With such a razor-thin margin for Republicans in the newly-elected House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the former GOP minority leader, is finding it hard to whip up enough votes to secure his election as House Speaker. While it’s safe to say most House Republicans will back McCarthy, a sizable portion simply will not, under any circumstance, vote for him as Speaker to replace Nancy Pelosi.
As previous noted, McCarthy does have the backing of former President Donald Trump, though a sizable number of “MAGA” Republicans are trying to force changes or have vowed to vote against McCarthy if given the chance.
The drama will begin unfolding today around noon eastern time, follow the events live below from C-SPAN via YouTube:
Watch Live – 118th Congress Opening Day
Watch live as the 118th Congress convenes and the House attempts to elect a new Speaker:
It’s in the small margin of anti-McCarthy votes where the wheeling and dealing have been taking place. Over the weekend, McCarthy made a major concession to some conservative members but even that might still not be enough to secure needed votes on the first round:
Rep. Kevin McCarthy appears not to have the votes necessary to win the House speaker’s gavel on the first ballot as a crucial group of conservative Republicans demanded a “radical departure from the status quo” in chamber leadership.
During a Sunday night conference call with members of the GOP conference, McCarthy (R-Calif.) acceded to a key demand pressed by members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, who had insisted on allowing the process to remove a speaker — known as a “motion to vacate” — to be initiated by just five Republican members instead of a majority.
A “motion to vacate” was filed in 2015 by then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and triggered the resignation of then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The rule was changed in 2019 by Democrats.
Nine hardline Republicans — Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Chip Roy of Texas, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Harris of Maryland, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Rep.-elects Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona — rejected McCarthy’s proposed rules changes as “insufficient.”
After McCarthy, the next name being floated around is Republican Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, a sort of consensus candidate that could emerge if McCarthy failed. Scalise, however, also has detractors from some moderates who, like their more conservative counterparts, would withhold their vote from Scalise like some members are doing now to McCarthy.
Rep. Andy Biggs, of the “Never Kevin” caucus, might also be a factor if McCarthy fails in the first round. It’s been one hundred years since the House Speaker vote went beyond a single round which means we may be in for some rarely-seen jockeying to try and find a consensus candidate each party faction can live with.
If voting spills into another round, the issue could take hours, days, or even weeks to hammer out depending on how entrenched each side is. Most members don’t seem to think it would come to that point expressing their belief that whether it makes one or two rounds, McCarthy will still find a way to secure the agenda-setting role as Speaker of the House.
