Will Gym Jordan Become Speaker?
They say the most powerful House Speaker ever was Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon (R-IL). Teddy Roosevelt was president when Cannon was elected speaker (1903), two Republicans from opposite ends of the GOP. Roosevelt was a progressive and Cannon a hard-right conservative— actually more a reactionary than a conservative— who opposed Roosevelt on women’s suffrage, conservation efforts, progressive taxation, corporate dominance, the labor movement and liberalization of international trade. Cannon was an absolute dictator as Speaker and was the avatar for predatory wealth. He couldn’t even get along with the next president, Taft, who was far more conservative than Roosevelt. He started attracting a great deal of Republican opposition calling for his resignation. He only grew more defiant. In 1910 he lost a procedural vote and the next day Nebraska Republican George Norris took the opportunity to introduce a resolution to create a new Rules Committee with fifteen members, all elected by the House. The Speaker, who had been the chair of the Rules Committee ex officio since 1880, would be barred from membership, thus placing the Committee (and ostensibly the House) above the Speaker's authority. 42 Republicans joined all 149 Democrats to pass it. He immediately engineered a motion to vacate the chair which he won since even the 42 Republicans preferred him to a Democrat. His iron grip on the House, though, was shattered… and that year the Democrats won control of the House and 2 years later Cannon himself was defeated for reelection.
That was the closest a Speaker came to being kicked out of the speakership… until the Freedom Caucus came along to threaten first John Boehner and then Paul Ryan. Boehner, in fact, would likely have been removed but in late Sept, 2015 he announced he would resign from Congress the next month, over trying to pass a CR to keep the government from shutting down— exactly what could cause McCarthy to become the first speaker to actually be fired. According to Anna Paulina Luna, a crackpot freshman extremist from Florida, the neo-fascist faction she's part of has decided to shut down the government for at least 10 days. Yesterday Gaetz even attacked fellow Freedom Caucus extremists Byron Donalds (FL) and Chip Roy (TX) for trying to work out a compromise (which is not what Trump wants).
Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer asked if it was actually about to happen. On Fox Sunday McCarthy announced that he plans to hold a vote on the Defense bill the Trump extremists have refused to advance— and that he’ll face a vote whether he has the votes to pass it or not. That could finally trigger Matt Gaetz’s threatened vacate the chair motion. “Gaetz,” wrote Caldwell and Meyer, “can’t stop taunting McCarthy and threatening to begin proceedings to oust him from his job. He criticized McCarthy a half-dozen times on Sunday on his two accounts on X, writing that it was one of McCarthy’s ‘final Sundays as Speaker.’”
Being establishment hacks, the two reporters actually framed this silly report as though it would be the Democrats’ fault for ousting McCarthy. These Washington Post reporters should be writing about their trip to the zoo or how to get a cracked windshield fixed, not about politics. The Republicans are the majority party. They elected McCarthy speaker; these pissed him off and they’re ousting him. If there’s am election for speaker, Democrats will vote for Hakeem Jeffries, who’s horrible enough without them casting their ballots for an anti-Choice, xenophobic, anti-LGBTQ partisan of Trump’s.
“The possibility of being deposed,” they wrote, “has hung over McCarthy’s head since he barely secured the speaker’s gavel in January. How much of a threat is it really? Would there be 218 votes— give or take a few depending on attendance— to strip McCarthy of his speakership if Gaetz or someone else pulls the motion-to-vacate trigger?”
First and foremost there are the people who really detest him, particularly Virginia neo-Nazi Bob Good, who would do anything to humiliate McCarthy. And Gaetz, who blames him for the fact that the House Ethics Committee is still investigating Gaetz’s sex trafficking of a minor. One member cited by Caldwell and Meyer as a potential problem is the least problem McCarthy could face. All talk and no action Nancy Mace (R-SC) knows how to whine but never follows through on any of her threats; she’s just a perpetual malcontent who was whining about how McCarthy broke promises to her. It’s unimaginable that the media keeps featuring one of the least consequential members of Congress week after week. There are certainly a number of Republicans who would like to topple McCarthy.
But Gaetz, whose disdain for McCarthy oozes from his pores, admitted last week that McCarthy’s job is not in immediate jeopardy.
“An initial motion to vacate might not be likely to succeed,” Gaetz told reporters.
The reason?
“There’s 200 of us or so— maybe more— that will stick by the speaker,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE).
So what's the fuss?
Well, McCarthy’s actions suggest he is worried about losing his job. He is constantly watching over his shoulder, fearful the far-right flank of his party will relieve him of his job while making concessions to appease these members.
Last week, as talk on the Hill grew that he may face a motion-to-vacate vote, he pushed back at the idea with a bit of salty language to try to quell the talk during a House GOP conference meeting.
It would ultimately be up to Democrats to eject McCarthy from the speakership. If all Democrats voted with a handful of Republicans on a motion to vacate, McCarthy would lose his job.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told “The Early” that his caucus hasn’t yet discussed whether they would help McCarthy keep his job should Republicans try to oust him.
But McCarthy’s launch of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden hasn’t built up any goodwill among Democrats, and McCarthy would need to show an attempt at bipartisanship on government funding for Democrats even to consider helping him, according to one Democratic lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Still, if Democrats helped get rid of McCarthy, it is unclear who would succeed him, and the party would probably own some of the chaos that could ensue. So, it’s not a sure thing they would band together with rebellious Republicans against the speaker.
Since becoming speaker, McCarthy has worked repeatedly to appease the conservatives most likely to support a motion to vacate, instead of with a governing bipartisan majority. McCarthy’s approach is different from the previous two Republican speakers, who didn’t work so hard to accommodate the far right and were nudged out of their jobs.
The approach has brought Washington to the brink of a government shutdown and put Republicans in swing districts— whose victories last year delivered McCarthy his slim majority— in tough positions.
For instance:
Hours after Gaetz telegraphed that he would publicly challenge McCarthy’s speakership last week, McCarthy called for an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
When McCarthy faced threats of a motion to vacate after he reaching a spending agreement with Biden in May, he relented and instructed his party to write funding bills with even steeper cuts.
But those cuts weren’t steep enough for some on the right, which is why a motion to vacate is being floating and why a government shutdown is likely.
Now, McCarthy is trying to pass a tentative deal to fund the government (see above) without Democratic support, even though a partisan deal to fund the government will never pass the Senate and it seems not to be enough for conservatives.
Any final product that passes both chambers out of Congress must be bipartisan.
Nearly every member of the Freedom Caucus who McCarthy is seeking to appease represents a deep-red district.
It’s the 18 mostly moderate Republicans who represent districts Biden won and who secured the Republican majority who could feel the electoral repercussions of a shutdown or an impeachment inquiry that goes off the rails.
Moderates still have McCarthy’s back. For now.
“Every one of us has actually the same amount of power,” said Rep. Marcus Molinaro (R-NY), who represents an upstate district that Biden won in 2020, pointing out that any member could bring up a motion to vacate.
McCarthy advocates take issue with the suggestion that he is sacrificing his majority by placating the far right.
“Placating would be putting appropriations bills on the floor that give them everything they want,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), the chairman of the Republican Main Street Caucus. “I guess the very existence of the fact that we haven’t passed 12 bills yet shows a total failure of placation.”
But even the threat of a motion to vacate can be enough to topple a speaker.
“I see us barreling towards what happened … to John Boehner as speaker,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who was a House member in 2015 when Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) introduced a motion to vacate that was aimed at Boehner.
There was never a vote because Boehner stepped down first.
Last night Punchbowl reported that "House Republicans are close to an all-out war with each other. Conservatives are sniping at one another, moderates are furious at their more hardline colleagues and the GOP leadership is as frustrated as the rest of them." House Whip Tom Emmer: "The patients are now in charge of the hospital." McCarthy forgetting who is exactly is in the GOP conference: "If you’re not going to pass individual bills, if you’re not going to pass a short term CR … what do you want to do? If you run for office, you should be willing to govern." And one of his fake "moderates," Mike Lawler (R-NY)-- who always goes along with whatever the Freedom Caucus demands in the end, said, "This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity… These people can’t define a win. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. It’s a clown show." Or, in the words of Trump arch-enabler, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC): "It’s a shit show in the House. It’s always a shit show in the House… Eventually what’s going to happen is a government shutdown will not go well for us."
Update:
When McCarthy tried passing the rule to allow the defense appropriations bill to move forward this afternoon, it failed 214-212, 5 Republicans voting against it— Dan Bishop (NC), Ralph Norman (SC), Andy Biggs (AZ), Matt Rosendale (MT) and Ken Buck (CO).