The speakership drama suggests Trump’s most committed supporters will have outsized influence this Congress — and may use it to keep him in the spotlight.
After finally eking out a victory in last week’s hard-fought speakership battle, Kevin McCarthy made sure to thank one man above all others: Donald Trump.
When Trump’s hand-picked candidates went down to defeat in a midterm environment that should have heavily favored Republicans, right-wing pundits and lawmakers began to question his 2024 viability.
McCarthy, who proved relatively adept at navigating the perilous dynamics of the MAGA years, thinks they spoke too soon.
“I do want to especially thank President Trump,” McCarthy told reporters. “I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning . . . he was all in.”
“He would call me, and he would call others. He really was — I was just talking to him tonight — helping get those final votes,” McCarthy said. “What he’s really saying, really, for the party and the country, that we have to come together. We have to focus on the economy. We’ve got to focus, make our borders secure. We gotta do so much work to do, and he was a great influence to make that all happen. So, thank you, President Trump.”
It initially seemed Trump’s power had taken a hit after he called on 20 GOP holdouts to support McCarthy and the group resisted. Representative Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) went so far as to mention the request from her “favorite president” but said that Trump should tell McCarthy, “Sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw.”
But Trump kept pushing to get McCarthy over the top, speaking to holdouts over the phone as the 15th round of voting came down to the wire. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) was seen passing a phone to Representative Matt Rosendale (R., Mont.) with Trump on the line shortly before the Montana Republican switched his vote to “present” after rounds of voting for other candidates besides McCarthy. Trump also reportedly spoke to Representatives Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.) and Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) before the pair changed their own votes to “present,” according to ABC News.
McCarthy was forced to agree to a slate of demands from the GOP holdouts in order to secure their votes. The chaos could preview what’s to come in the 118th Congress.
The GOP’s midterm losses, some of which can be attributed to Trump, may have created an environment that will work to his advantage.
With such a narrow majority, the GOP can afford few defections from the party. In the case of the speakership race, a small group of Trump’s most committed supporters bent the Republican establishment to their will — and dominated the news cycle in the process.
With their outsized influence, the MAGA faithful in the House will be willing and able to put the man who gave them their careers back in the national spotlight. And if history is any guide, that will go a long way toward resuscitating his influence in the party.
In the wake of the midterms, polling has shown mixed results for Trump, a FiveThirtyEight analysis found. Averages compiled by the election forecaster show that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is typically ahead in head-to-head polling against Trump, with DeSantis at 48 percent and Trump at 43 percent.
However, adding in other potential candidates seems to chip away at the governor’s lead. In national polling matchups that include DeSantis, Trump, and at least one other potential candidate, Trump has had an average lead of 41 percent to 31 percent since the midterms, per FiveThirtyEight.
Matt Terrill, a managing partner at Firehouse Strategies and former chief of staff for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, cautioned against drawing conclusions about Trump’s influence from any one news cycle.
“In the Republican primary, [Trump] has taken up, many would argue, a very large lane. He still has a very strong standing in the party,” Terrill told me, adding that the race will likely not be about “any one issue.”
“A week is a lifetime in politics. We have a lot of weeks to go between then and now,” he added.
Still, DeSantis, who has emerged as the top potential non-Trump 2024 Republican candidate, seems to have grown a target on his back already.
A spokesman for South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, long considered a potential 2024 contender herself, slammed DeSantis’s record on abortion — completely unprompted — in comments to NR’s Nate Hochman last week.
Hochman reached out to spokesman Ian Fury for a piece about the transgender lobby’s influence in South Dakota. After denying that the governor is “overly cozy with” major lobbying groups that helped defeat anti-gender-ideology bills in the state, Fury sent a follow-up email targeting DeSantis’s commitment to the pro-life movement. As Hochman explained:
Fury argued that “Governor Noem was the only Governor in America on national television defending the Dobbs decision.” He then queried: “Where was Governor DeSantis? Hiding behind a 15-week ban. Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don’t have a right to live?” DeSantis, Fury continued, “just terminated his pro-life Secretary for AHCA, Simone Marstiller, the most pro-life member of his cabinet. Florida Right to Life is embarrassed by Gov. DeSantis’s record, so they invited Governor Noem to speak at their annual conference in October 2021.” He closed out the email by speculating as to whether National Review was “no longer pro-life . . . because that’s the message you send by carrying water for Gov. DeSantis.”
It was perhaps the first attack DeSantis has faced from a fellow Republican — besides former president Donald Trump — since emerging as a likely top contender for 2024.
Around NR
• Representative Katie Porter (D., Calif.) on Tuesday launched a 2024 bid for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein. This despite recent allegations from a former staffer that the congresswoman runs a toxic office. Ryan Mills with more:
In December, Sasha Georgiades, a former Wounded Warrior Fellow who worked in Porter’s office, accused the congresswoman of making rude comments to her staff and using racial slurs. “She has made multiple staffers cry and people are generally so anxious to even staff her because if ANYTHING goes wrong she flips out on whatever staffer is present,” Georgiades told Fox News. “She just talks to staffers however she wants.”
• “The stage is being set for a knock-down, drag-out fight,” Jim Geraghty writes of efforts by President Biden to reshuffle the 2024 Democratic presidential-primary schedule, moving South Carolina to the front of the line, putting Georgia in the top four, and pushing the Iowa caucuses back significantly.
Presidential primaries are usually managed in cooperation with state election officials. And in Georgia and New Hampshire, Republican election officials aren’t all that interested in changing schedules set by state law to fit the preferences of President Biden.
• The retirement of four-term Michigan Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow at the end of her current term will present Republicans with a key opportunity to make inroads in Michigan. There are two particularly strong candidates to do it, Bobby Miller writes, pointing to newly elected representative John James and former representative Peter Meijer.
• The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has opened an investigation into classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president that were discovered at a D.C. think tank affiliated with him. More here.
• Stacey Abrams and her allies will be forced to pay more than $200,000 in court costs connected to the Fair Fight Action organization’s failed voting-rights lawsuit. The suit was tied to Abrams’s loss in her 2018 race for governor of Georgia, Ryan Mills reports.