everyone agrees it is flawed.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, speaking to reporters late Tuesday evening in the Capitol. “I’m staying until we win,” he said.

Even after the direct appeal from Donald Trump, the fourthballot vote showed that Republicans were not about to break the logjam in the chamber.

The endorsement didn’t make much difference in Mr. McCarthy’s direction. The Republican leader was working behind closed doors to win the votes of his supporters during the fifth vote.

Right-wing Republicans coalesced behind Representative Jim Jordan of OH, who is one of the founding members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, to replace Mr. McCarthy.