Club for Growth Will Oppose Any Speaker Candidate Who Vows to Abolish Motion to Vacate Rule

It didn’t take long after former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s historic defenestration from House GOP leadership Tuesday before Republican members began brainstorming concessions they hope to extract from the California Republican’s successor.

In exchange for their coveted votes, many House Republicans are taking early aim at pressuring the next speaker to amend or even abolish the motion to vacate — a rule reinstated by McCarthy in January as part of a deal that secured his speakership before ironically prompting his ouster less than ten months later. As National Review reported earlier this week: “There are early discussions among formerly McCarthy-aligned members to push a rules change that would increase the threshold for the motion to vacate the chair from just one member, largely to avoid empowering individual members with the ability to introduce ouster resolutions on the floor whenever they please.” Even hardliner GOP representatives Matt Gaetz (who introduced this week’s motion to vacate resolution against McCarthy) says he is open to changing the rule, provided he secures other concessions in return.

But one influential conservative spending group is already pledging to oppose any speaker candidate who vows to change the rule. “Club for Growth will oppose any candidate for Speaker of the House who supports a return to Pelosi’s rules, especially her rule change against vacating the chair which stood for more than 200 years,” Club for Growth president David McIntosh said in a social-media statement Thursday evening. “The House was meant to act as a democratic body, not at the whims of one person’s self-interested agenda.”

It’s unclear whether McIntosh’s statement will translate into a formal key vote alert that will affect members’ Club for Growth congressional scorecards. A key vote alert could make this speakership calculation tricky for members who want to stay in the group’s good graces ahead of 2024. The Club for Growth’s lobbying arm spends millions on behalf of economic conservative candidates each cycle, including a handful of members who initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid back in January. Here’s a story I reported for The Dispatch back in January exploring the Club for Growth’s influence over McCarthy’s speakership fight:

On January 2 the anti-establishment Club for Growth issued a “key vote alert.” The notice urged Republican representatives to support a candidate for House speaker who would push for “transformational reforms to the House” and “restore the individual rights and powers of the rank-and-file membership.” The implication was clear: Don’t support Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker unless he agrees to a bevy of changes to House rules. 

Two days into McCarthy’s protracted battle for the top job in the House, the Club for Growth endorsed his bid. McCarthy had signaled he would consider many of the rules changes and also cut another deal: The Club would support him so long as the McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) stopped spending in open Republican primaries in “safe” congressional districts or financially support any other groups that choose to do so. 

The deal proved pivotal to winning over 20 Republican holdouts, many of whom McCarthy-aligned donors earlier had opposed in GOP primaries. The pledge was also a blatant power play from the Club for Growth, as it could result in more Freedom Caucus-style candidates making it through Republican primaries and into the House — further weakening McCarthy’s hand in future negotiations with his own party.

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Rep. Greg Steube, a Club-for-Growth-endorsed Florida member and longtime McCarthy supporter, told The Dispatch that key votes from the Club carry influence with many Republicans. “If the Club were to put out an endorsement for Kevin, and then say that they were going to grade against that — that’s going to be a significant impact, because Club, some board members don’t want their club grades to go down,” Steube said. “If the Club comes out with a press release that says we’re endorsing Kevin — and we’re going to grade against a no-vote for him — yeah, that could have significant impacts as well.”