Barabak: McCarthy's election as speaker comes at high price Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Kevin McCarthy ousted as speaker, throwing Washington into chaos
• McCarthy fails for 3rd day in bitter GOP House speaker fight
• Homeless encampments are on the ballot in Arizona. Could California, other states follow?
• What happened when tempers really got out of control on the House floor.
• As McCarthy grasps for the speakership, ‘pork’ has become a focal point.

In recent years, that has meant legislation has gone through the committee precooked, with few amendments accepted inside the room and no ability to alter bills by rank-and-file members once they hit the floor. Like with the effort to oust McCarthy that played out Tuesday, Gaetz was at the center of the dispute over the California Republican's quest to win the speakership in the first place. He angered some of his Republican colleagues when he voted "present" on the 14th round, blocking McCarthy's bid and forcing another ballot. The Constitution doesn't specify that the speaker of the House must be a current member of the House, but it always has been, according to the office of the House historian. On Tuesday, Texas Rep. Troy Nehls said on social media that he will nominate former President Donald Trump for speaker. Trump is currently running for president and facing a total of 91 criminal counts in four different jurisdictions.

Kevin McCarthy ousted as speaker, throwing Washington into chaos

But after flipping their votes to Mr. McCarthy on Friday, some of the former holdouts said they had been assured by an emerging framework, which is expected to cap the size of government funding bills, call for spending cuts and allow for amendments on the House floor. The year was 1923, the last time the House required multiple days and repeated votes to settle on a new speaker before this week’s continuing stalemate over the candidacy of Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California. Mr. McCarthy still wins re-election in the district with two-thirds of the vote, but the passionate minority of the majority has become his Achilles’ heel, as it has been on the House floor this week.

McCarthy fails for 3rd day in bitter GOP House speaker fight

In the 118th Congress, the 2022 United States House of Representatives election formed a narrow majority for Republicans in the House of Representatives. The Freedom Caucus, a far-right congressional caucus of Republican representatives, secured a minority of these seats. During the speakership election for the 118th Congress, McCarthy faced significant opposition within the Republican Conference from the Freedom Caucus, who saw him as untrustworthy and insufficiently conservative. After fifteen rounds of voting, McCarthy was elected speaker, conceding to his opponents by allowing any representative to file a motion to vacate.

Homeless encampments are on the ballot in Arizona. Could California, other states follow?

After McCarthy retires, GOP's slim House majority gets even tighter - The Associated Press

After McCarthy retires, GOP's slim House majority gets even tighter.

Posted: Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The blandishments McCarthy might have offered to horse trade his way to the speakership — fancy titles, perks, a fundraising appearance — meant little to those Republican holdouts who would like nothing more than to burn Washington to the ground. The longest fight for the gavel started in late 1855 and dragged on for two months, with 133 ballots, during debates over slavery in the run-up to the Civil War. But McCarthy’s right-flank detractors, led by the Freedom Caucus and aligned with Trump, appeared emboldened — even though the former president publicly backed McCarthy. “This sacred House of Representatives needs a leader,” said Democrat Joe Neguse of Colorado, nominating his own party’s leader, Hakeem Jeffries, as speaker.

After three days of vote after vote and late-night negotiations inside the Capitol, McCarthy finally achieved his long-desired goal of wielding the speaker’s gavel. And in recent weeks, hardliners within his party blocked his efforts to pass a temporary spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. If the House speaker election has felt endless to you, take a second to imagine the experiences of the chamber’s reading clerks — the two people who have read out the names of every representative in attendance, and recorded their votes, 13 times now, with a 14th expected Friday night.

Also part of the proposal, Republicans familiar with it said, was a commitment by the leader to give the ultraconservative faction approval over a third of the seats on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and how it is debated. He also agreed to open government spending bills to a freewheeling debate in which any lawmaker could force votes on proposed changes. The shift from Democrats is noteworthy given their lockstep support of the motion to vacate that led to the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in October, which ultimately resulted in Johnson’s getting the gavel. Members tried to remove speakers in previous congressional terms, but no motion ever reached the floor for a vote. McCarthy was ousted as speaker on Oct. 3, setting off a contentious race to replace him.

House Speaker VoteMcCarthy Wins Speakership on 15th Vote

Republicans are divided on far-right move to remove McCarthy as House speaker, an AP-NORC poll shows - The Associated Press

Republicans are divided on far-right move to remove McCarthy as House speaker, an AP-NORC poll shows.

Posted: Tue, 10 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

All three met with Mr. Trump or White House officials as they discussed how to fight the election results, according to evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Former President Donald J. Trump made a crucially timed call to Representative Matt Gaetz on Friday night after the Florida congressman voted “present” and sunk Kevin McCarthy’s 14th effort to be elected House speaker. The vitriolic attack on the top candidate for speaker from a member of his own party led some of Mr. McCarthy’s supporters to walk off the House floor while he spoke. And by the end of the day, with the majority of the detractors finally coalescing around Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Gaetz appeared to have softened his tone. As Minority Leader, McCarthy supported Donald Trump's debunked claims of voter fraud after Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and initially participated in efforts to overturn the results.

Speaker McCarthy ousted in historic House vote, as scramble begins for a Republican leader

To end the blockade, McCarthy directed the House Appropriations Committee to cut $3 billion from the spending agreement, which resulted in difficult votes for vulnerable Republicans. When Republicans return to Washington on Monday, they will continue to struggle to pass anything without Democratic help. Their inability to agree has made them appear publicly and privately chaotic, misunderstood and afraid they will lose the majority in November.

A similar showdown in 2011 under Boehner led to the United States’ credit rating being reduced for the first time in history. But unlike then, far-right conservatives in the House will have a lot more power, and the Republican speaker will be in a much weaker political position. McCarthy had to grant numerous concessions to Congress’ most conservative members to win the speakership, and even then it took 15 rounds of voting — the first time in a century that a speaker was not elected on the first ballot. He called the experience, a spectacle that played out on live national television, a test from God.

Many party officials and political pundits predicted Republicans would make large gains in the House. In the elections, Republicans gained a majority, continuing the decades-long trend of the incumbent president's party losing a House majority in their midterm elections. This also marked the first time since the 115th Congress that Republicans held a majority. But Republicans did not fulfill widespread predictions of large gains, as their majority was narrow.

The party settled on Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who had not sought the gavel but agreed to take it. The 30-year saga began with Gingrich of Georgia, who was the first member of his party to gain "the big gavel" since the early 1950s and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gingrich had been a backbench rabble-rouser since coming to the House in 1978 and built up a cadre of supporters until he won the party's No. 2 power position as minority whip in 1989. Johnson has gained stature and won bipartisan praise for letting the whole House vote on the aid package.

It is easier to find detractors on his far-right flank than die-hard supporters, in what should be friendly home turf for California’s top Republican — one of the reddest cities in one of the bluest states in the country. The two clerks, Tylease Alli and Susan Cole, have been an integral part of what is now the fifth longest speaker election, and television viewers have noticed. Mr. Gaetz, Mr. McCarthy’s chief antagonist, has accused the G.O.P. leader of selling his soul to lobbyists and of pursuing the speakership because of his own vanity. The House is back to the floor for its 14th vote for speaker, and the one that Representative Kevin McCarthy is saying will finally clinch the deal for him. A bartender switched the channel from basketball to C-SPAN about 10 minutes before the vote was set to start, but it was only when the session was called to order that the rowdy crowd turned its attention fully to the screens, hooting and clapping. The dramatic moment was captured on C-SPAN’s video cameras, which, lacking the typical restraints placed upon them in a House with a speaker, were free to show whatever moments from the floor its operators deemed newsworthy.

Prior to the GOP's 40-year sentence as the minority party, several of its speakers had risen to the top rung largely on their personal popularity among their colleagues. One was Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who led the party in the House during two brief interludes of majority status after World War II. Both lasted only the minimum two years, the first ending with Democratic Harry S. Truman's surprise White House win in 1948. Martin was back four years later when Eisenhower was first elected president in 1952, but that tour at the top was cut short by his party's sharp losses two years later.

The quandary reflects not just McCarthy’s uncertain standing with his peers, but also shifting norms in Congress. Party leaders who once had immense power — among them Cannon, Rayburn and now Pelosi, whose names adorn House meeting rooms and office buildings — are seeing it slip away in the 21st century. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., was handpicked by McCarthy in 2020 to run for a House seat that had swung back and forth between Democrats and Republicans for several elections. McCarthy’s instinct turned out to be right and Gimenez won that election over an incumbent Democrat. Seema Mehta is a veteran political writer who is covering the 2024 presidential race as well as other state and national contests.

Last call came, before the Republicans voted to go to a 15th ballot instead of adjourning — an unexpected opportunity for another viewing party. The protracted fight foreshadowed how difficult it would be for him to govern with an exceedingly narrow majority and an unruly hard-right faction bent on slashing spending and disrupting business in Washington. The speakership struggle that crippled the House before it had even opened its session suggested that basic tasks such as passing government funding bills or financing the federal debt would prompt epic struggles over the next two years. Republican leader John Boehner appointed him chair of the Republican platform committee during the committee's meetings in Minneapolis in August 2008, which produced the Republican Party Platform for 2008. He was also one of the three founding members of the GOP Young Guns Program.[48] After the 2008 elections, he was chosen as chief deputy minority whip, the highest-ranking appointed position in the House Republican Conference.

So far, there have been no repercussions for Republicans who defy leadership and it doesn’t sound like any are coming soon. Some would like to see the obstructionist Republicans removed from the Rules Committee, for instance. Johnson has tried to incorporate the far right into discussions, but the group has often repelled his asks.