KRISTEN: Hey there. That is Kristen (ph) in snowy Stoughton, Wis., And I’m preparing for the primary round of shoveling for the day. This podcast was recorded at…
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
5:43 p.m. on Wednesday, January 4.
KRISTEN: Things could have modified by the point you hear it, but I’ll probably must exit and shovel again. Stay warm. Here’s the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
DAVIS: At first, I believed she said shuffling. And we all know rather a lot about shuffling immediately.
(LAUGHTER)
DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: Pace yourself, Kristen.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: And considering she’s within the aptly named Stoughton, Wis., which is how firmly, I suppose, either side are holding in Congress immediately.
DAVIS: Hey there. It is the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
WALSH: I’m Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And the House of Representatives stays at an impasse.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHERYL JOHNSON: No member-elect having received a majority of the entire variety of votes solid, a speaker has not been elected.
DAVIS: Two days, six ballots, and still, there is no speaker of the House. California’s Kevin McCarthy continues to be recommend as the bulk party’s nominee. Here’s Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE GALLAGHER: They gave us, Republicans, a possibility to inject some basic commonsense into the federal government – to tug the emergency brake on a number of the crazy we have seen in the previous few years. They’re asking us to do a job. And no person has laid out a plan, a proactive policy agenda for the direction we wish to take this country, in additional detail than Kevin McCarthy.
DAVIS: And yet the votes haven’t budged. About 20 Republicans proceed to oppose McCarthy, today casting ballots within the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds for Florida’s Byron Donalds, who was first nominated by Texas Congressman Chip Roy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CHIP ROY: Byron is a pricey friend, a solid conservative.
DAVIS: The Democrats, newly within the minority and now playing the role of loyal opposition, have shown little interest in tossing McCarthy a lifeline with any of their votes. Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California continued to nominate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries throughout the day, with the support of all 212 Democrats.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PETE AGUILAR: Madam Clerk, make no mistake, there isn’t a frustration on our side. We’re focused on serving the American people.
DAVIS: Earlier today, President Biden weighed in, saying partly that this logjam was, in his words, not a superb thing. And the previous President Donald Trump took to his social media platform this morning to proceed to endorse McCarthy, saying partly that he would, quote, “do a superb job, perhaps even an incredible job.” And yet the House adjourned for a second time with no speaker in place. Deirdre, you were on the Hill yesterday. You are on the Hill immediately. Is patience wearing thin for Kevin McCarthy?
WALSH: Well, not for Kevin McCarthy. He keeps insisting that he’s eventually going to get there. I mean, I asked him on his way into the ground today, and he said, I didn’t say today. Eventually, we’re going to return together. As for other House Republicans, I feel Kat Cammack said it best, the Florida Republican who nominated McCarthy, I feel, on the sixth ballot.
DAVIS: Yeah.
WALSH: And she or he said, hey, it’s “Groundhog Day” again. So I feel that we’re just on this weird standoff where McCarthy keeps saying that he’s making progress, but he is not. And the…
DAVIS: If anything, the needle’s moved in the opposite direction.
WALSH: Correct. I mean, there have been 20 Republicans yesterday, 20 Republicans today. There was a twenty first Republican, Victoria Spartz from Indiana, who had been backing McCarthy but voted present today as she stood with the defectors on the ground, they usually applauded her. So clearly, she’s talking to them. There have been a number of superintense huddles with McCarthy allies, McCarthy critics on the House floor. And as I used to be watching them, I kept considering perhaps someone’s going to flip. But then, they might announce they were voting for Donalds the fourth time, the fifth time, the sixth time.
DAVIS: With none sign of a breakthrough, a minimum of seemingly in sight, it also looks like the weird factor goes up. , you’ve got former Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan – he just left Congress – saying, oh, hey, I can be speaker in the event that they want me to. One other former Michigan congressman, Justin Amash, flew to Washington, D.C., and was within the Capitol today, principally telling reporters he’s just hanging out in case people want him to be speaker of the House.
WALSH: I feel I spotted him on the ground.
MONTANARO: I ponder, does FiveThirtyEight and The Recent York Times have a needle for weird-meter? I mean…
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: It’s getting – it is unquestionably getting weirder. But I also think members appear to be getting angrier. Just tonight, a gaggle of Republicans who’re military veterans had a press conference within the Capitol. And their anger on the 20 seems to also only be intensifying, Deirdre. I do not – it isn’t just concerning the anger towards Kevin McCarthy. I feel like the inner Republican anger factor has also intensified.
WALSH: It has. They usually keep using, you recognize, lines like hostage-taking and, you recognize, we’re not taking orders from them, they usually’re attempting to hold us hostage, they usually’re only hurting the party. They’re embarrassing the party. , Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska, said he’s listening to the news, and it’s making him feel sick. , when it comes to this – consequences that this group of national security Republicans were talking about, you recognize, one argued that they can not get classified information or briefings since the committees have not formed, right?
DAVIS: Yeah.
WALSH: There is not any House Intelligence Committee. There is not any House Intelligence Committee chairman. If there’s, like, any form of national security event, they have an inclination to temporary the gang of eight – like, the highest 4, you recognize, House and Senate leaders – and committee chairs of the intelligence committees, and people slots don’t exist immediately.
MONTANARO: We talked about this a bit of bit yesterday. But, you recognize, that is the primary consequence of the red wave being only a red trickle because, you recognize, with this type of majority – 4 seats – all of us knew. We saw what happened with John Boehner and form of the frustration he’d felt with this hard-right conservative caucus. And he just didn’t need to cope with them anymore because he couldn’t even pass basic laws. And we knew, with a four-seat majority, how difficult passing laws can be. It’s amazing that they can not even pick a pacesetter and may’t even agree on that, but I feel they know that they may flex their muscles on this and that they may exercise a number of demands and potentially a scalp here with Kevin McCarthy.
DAVIS: Well, yesterday they put up a pair alternatives. First, they put up Andy Biggs of Arizona. Then they moved on to Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jim Jordan said very clearly he doesn’t need to be speaker. He has endorsed McCarthy. Today, they shifted to Byron Donalds. I feel he’s a lawmaker that a number of our listeners probably do not know rather a lot about. He’s a junior lawmaker. I mean, do you’ve got a way of what their strategy is here? I feel Donalds also told reporters he knows he won’t be speaker, either.
WALSH: He did. I mean, he – I feel he said he wasn’t running for speaker, but he was attempting to play some form of constructive role to get to a consensus. I mean, I feel, as we have noted on this podcast, Democrats are nominating Recent York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries to be the brand new Democratic leader. He becomes the primary Black leader of either party in Congress. And Byron Donalds, who, as you said, Sue – I feel that is just his second term in Congress – I mean, is Black. And Chip Roy, who nominated him, invoked Martin Luther King when he nominated him on the ground today.
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, Donalds is a congressman from Florida. He was born in Brooklyn, by the way in which. So was Hakeem Jeffries. He’s 44 years old. He represents southwest Florida. Now, he’s described himself as a, “Trump-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, Second Amendment, Black man.” That’s his quote about how he describes himself. He seems somewhat flattered about this form of recent, you recognize, attention that he’s getting. He said, well, they nominated me – right? – when he was asked if he is definitely running for speaker, as Deirdre alluded to – that he – this wasn’t really a – necessarily a serious bid on his part.
And I feel it surprised him somewhat, but he’s blissful to have the eye. And he really rode the Tea Party to, you recognize, the legislature in Florida. He gained their support. He has been one of the conservative members since then – even voted against some gun laws after the Parkland school massacre there – one among the one members to try this – so really has been in a position to rise to fame through, you recognize, using this conservative angle, you recognize, and being – and now form of getting all this newfound attention, which was unexpected for him.
WALSH: But Donalds ran for a leadership position in November and lost. He ran to be, I feel, the No. 3 House Republican leader position, and he lost to Elise Stefanik. So he clearly has been wanting to be a part of the leadership team.
DAVIS: All right. Let’s take a fast break, and we’ll talk more about this once we get back.
And we’re back. And Deirdre, I feel it’s value perhaps taking a step back for a minute on the battle to be speaker since it’s common that folks prior to now have faced internal party resistance to get the gavel. Nancy Pelosi faced internal resistance. John Boehner faced internal resistance. Paul Ryan faced internal resistance. But they were in a position to get there before they got so far, right? There is a reason…
WALSH: Right.
DAVIS: …Why they have not fought it out on the ground. What’s it concerning the dynamic of this makeup of the Republican Party that’s stopping Kevin McCarthy – or, frankly, anyone else – from doing that?
WALSH: Well, the opposite thing that is striking, too, whenever you mention Pelosi, is McCarthy has the identical, razor-thin, four-seat majority…
DAVIS: Exactly.
WALSH: …That Pelosi had within the last session of Congress that just ended.
DAVIS: And a bunch of people that didn’t want her to be speaker anymore.
WALSH: Right – and had publicly come out against her right before that election. But within the wake of that, she knew she had a skinny majority. She negotiated behind the scenes, offered as much as term-limit herself and secured the votes and won on the ground. The difference between Pelosi and McCarthy – right? – is that McCarthy is negotiating with this group that’s making these demands which might be a bit of bit unclear in some unspecified time in the future, seem pretty personal, but additionally seem pretty hard for McCarthy to truly conform to.
I mean, I talked to one among them, South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman, and he essentially said he doesn’t consider Kevin McCarthy is absolutely a fiscal conservative. He pointed to his record over the past 14 years on spending bills. And he said, look, I would like to do some major cuts, and I would like Kevin McCarthy to conform to all these cuts and essentially conform to shut down the federal government if he cannot get them through. And he also said, I would like Kevin McCarthy to conform to not raise the debt ceiling if we won’t get these sorts of cuts through. And I said, congressman, you’ve got a Democratic Senate, a Democratic president. Like, you may’t pass these things. And he was like, we’re on this fiscal crisis. We’d like to make a stand. We’d like to handle our country’s spending problem. Mainly, he wants the fight.
DAVIS: Yeah. I mean, I at all times think that there’s – I try to clarify this to people once they ask concerning the differences within the parties since the left – you recognize, there is a far left within the Democratic Party. There is a far right within the Republican Party. However the far right form of animating impulse is sort of anti-government, right? We said it’s anti-establishment.
MONTANARO: Yeah.
DAVIS: It’s anti-government. They need to break it down. And the far left’s animating impulse remains to be pro-government. They still need to construct government, make it larger. So it’s almost easier to get the left within the fold because they fundamentally consider in government. It’s rather a lot harder to get the far right within the fold ’cause they only fundamentally don’t need to see government proceed in its current form.
MONTANARO: Yeah, they really see government because the enemy. , as Ronald Reagan said, you recognize, it gets in the way in which. It hurts businesses. And a part of what they’re here to do is to somewhat strangle government, to scale back how much it does, how much it spends, what its role is in society abroad, and all of that. And it makes it really difficult if you happen to’re trying to negotiate with folks who, you recognize, really are only form of sitting there in an intransigent way. , and it isn’t like they don’t need anything. They actually need a style of America that they foresee and that they might need to instill, but they do not have the facility to do it.
DAVIS: They usually do not have the votes.
MONTANARO: They do have this power to give you the chance to regulate, at this point, who might the speaker be.
WALSH: They usually have a Republican conference within the Senate that is just not on the identical page as them.
DAVIS: Actually not in the case of government shutdowns and defaulting on the national debt. Deirdre, there was an interesting moment, I believed, today, and I ponder if – perhaps I’m reading an excessive amount of into it or if it’s something we should always follow. Ken Buck is a Republican from Colorado. He voted for McCarthy in all six rounds. He’s been behind him. But he was one among the primary lawmakers I heard today start to drift the concept, if McCarthy cannot begin to close this gap, he might need to entertain stepping aside and letting another person try. And he specifically name-checked Steve Scalise, the bulk leader, who has been form of a part of this whisper conversation of whether he might be speaker. Although to be clear, Scalise has made no moves to that end. Do you get a way that even the McCarthy wall could be starting to indicate some cracks?
WALSH: I mean, I feel there’s growing concern that this public spectacle is making the party look bad. A few of McCarthy’s allies say people aren’t really being attentive. They’ll work. They’ll the gas station. Life moves on. This is just not a giant deal. We should always just have this debate and get through it. But I feel there are some, like Buck, who’re saying that quiet part out loud – we won’t just do that perpetually. And Buck, on this interview on CNN said, look, we could get so far where other senior members go to Kevin and say, it’s just time to maneuver forward. But I do not get the sense that Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican from Louisiana, who was near McCarthy and has been backing him, could get the votes to win the speaker’s race either immediately.
MONTANARO: And Buck appeared to have a way of urgency about it. He said a pair times that it needs to be and needs to be today where this movement is made, where either McCarthy can win over a few of these folks or cut bait. , and I feel that it truly is indicative when you concentrate on today – the split screen that all of us saw happening with President Biden in Kentucky with Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, talking about how they were in a position to get funding for a bridge through the bipartisan infrastructure bill while, at the identical time, Republicans were, once more, failing to even pick a pacesetter within the House.
DAVIS: All right. Let’s leave it there for today. We should always note the House does plan to satisfy again tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern time for more deliberations and possibly more voting. We’ll see what happens. And we’ll be back within the podcast to speak about it when we are able to. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
WALSH: I’m Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text is probably not in its final form and should be updated or revised in the longer term. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.