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As Toni covered earlier, Representative Matt Gaetz, who has no endgame to his plans except wearing a t-shirt that says “I H8 KEVIN MCCARTHY,” has pushed through a motion to vacate the chair, potentially removing McCarthy as House Speaker.
Of course, the Democrats are more than happy to encourage the chaos. And why not? It isn’t THEIR problem – their caucus knows not to step out of line.
Democrats signaled early on Tuesday that they would not be inclined to help McCarthy. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said before the vote, “Democrats “are ready to find bipartisan common ground. Our extreme colleagues have shown no willingness to do the same. They must find a way to end the House Republican Civil War.”
The motion passed with all Democrats supporting it, along with Gaetz and TEN OTHER Republicans. Thanks, guys!
Eleven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against killing that measure on Tuesday afternoon. They are: Gaetz, Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, Eli Crane, R-Ariz., Cory Mills, R-Fla., Bob Good, R-Va., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
Some of these Republicans are holdovers from the rounds and rounds of voting and negotiations that made McCarthy Speaker of the House back in January. Some are not. What is going on here? Are some of the Republicans who let the motion go forward, going to end up voting to retain McCarthy anyway? Will some who didn’t want the fight to open up again, but voted against McCarthy back in January, willing to oust him now? Will Matt Gaetz be left holding the bag by himself, aligned with all the Democrats, in a final vote as a way of embarrassing him?
The biggest problem, yet again, is that the GOP majority in the House is so slim that McCarthy is in a technically precarious position. And Gaetz doesn’t mind blowing his political capital on being an asshole and siding with Democrats.
Gaetz is now going after Jim Jordan and GOP investigations into Hunter Biden, while literally standing on the Democratic side of the aisle.
After joining with House Democrats and Liz Cheney to oust the Trump-endorsed Speaker.
Your hero, folks. https://t.co/TH9TWNLtjI
— Sunny McSunnyface (Taylor's Version) (@sunnyright) October 3, 2023
Who is winning today? Democrats.
Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi are the happiest people in Washington. pic.twitter.com/NFxtYwVJAk
— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) October 3, 2023
There is no viable alternative to Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. The House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise, does not want the job (and is currently focused on beating cancer) and is openly supporting McCarthy.
We have a lot of work to do. Now is not the time for distractions. I’m committed to continuing to work with @SpeakerMcCarthy and our entire leadership team on reducing spending, securing our border, and fighting for hardworking Americans.
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) October 2, 2023
All the names that were brought up before by the GOP holdouts in January don’t even have 20 votes to support them, much less the full support of the caucus. This is a waste of time, and the Democrats are happily eating popcorn and enjoying the spectacle.
Does Gaetz care? Of course not – he’s eating up the camera time and enjoying himself. Gaetz doesn’t have an alternative candidate, he just wants to spout his complaints (and they are legitimate ones) about spending bills without presenting any viable solutions. And why not? He won’t bear any political consequences, and he knows that he will never get his way while the White House and the Senate are both controlled by Democrats.
Even McCarthy haters outside the Congress admit that there are no other alternatives at the moment, and that this entire exercise is performative at best. Matt Gaetz sees himself as the main character of his own story – and he’s taking the entire Congress along for his special story time.
UPDATE 4:50 PM ET
A voice roll call was held. Out of the 11 GOP votes, only 8 voted to vacate the chair.
8 House GOP YES Votes on MTV:
1.Biggs
2.Buck
3.Burchett
4.Crane
5.Gaetz
6.Good
7.Mace
8.Rosendale— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) October 3, 2023
Those voting no? Spartz, Mills, and Davidson. Three GOP representatives did not vote – two were known to be absent, and one missed the vote.
The vote passed 216-210, and the Speakership was officially vacated. So, Gaetz gets to have his fun and flex, but he’s given no end game. Scalise said no. So who wants this job, who can get the unanimous (or mostly unanimous) support of the GOP caucus?
I don’t know about you, but this circus is a GREAT way to spend time! /sarc
Featured image: Gage Skidmore/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons/Thomas Hawk/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons
Promises were made. Promises were broken. But, of course, there should be no consequences for this…
You do realize that this attitude is how the nation ended up the sorry mess it is today?
tajar says: agreed!
McCarthy never should have agreed to take the job of Speaker if it was going to be this easy to remove him from the job. With such a small majority, he put himself in an untenable position.
There will always be politicians who love attention too much. Gaetz seems to be one of them. When it is so easy to win a vote to remove the Speaker, McCarthy gave Gaetz too much of an opportunity.
Whoever takes the job of Speaker at this point should have learned his learn lesson from this fiasco. My guess is that Republicans will be eager to vote themselves a new Speaker — including the 8 bomb throwers. The idiots risk making a Democrat the Speaker. However, no one is going to take the job unless that foolish provision is removed.
Hate_me says: McCarthy has claimed he won’t seek a return to the speakership – that, alone, is a win for Gaetz. Especially if there really was a backdoor agreement between Messrs. McCarthy & Biden to separately push through continued funding for Ukraine. I’m happy to see McCarthy out of that spot, as he seems to be the only politician in the world who can be (and consistently has been) politically outmaneuvered by Brandon.
Many point to the GOP pissing away the benefits of their slim majority in the House, but with Democrat control of both the Senate and the veto, that slim majority is pretty pointless, anyway. Chaos in the House might be their most effective weapon.
Joe R. says: It took 18 tries to make him speaker and 1 to fix it. ALL of D.C. is
A L W A Y S
less than 1 vote away from having to pack their shizzay and go home, per the 2nd Para. of The Declaration of Independence.
Lemuel Vargas says: IMHO, they should have given a chance for McCarthy to make things right. Anyways, what did Gaetz et. al. do to remind McCarthy about his promises when they suspected him of not delivering on that promises? To the best of my knowledge, they did not do anything about it. (but pls. correct me if my info is wrong.)
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