After 13 rounds of voting, the state of play in the GOP’s internal battle over House speaker is exactly what we’d envisioned.
Well, we’re there. After 13 rounds of voting, the state of play in the GOP’s internal battle over House speaker is exactly what we’d envisioned: The aspirant, Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), against his Never Kevin opponents, which we can now quantify as six — Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Col.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), and Max Rosendale (Mont.).
Up until now, the six solipsists managed to slipstream behind the rest of the opposition, led by Chip Roy (of Texas who, as Rich observes, is the big political winner here). That larger opposition faction was more interested in structural reform of the House to prevent reoccurrence of such legislative abuses as the infamous $1.7 trillion omnibus (see Phil on that).
The faction’s members (and there have probably been a dozen or more beyond the 14 who held out until a settlement was reached on Friday morning) are not Kevin McCarthy fans, but neither were they Never Kevin. Their issue was the House and the failures of GOP leadership generally — which, during Kevin McCarthy’s years in it, has stood by (or worse) as the national debt skyrocketed by $20 trillion, to the current $31 trillion. When those concerns were addressed, they backed their party’s chosen leader.
For the other six, the issue is McCarthy, and it’s personal. There can be no other explanation for, to take just one example, Gaetz’s moronic stunt of complaining that McCarthy is a “squatter” because he moved into the speaker’s suite of offices despite not yet being elected to the post in the new Congress — notwithstanding that Gaetz is presumably inhabiting his office despite not yet being sworn in as a member of the new Congress.
It is much harder for the party to bring pressure to bear on 20 members, especially since many of them are pushing for reforms that are popular among conservatives, than to make life uncomfortable for a half-dozen performance artists who have no reason, other than spite, to hold out. After all, the concessions won by Roy and his allies mean that any one of the six holdouts could make a motion of no confidence against McCarthy if he double-crosses conservatives.
McCarthy now has 214 votes, and by later today, he will have at least 216, as two supporters who’ve been absent thus far on Friday — Ken Buck (Col.) and Wesley Hunt (Texas) — return. That leaves him two short. If the six holdouts refuse to move, he loses.
It doesn’t have to go that way, and it shouldn’t. The six can maintain their opposition but end their obstruction by simply voting present instead of wasting their votes on a named person who has no chance of, or interest in, being speaker. (In the last round, the six voted for Jim Jordan (Ohio), a McCarthy supporter who has made it clear that he does not want to be speaker and is not seeking the post.) To repeat, present votes would have the effect of reducing the overall number of members voting, and thus reduce the number needed by McCarthy to attain a majority and thus prevail.
For every two of the six holdouts who were persuaded to vote present, the number McCarthy needs to win would drop by one. If all six voted present, McCarthy could win with 215 — which he would have if either Buck or Hunt returned.
McCarthy will probably have both of those members back at 10 p.m. this evening, when the House will reconvene, having recessed after the 13th round of voting. I’m betting the next six hours will not be pleasant for the six holdouts.