U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) presides over a news conference concerning the Save Our Sequoias Act on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2022.Â
Mary F. Calvert | Reuters
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to secure enough support inside his party to win House speaker in January is putting key decisions on hold and potentially hindering the party’s ability to implement its agenda when it assumes the House majority next yr, in line with Republican congressional aides.
The California lawmaker needs 218 out of 222 Republicans within the House to elect him speaker on Jan. 3 if he desires to avoid a messy public floor fight and multiple rounds of voting. As of Tuesday afternoon, McCarthy was still short by no less than five votes.
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In a secret ballot vote held last month, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., challenged McCarthy for speaker and won 31 votes to McCarthy’s 188, a small but significant bloc. Biggs said Tuesday that he plans to formally run against McCarthy in January.
Biggs is a component of a small band of vocal opponents, who say there are as many as 20 members who’re “hard nos,” and would vote against McCarthy in public, on the House floor. McCarthy’s allies say the true number is more like five to eight votes.
Last Wednesday, a gaggle of 13 conservative Republicans that included McCarthy’s loudest detractors met behind closed doors with the House parliamentarian, the chief arbiter of rules for the chamber, reportedly to learn more concerning the procedural steps to elect a speaker.
McCarthy also faces organized opposition from influential conservative outside groups comparable to FreedomWorks and the Conservative Partnership Institute, which have amplified McCarthy’s critics on social media.
Chairmanships on hold
Amid the turmoil over the speakership, Republican House leaders appear to have put a hold on making tough decisions about which members shall be chosen to fill open committee chairmanships.
This includes the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax policy. Three Republicans are locked in a really public battle for the chairmanship, a call that ultimately falls to McCarthy and his lieutenants on the Republican Steering Committee, the party’s internal leadership board.
The steering committee’s vote for Ways and Means chairman was originally expected to happen this week. But two Republican congressional aides, who asked to not be named to talk candidly about internal deliberations, said it had been placed on hold — together with votes on two other open chairmans’ seats, on the Budget Committee and the Homeland Security Committee.
It was unclear how long the delay would last, however the aides said it could go on until the speakership contest is sorted out, which could possibly be January.
A spokesman for McCarthy didn’t reply to questions from CNBC concerning the committee vote schedule.
McCarthy himself said essentially the identical thing over the weekend, nonetheless, warning that Republicans who refuse to back him for speaker are “delaying our ability to manipulate.”
“I’m hopeful that everyone comes together, finds a technique to govern together. That is what the American people want,” McCarthy said Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “Otherwise, we shall be squandering this majority.”
Doubling down
For the moment, neither McCarthy nor his band of antagonists appears able to “come together.”
As an alternative, either side have dug in over the past week, telling reporters they’re able to take the fight all of the technique to the House floor on Jan. 3.
“Oh yeah, I’ll take the speaker’s fight to the ground,” McCarthy told reporters within the Capitol recently. “We’ll have 218,” he said. “At the top of the day, we’ll get there.”
The holdout members have also escalated the fight, with all five of them saying they’ll not vote “present” on Jan. 3 but will as a substitute vote against McCarthy.
A vote of “present,” moderately than yes or no, would cut back the overall variety of votes McCarthy needed to secure a majority of the chamber, thereby helping him without explicitly voting for him.
While McCarthy and his critics each sound ready for a floor fight, this is not necessarily what members of the broader House Freedom Caucus want. The caucus is product of up roughly 40 of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans, lots of them close allies of former President Donald Trump, including Biggs and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Messy floor fight
“The Freedom Caucus doesn’t want this to go to a messy floor fight. That does not help them or the party,” said a conservative strategist near the negotiations, who requested anonymity to debate the sensitive talks.
“The goal was never to embarrass Kevin McCarthy on the [House] floor, nobody wants that,” the strategist said.
As an alternative, this greater group of conservative Republicans has publicly said that what they really need is for McCarthy to greenlight changes to the foundations that govern day by day operations within the House.
In July, the House Freedom Caucus posted a listing of their desired changes online.
The overarching goal of the changes is to rein in the large power of the speaker under the present rules, and provides rank-and-file Republican members more say in who gets plum positions.
To this point, McCarthy has not agreed to any of them.
“He’s probably not negotiating with members of the Freedom Caucus, he’s still trying to choose people off one after the other,” said the conservative strategist.
A spokesman for McCarthy declined to comment on his strategy.
“He thinks he can call the holdouts on their bluff, but they are not bluffing,” said the strategist.
But while the five stalwart opponents could also be inconceivable for McCarthy to maneuver, other key figures within the conservative political ecosystem have proven unexpectedly persuadable.
Winning allies ‘one after the other’
McCarthy has surprised each his allies and critics by locking down the support of several outstanding conservatives who’ve clashed with him previously.
His biggest success so far could also be Greene, who announced in mid-November that she would back McCarthy for speaker.
Greene’s past promotion of conspiracy theories cost the freshman lawmaker, who just won reelection in November, her committee assignments in 2021. It also prompted McCarthy to issue a protracted statement condemning her prior remarks, which he said “don’t represent the values or beliefs of House Republicans.”
Earlier this yr, nonetheless, McCarthy promised to lift the ban on Greene and seat her on committees “just like several other member.”
A spokesman for McCarthy didn’t reply to questions on how he won her support for his speaker bid, but Greene recently drew a transparent line between McCarthy’s decision to raise her status inside the GOP caucus and his fitness to be speaker.
“To be the most effective Speaker of the House and to please the bottom, he’s going to present me plenty of power and plenty of leeway,” she told The Recent York Times in October. “And if he doesn’t, they’ll be very unhappy about it. I feel that is the most effective technique to read that. And that is not in any way a threat in any respect. I just think that is reality.”
In late November, McCarthy visited the Texas border and announced that he would launch investigations of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — a longtime wish of Freedom Caucus members. Greene praised the announcement as an indication of McCarthy’s alignment with conservative priorities.
“McCarthy is ten times more politically talented than [former GOP speakers] Paul Ryan or John Boehner,” said the conservative strategist, “and that is an element here, too.”
Essentially the most noise
The strategist also noted that in recent weeks, several influential conservative voices, including Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich and Mark Levin, have all publicly spoken out in favor of McCarthy’s bid for speaker.
There could possibly be similar deals McCarthy must make with the moderate faction of the House GOP, whose members are reportedly taking a deliberately low-key stance on the speaker’s race, letting the Freedom Caucus firebrands draw plenty of attention while they deal with policy.
Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, who leads a moderate bloc often known as the Republican Governance Group, recently pushed back against the concept the Freedom Caucus can be dictating the agenda within the House.
“They make probably the most noise, but so far as being productive that is not necessarily true,” Joyce recently told Fox News. “It’s plenty of smoke and mirrors.”
Greater than 20 members of the Republican Governance Group signed an open letter last week to their fellow Republicans, urging those within the anti-McCarthy camp to “put the posturing aside” and unite behind the party leader.
While the letter called on Republicans to put aside their differences, it also drew a line within the sand.
“Make no mistake, we is not going to allow this Conference to be dragged down a path to a paralyzed House that weakens our hard-fought majority,” they wrote.
