Dem
51
GOP
49
The speaker of the House is elected by majority vote of the entire House. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has had a lifelong dream of becoming speaker. For him, it is now or never—and he prefers now. The Democrats are never going to vote for a weak leader who is in Donald Trump's pocket and who hates bipartisanship, so McCarthy has to round up 218 votes from his soon-to-be 222-member caucus. Here's the math: 222 - 218 = 4. That means if five members of his caucus refused to vote for him, he doesn't have enough votes since every Democrat will vote for their new leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
Enter the Gang of Five. Usually it is the Senate that is full of gangs, but now it is the House Republicans. Five MAGA Republicans have formed a bloc and pledged to all vote the same way, to prevent McCarthy from picking them off one a time with offers of committee chairmanships and the like. Without realizing it, they have formed a union in order to stand up to management. The union members are Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Bob Good (VA), Matt Gaetz (FL), Ralph Norman (OK), and Matt Rosendale (MT). Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is not a member because McCarthy already picked her off by promising to reinstate the committee memberships she lost for antisemitism and for supporting violence earlier this year.
Four of the members are 100% never-Kevin, no matter what he concedes (although in politics, "never" means "unless we get what we want"). Norman left a small bit of wiggle room open, but Biggs says the gang is actually more than five, it's just that the others don't want to stick their necks out yet.
Some of the hidden "I don't like Kevin but I can be won over with the right concessions" members include members like Freedom Caucus chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) and probably FC members Dan Bishop (R-NC) Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Chip Roy (R-TX). One concession they want is a reinstatement of the rule about vacating the chair. If reinstated, any one member can call for a floor vote to remove the speaker from office. That used to be the rule, but current speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) got rid of it when she took over. This is the rule that doomed former speakers John Bohner and Paul Ryan. McCarthy really doesn't want the rule back, but if he holds firm, he probably will lose another 5-10 votes as well.
Oh wait, the Freedom Caucus members have more on their Christmas list. They also want rules that:
Interestingly enough, the Democrats are fine with all these items.
McCarthy's problem is that if he gives the Freedom Caucus whatever it wants, this could touch off a revolt among the moderate Republicans. About a dozen Republicans sit in districts that Joe Biden won. If they vote for rules dictated by the Freedom Caucus, their Democratic opponent in 2024 will make them out to be puppets of Greene (probably illustrated by green puppets—and definitely not Kermit the Frog).
Thus, McCarthy has to placate both the hardliners and the moderates. He doesn't have the required skills for that. He once threatened to remove some moderates from their committee memberships if they didn't obey him, and one of them said: "You don't get to 218 by kicking people off the island." The politics of counting noses right now aside, those districts will be in play in 2024. Doing things that anger the voters there could threaten the Republicans' tiny majority in 2024 and perhaps being back a (tiny) Democratic majority in Jan. 2025. McCarthy knows that, but he doesn't think long-term. He wants 218 votes on Jan. 3, 2023, and will say anything, promise anything, and do anything to get there, the February 2023 votes be damned, let alone what might happen on Nov. 2024.
For example, the House needs to pass a budget by next week or the government will shut down just before Christmas. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) knows that if the government shuts down, nobody (except maybe hardcore Fox viewers) will blame Joe Biden. They will blame the Republicans. So McConnell is trying to get a budget passed. He's doing his best to include in it items he wants and exclude items he doesn't want, but this is normal negotiation. He absolutely does not want a shutdown. For behaving in a way good for the country and also good for his party, McCarthy has criticized McConnell. Retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said: "He's running for speaker, he's supposed to say that." What he meant was that the Freedom Caucus has McCarthy by the [insert body part here] and is just tossing him around.
McCarthy got a bit of help yesterday when Donald Trump explicitly asked the MAGA holdouts to stop it and support McCarthy. Whether that sways any of them remains to be seen, though.
One of the reasons McCarthy is strongly against reinstating the rule about the motion to vacate is that getting to 218 isn't just for Jan. 3, 2023, and then it is smooth sailing. Far from it. Every time he wants to pass a bill, he has to get to 218 all over again. Now, he could just concede that no bills will be passed in the upcoming session of Congress and focus entirely on Hunter Biden's laptop, but he really can't. If the debt limit is not raised next week, then it will come up in 2023. There may be appropriations bills and other must-pass bills next year. In some cases, he can count on 213 Democratic votes so he needs only to corral five Republicans, but then he will be perceived as the puppet of Jeffries. As soon as that happens, here comes the motion to vacate the chair. McCarthy's goal was actually to run the House, not just add an entry to his C.V. "Was speaker of the House from Jan. 3, 2023 until May 31, 2023."
McCarthy's situation is summed up by this cartoon by
by Roll Call's R.J. Matson:
In short, McCarthy's political skills are being sorely tested by an impossible situation. Bohner and Ryan couldn't handle it and they are far better politicians than McCarthy is. (V)