Dem
51
GOP
49
The election for speaker of the House of Representatives is tomorrow and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has dreamed of the job his whole life, still does not have it locked down. It's that pesky Freedom Caucus that is giving him nightmares. If the FC wanted movement on some straightforward policy issue, say, on taxes or on impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, McCarthy would just cave and give the members whatever they want. His problem is that what they want is to permanently install the sword of Damocles over his head, held by a single horse hair, and with FC Chairman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) standing next to it holding a pair of scissors. In House-speak, what they want is to allow any member of the House to be able to make a motion to vacate the chair (i.e., fire McCarthy) at any time and force a vote on it. That would keep McCarthy under pressure his entire term and force him to give in to the FC again and again. Not surprisingly, he is not keen on this. Members of the Republican caucus who are not in the FC see this as creating a hostage situation and are also strongly against it. But if even five members of the FC vote for Biggs or someone other than McCarthy and keep doing that, he won't become speaker.
Currently somewhere between five and fourteen members of the FC are on record as "Never Kevin," to varying degrees of seriousness, and there is not a lot of time left for making a deal. To be specific, nine far-right members of the Republican conference released a letter yesterday that describes McCarthy's concessions as "insufficient," and decrees:
The times call for radical departure from the status quo—not a continuation of past and ongoing Republican failures. For someone with a 14-year presence in senior House Republican leadership, Mr. McCarthy bears squarely the burden to correct the dysfunction he now explicitly admits across that long tenure.
The letter is signed by Scott Perry (PA) and Chip Roy (TX), who apparently took the lead, along with Dan Bishop (NC), Andrew Clyde (GA), Paul Gosar (AZ) and Andy Harris (MD), and Reps.-elect Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Eli Crane (AZ) and Andy Ogles (TN). None of those nine are in the group of five led by Matt Gaetz (FL), who have all vowed that they will not vote for McCarthy. That's how we get "between five and fourteen members."
Some members (not the right-wingers) are proposing a compromise in which it would take five members to force a vote on vacating the chair, but that would just mean the hair from which Damocles' sword would hang would just be a little thicker. Many members want it to be as thin as Donald Trump's skin, while most don't want there to be a sword at all. So, the compromise doesn't have many takers.
One development that occurred late last week is that the 70-member Main Street Caucus voted to keep supporting McCarthy until the cows come home. A group of more than a dozen representatives from crossover districts that Joe Biden won also voted for "only Kevin, and said it would not support a compromise candidate." If the five to fourteen FC-ers also refuse to budge, electing a speaker could take a while.
If McCarthy does not make it on the first ballot, it will be the first time since 1923 when the election has gone to a second ballot. Nobody really has an official Plan B, but there is talk that if McCarthy simply doesn't have the votes after multiple ballots, one way out might be for most of the Democrats and some of the moderate Republicans to vote for retiring representative Fred Upon of Michigan. The Constitution does not require the speaker to be a sitting member of the House, so Upton's election would be a first. At this point this seems unlikely, but if McCarthy doesn't have the votes and can't get them, the unlikely may become likely. (V)