Five House Republicans Oppose Kevin McCarthy for Speaker
McCarthy can only lose four votes since the GOP will likely only have a 222-seat majority.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy can only lose four votes for his bid for Speaker of the House when Republicans take over in January.
The GOP will likely only have a 222-seat majority out of the 435-seat House. McCarthy needs 218 votes.
Five House Republicans have publically come out against McCarthy:
- Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz
- South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman
- Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs
- Virginia Rep. Bob Good
- Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale
Good and Rosendale are not hard nos like the first three because they would vote for him “in exchange for concessions on House rules.”
The two men “want to decentralize the speaker’s powers over committees and the way legislation moves through the House.”
I rolled my eyes when The Squad and others threatened not to vote for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi because I knew she and her cronies would find ways to sweeten deals to get their votes.
I believe Gaetz, Norman, and Biggs will not vote for McCarthy.
McCarthy has already started making moves to secure votes, but who knows if he can make members of his party fall in line like Pelosi and the other Democrat leaders did with The Squad.
McCarthy made a few concessions:
McCarthy has already agreed to some of the demands, by changing the makeup of the internal GOP steering committee, which decides committee assignments, to empower rank-and-file members. The Californian Republican is also expected to support requirements that legislation moves through the committee process and receive extensive debate before being brought to the House floor for a vote.
“Kevin [McCarthy]s [sic] knows when the time is right to strike a deal,” said an aide to GOP leadership. “This is all public negotiating right now.”
McCarthy promised to restore committee assignments while kicking Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff off committees, removing metal detectors, and ending COVID protocols.
McCarthy also told DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or face an impeachment investigation due to the out-of-control border situation.
The minority leader has been meeting with Republicans to discuss their concerns and demands:
For example, some conservatives want McCarthy to impose a ban on earmarks, which allow lawmakers to direct federal dollars to local projects and programs in their home states, a legislative perk long derided as wasteful.
Others want McCarthy to enforce a balanced federal budget in future years, which would require vast spending cuts.
Some of the more conservative members of the House want to restore a rule that allows any member at any time to submit a motion to remove the speaker, which had been used by then-Rep. Mark Meadows as a pressure point during Boehner’s tenure. Instead, they adopted a provision stating that submitting such a “motion to vacate the chair” should only be done with party agreement.
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Comments
Only 5???
The whole leadership should have resigned
Only 5.
Very disappointing.
Should. But won’t. More RINO Squish on the way, but he’ll do just enough posturing (and maybe some concrete accomplishments that aren’t that big a deal) but that’ll be it.
McCarthy is built-in failure from the start. For one thing, he’s dragging way too much swamp goo behind him. The other is: he’s just not the man for the job: he doesn’t have the spine.
How can that be? Trump endorsed him for Speaker. Shouldn’t you be screaming about these five “traitors” right about now?
For those who are confused here, Trump endorsed McCarthy for Speaker this year.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/trump-endorses-mccarthy-speaker
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-endorse-kevin-mccarthy/2022/11/08/id/1095483/
Rosendale looked me in the eye and said he would do everything he could to oppose McCarthy. His “everything” doesn’t seem like much!
Some of this amounts to “Charge of the Light Headed Brigade” or “Sheer stupidity”.
Unless we have Democrats on board with banning earmarks all that means is “MUH UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT”.
Earmarks are a major way legislation gets through in practice and what a purely Republican ban on them means is “Democrats get to use earmarks and get to use it as an effective tool for legislation while Republicans will be restricted to only Republican votes for legislation because w have no way to incentivize crossover”.
Furthermore earmarks aren’t all bad.
I am sorry to break to you but we aren’t Sweden, we aren’t Japan, neither are we Germany we are America and our system does actually count on self interest of politicians for steering money to correct projects in their districts (which not by coincidence so does the British, and Australian and other Anglo systems!).
Trying to disarm ourselves for ideological reasons has been a 21st century catastrophe which we shouldn’t have done.
Before saying how bad it is for we the people to do earmarks
1. So you think our government was inferior under Raegan than it is now? You really would say Eisenhower was a bad president? Sorry but earmarks are part of our system.
2. If you don’t like where the earmarks for your district go that’s what primaries and elections are for! We need to stop forgetting district politics in favor of national politics.
3. Democrats will be glad to be the only ones using earmarks to attract defections if we “abolish” them.
Again we are not Sweden, if we chose to pretend to be Sweden the result is just unilateral disarmament not that the Democrats jump aboard our reforms and agree we are adopting Swedish standards.
We don’t need earmarks for the horse trading necessary to grease the legislative wheels.
For example the Congressional delegation from a particular State could work with their Gov and State Legislature on allowing more realistic military training. IOW more ordinance dropped on ranges. No military installation to speak of in a particular State? Sucks to be you, probably should have thought longer term.
Waste material, particularly hazardous waste is another issue. Nevada may have been very unwise to reject a r Senator as nuclear material must go somewhere. The NE doesn’t have sufficient refinery capacity nor want additional pipelines of any sort. Legislation bringing refinery capacity and pipelines to the fore as national security issues may be needed or perhaps not dependent upon the Congressional delegation supporting other initiatives.
Bottom line is there’s all sorts of things besides earmarks to be traded for legislation getting passed. Withholding funding for failing to get into line can be just as effective as granting additional funding. Pain, even economic pain, is very good teacher.
At least one thing you mentioned (federal tax dollars to help a states refining inadequacies) is the definition of an earmark.
Threat of withholding federal dollars if the other side doesn’t cooperate is also easier said than done (see Biden defeats in court as he threatens to withhold funding from red state schools in reaction to our state victories over CRT and trans agenda). It also has a nasty tendency of being defeated by the fact that in our system congressmen and senators do not look kindly on that tactic and will give it tepid support at best (Biden is the one who has shouted withhold, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have done no such thing). The offer of spending is the conventional political weapon in our system, threat to take away from a state or district however is the American political systems equivalent of chemical warfare.
Furthermore we have tried proceeding without earmarks through this century it just hasn’t worked.
We didn’t used to be squeamish about being in the American political system. When Raegan lowered taxes the reason it passed a Democrat house was earmarks, and when he passed a bill stopping oligarchic control over the flow of information by regulating cable companies…he didn’t have the house when he did that either he passed it by horse trading/earmarks.
Every 20th century Republican president used earmarks extensively. There is very good reason for that.
Why on earth would unilateral disarmament be a good idea anyway? So what if the the funding cut threat was to be normalized (which wouldn’t be a good thing; would you have really wanted to see Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer make good on Biden’s threats to cut funding for red state schools?) why on earth would you want the Democrats to have both carrot and stick while we only have the stick? Every bit of 21st century unilateral disarmament we did so far has backfired big time, why on Earth would it be a good idea to quadruple down on ideas that have already failed?
No. You are reading into what I wrote. All my points were about how the use of negative consequences can come into play.
Not withholding funds just rewarding the Congressional Delegations and States who want to play ball. So if say the NE States where Amtrak exist demand X additional dollars reroute them to other States who have historically gotten less rail subsidies. Having made a case that these additional $ should be spent they can’t argue about spending the $ just that they would be spent outside the NE.
IOW use a whole lot more stick than Carrots. Force the States to pay a price when their Congressional Delegation puts party ahead of the interests of their State. Do that long enough and hard enough and the Gov, Legislatures and local power brokers back home will intervene to steer their Congressional Delegation back into the good graces of the Speaker.
Two years of negative consequences and we lose the house.
We only have the house courtesy of a group of moderates in places like NY who ran in exceptionally tough districts and flipped blue leaning areas against all odds.
How many of those Republicans will be re-elected if we go with negative consequences that could be directly blamed on the house speaker?
There is also a major issue with negative consequences as a solution which is that we need to flip votes to do things like tackle big tech censorship, or make the department of ed purely about the three rs and remove the SJW things from it etc.
Earmarks are not a bad word they have been part of our politics from the start and the only way they won’t be is if Democrats see earmarks as bad (if they don’t we ban earmarks when we are in charge and don’t use them to get victories then when Democrats are in charge they revoke the ban and use them to get some Republican moderates to go squishy).
Before even starting the fact that big pharma is breaking the law and charging rural hospitals full price needs to be crushed by a congress willing to recommend criminal charges against the corporate class responsible; and willing to get it publicized if Garland refuses to play along.
Now getting back to topic
@Fuzzy
I know about those. Earmarks range from getting extra funding for your local hospital to a bridge to nowhere in a scheme run by a congressman’s first cousin. I would be glad to have even say a million dollars go to the later category of corrupt earmarks in return for a ban on big tech censorship the tradeoff isn’t close, and that is just one of many areas we really need legislation in. There are much worst things than 1% of the federal budget being wasted on absurdity, and because our society is at a major fork in the road during a moral panic while the left controls all institutions outside of government I think failure to get legislation because we are too pure to do what it takes is one of those things. To build a system without things like earmarks you need a system where all sides agree they are bad (i.e. what exists in Sweden). In the United States the Democrats firmly believe in earmarks as an ideal way to do things which means the only thing we are capable of doing about it is disarming ourselves by refusing to use them. As I said they also aren’t all bad, most red districts have projects that happened due to earmarks.
@Commo
We need to do both then. Democrats doing both has been very effective.
I am adamantly opposed to earmarks.
No, not sending $ to fix issues the States created. Instead accelerate the consequences. Y’all don’t have any fracking despite sitting on NG reserves? Y’all don’t have sufficient NG pipeline infrastructure to transfer NG to your CD and State?
Tough cookies. Live with consequences. Especially when your particular Rep, Senators or most of your Congressional Delegation isn’t getting on board with the agenda the Speaker has laid out.
Now if we can all the Speaker’s legislative priorities passed and signed into law quickly there might by time at the end of the session to see about some assistance for the particular issue impacting a CD or State. Not before.
Short version: Play ball or get the bat stuck where the sun don’t shine in a very aggressive and repetitive manner until we get tired of doing it.
You are seeing the problem as say “why should our tax dollars go a school in Mississippi or a museum in Florida” I am looking at it as “why exactly should we keep big tech censorship when by funding a school in Mississippi and a museum in Florida we could get something done for a change”.
Earmarks are the conventional tool for legislation. Our experiment in getting rid of them has just amounted to we don’t have them when we need to flip a couple of Democrat votes but the Democrats will always have them.
Earmarks also are a major tool for party discipline for the party with power and have been for sooo long. If you went back to the Eisenhower administration you would find earmarks being used routinely.
We can’t unilaterally disarm. A ban on big tech censorship is easily worth some extra spending in a select few districts.
Earmarks are shameful and disgusting, enabling corruption and blackmail to get crap legislation passed on our dime. Remember ObamaCare, the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the bridge to nowhere? No thank you. I want the swamp drained not fed.
Danny,
The Speaker has immense power. He controls committee assignments. He controls office assignments. He can use that power to disrupt and make it incredibly unpleasant to be a member of the minority. Being a back bench member even in the minority is a pretty good gig normally. We should use the power of the Speaker to makes things abnormal for those who don’t play ball.
The CD and States who seem to be hell bent on sending d/prog to Congress need to feel the consequences of that. Y’all want a d/prog, to rep you? Fine but they are in the minority not the majority. That should be a consideration with teeth.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s the d/prog held onto political power for a decade and a half in Congress past the Reagan revolution of 1980. Then another 15 years at the State level. They were able to use the threat of consequences for election of a r into a minority to do so.
Past time to return the favor. The consequences for not playing ball with the agenda of the majority should be harsh. Look at how the d/prog punished rural areas via disruption of reimbursement and draconian policies for hospitals. Many rural hospitals are closed. Lots of places don’t have a hospital within a 90 minute drive.
That is the sort thing I am recommending. Reward your friends and punish your enemies. It works. It’s effective. Obama care is a decade in and despite a period of r control in DC wasn’t sufficiently reformed to undue the damage it caused. That’s one example. Many others exist.
Bottom line is following through on threats is at least as effective as the bribes you favor.
I’m psychic. I can tell you exactly what will happen if the conservatives manage to get a different House speaker than McCarthy.
The Republicans will all happily line up in favor of “new blood” and “unity” for about ten minutes. Then an endless string of deep state Republicans will begin a leaking campaign that makes (fill in extreme analogy here). They will go to the microphone of every TV network and dish dirt on their fellow Republicans, in particular those wild-eyed radicals in the Insurrection wing of the party. They will whine about their leadership, wax poetic about the good old days of bipartisanship (when the Dems were partisan, and the Republicans were bi), ‘reach across the aisle’ to achieve ‘progress’ in critical legislation (to the Dems), criticize every Republican idea and proposal, and propose massive spending bills they think will appease the Left. A hundred McCains will flower and they will not rest until the Republicans lose both houses and the Presidency in the next election, which they will claim is a ‘good thing’
Oh, wait. I’m not psychic. I just remember history.
And this is why the Rep-wing is content to be the “Washington Generals” playing against the Dem-wing “Globetrotters”.
The Dem-wing, when push comes to shove, provide a united front akin to a steel wall when they have to, beating their dissidents into line. A perfect example was when Al Franken stepped briefly off the reservation when talking about how gun control was useless when dealing with insane people. They yanked his leash so hard he flopped over on his back pissing himself.
The Rep-wingers, because they don’t actually WANT the power, do insane stuff like this to deliberately not do what their voting base desperately wants them to do, which is to restore the Constitutional Republic.
Look for a completely do-nothing House for the next two years, in conjunction with the sabotaging of any Rep-winger (whether Trump or DeSantis) if he’s not a GOPeRino like Mitt.
The repubs added to their margin in house, for at least a few months as Virginia Rep McEachin passed away last night. They will keep that margin until a new election is called and held.
One of the more important things for the House Pubs to do in January is to show that they are effective. They’ll get things done. They’ll have some dignity and gravity. They’ll go after the Biden administration with hearings, oversight, and (perhaps) some targeted impeachments.
This is not the time to joust over the Speakership. The Pubs will have a 3 to 4 vote majority. It’s time to hang together; that’s the definition of a party. It’s one of the reasons why the Dems are so good at what they do. You want the Pubs to be effective? Settle the speakership quietly.
You don’t have to fall in love with Mr. McCarthy, but you do have to fall in line.
Unfortunately (and I know this wont’ be popular), I think they have to go with McCarthy.
What will happen if they don’t elect McCarthy on the first ballot? 5 or so of the most squishy Republicans will join with the democrats to elect a squish as Speaker. Say, for example, Liz Cheney. How would we all like that?
You wanna spend the next couple of years listening to the MSM libtards gloating about how much damage the Republican’s inability to stick together to elect a speaker has done to the party? Really?
And what’s really at issue? It’s not like this divided Congress is going to enact any meaningful legislation.
It’s one thing for conservatives to make threats to get some concessions. That’s politics. But in the end 219 Republicans MUST honor the vote the republicans took to elect McCarthy the next speaker. Not doing so risks real destruction.
Nope. Part of McCarthy getting the nod to be backed for his bid to become Speaker was his pledge to refuse d/prog votes to put him over the top. IOW he has to do it with r votes only or risk handing an excuse to vote against him to his many more than five detractors in the r conference.
Nothing in my comment suggested that McCarthy would cut a deal with dems. I am talking about 5 or so truly squish RINO reps getting together on a 2nd ballot to cut a deal with the left to foist a leftard speaker on the house.
Party contol of the house can only work if the vote taken solely by the party members for the new speaker is treated as sacrosanct, and final. Doing anything else will wind up hurting all Republicans.
This happened in the NH House a couple of decades or so ago. Very messy.
Why not try a real conservative? We had 2 RINOs in that job already.
Curious how not a single Screaming D is expected to vote their conscience n support Whoever the R.
It’s like their consciences extend to party loyalty, and no further. That’s morally true if your goal is only power to support your revealed Mission From God
SOTH is the worst big job in DC. You don’t actually want a star with a bright future to take this job.
Are the Republicans even aware of how weak we look? The Rs are giving the Ds a symbolic victory with same sex marriage bill and in return getting absolutely nothing.
That’s the GOPe way. They did the same on the gun bill earlier in the year as well.
All for show, McCarthy will unfortunately be speaker. RINO’s in charge little will get done for the people or the country.