Name: Kevin McCarthy will not run for House Speaker again after ouster
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Kevin McCarthy will not run for House Speaker again after ouster

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34568c8bae0bc3439f9c06a73eea0ec3bbce854bab60ebfa8e30d47c71d2cfcc6829c17a90be664cby JACKSON SINNENBERG | The National DeskTue, October 3rd 2023, 6:26 PM UTC8VIEW ALL PHOTOSRep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., leaves the House floor after being ousted as Speaker of the House at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)Kevin McCarthy has been ousted as Speaker of the House, becoming the first holder of that office in U.S. history to be forcefully removed from power.Livestream will begin shortlyThe final vote count stood at 216 to 210 on the motion to vacate brought against McCarthy by longtime critic Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Monday night.Per House rules, McCarthy submitted a list of names of members that could fill his role as Speaker in the case of a vacancy. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., one of the former speaker’s most trusted lieutenants, ascended to the chair of Speaker Pro Tempore following the vote.During a meeting of the House Republican conference Tuesday night, McCarthy confirmed that he would not seek re-election to the speakership, which he echoed in remarks to the media Tuesday night. “I may have lost the vote today, but as I walk out of this chamber I feel fortunate to have served the American people. I leave the speakership with a sense of pride, accomplishment and, yes, optimism," he told reporters. His comments and responses Tuesday night were gracious and reflective, although he directed some amount of vitriol towards the eight Republicans that joined with Democrats to vote against him. This country is too great for the small vision of those eight,” he said. "You can’t do the job if you have 96% of your entire conference but 8 people can partner with the other side. How do you govern?"On Gaetz, McCarthy alleged that the sole reason he brought the motion to vacate was due to the resumed House Ethics Committee probe into allegations of sex trafficking, drug use and bribery that threatens the Florida Congressmans' tenure. “I’ve seen the texts and it was all about his ethics," McCarthy alluded. McCarthy also emphasized his approach to the speakership, as much as he rooted it in conservative principles, to ensuring that he and the Republican majority governed successfully. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is necessary. I don’t regret choosing governing over grievance," he said. "I do not regret negotiating: our government is designed to find compromise.The event is the culmination of an eight-month term for the California Republican as the holder of the office third in line for the presidency that was marked by a historically tight majority and from even before day one saw constant infighting between McCarthy and his right flank.Perhaps his election campaign to become Speaker, which succeeded after five days and fifteen ballots – the longest fight over House leader since before the Civil War – and saw him ascend to power only with the permission of Gaetz and other hard right members of Congress.While the vast majority of the Republican House caucus supported McCarthy’s attempt to remain in power, all of the Democrats present in the chamber joined with eight Republicans – Reps. Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, as well as Gaetz – to bring an end to the shortest speakership in modern history.The reason Kevin McCarthy went down today is because nobody trusts him,” Gaetz told a gaggle of reporters on the steps of the Capitol Building shortly after the chamber recessed. “Turns out getting 200 Republicans to trust you isn’t enough to remain Speaker of the House.Gaetz and the other hard right Republicans that brought McCarthy down – as The National Desk’s Scott Thuman noted, “It only takes a tiny portion of the party to upend the entire system” – cited trust as a central issue of their concerns with the Speaker’s continued hold on power, saying that they no longer trusted him after he violated terms of a deal he made with them to gain their acquiescence to his hold of the gavel.That deal provided spots on the influential House Rules Committee for members of the hard right House Freedom Caucus, forming a special committee to investigate so-called weaponization of the Justice Department, lowering the threshold for the motion to vacate to one member and promises to pass regular budget and appropriations bills to reign in government spending rather than continue to pass long-and-short-term funding CRs (among other things, the full scope of the deal was never publicly disclosed)."Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January, and since then he has been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement," Gaetz said on CNN Sunday. "This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we'd set up is a last straw."The subject of trust in the Speaker was also a motivating factor for House Democrats to join Gaetz in the attempt to remove McCarthy from power.There are real trust issues with the Republican leadership and with the Republicans overall, based on the fact that they negotiated an agreement with the President of the United States ... and then immediately turned around and broke [it],” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on MSNBC Tuesday morning, referring to commitments McCarthy made regarding the appropriations process."In a futile attempt to pander to the far right, [McCarthy] opened a kangaroo investigation into President Biden,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said on CNN. “So, that erosion of trust undermines bipartisanship within the House."The cracks began to fissure anew between McCarthy and the Gaetz camp following the former’s bipartisan deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. Following the passage of that bill, hard right members of Congress expressed their displeasure legislatively at the outcome by voting down a Republican-sponsored bill to combat growing gas stove regulations in states across the country.They also took to the steps of the Capitol to verbally express their now growing concerns with McCarthy’s way of running the people’s House.“Today we took down the rule because we’re frustrated at the way this place is operating. We took a stand in January to end the era of the imperial speakership,” Gaetz said in a press conference outside the Capitol Building with other conservatives the day that vote was taken.“We’re concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed Kevin McCarthy to assume the speakership have been violated as a consequence of the debt limit deal."One of the architects of that deal, Rep. McHenry, implored his fellow Republicans to stand with the House Speaker in remarks he made during floor debate on the motion to vacate.Republicans, why would we give up a conservative, working majority for better outcomes and hand the keys over to the Democrats,” McHenry asked the chamber. “And furthermore, with this record of success we’ve seen Speaker McCarthy and a Republican majority produce in a Washington run by Democrats, we’re gonna throw that away? Resulting in more liberal outcomes, not more conservative ones.”Gaetz responded, condemning McHenry and other more moderate Republicans’ comments that argued the debt ceiling deal McCarthy got held to conservative principles. “The only people in America who think the deal was conservative are in this room,” he fired back.However, Gaetz did not have the backing off all his Freedom Caucus colleagues. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who served as a kind of similar foil to House Speaker John Boehner that Gaetz did to McCarthy, strongly condemned this effort to vacate the speaker, based on his own experience trying to do the same.As the only still serving co-author of the motion to vacate Speaker Boehner, I can tell you this motion to vacate is a terrible idea,” Massie said during floor debate. “I can tell you that this chamber has been run better, more conservatively and more transparently under Speaker McCarthy than any under speaker I have served under.“McCarthy has tried regular order. If regular order fails today, if you vacate the speaker, nobody is going to try again. This institution will fail,” he added.The chorus of support for McCarthy fell along similar lines during floor debate, which saw multiple Republican members of Congress take turns verbally sparring with Gaetz over the motion to vacate.“On Jan. 3 we said the 118th Congress is about three things: pass the bills that need passed, do the oversight work that needs to be done, and stop the inevitable omnibus that comes from the Senate every holiday season,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a former Freedom Caucus chair “Kevin McCarthy has been rock solid on all three.”Kevin McCarthy has earned this,” added Rep. Tom Emmer, the majority whip. “Under Speaker McCarthy’s leadership, our House Republican majority has actually defied all odds and over-performed expectations again and again and again.Gaetz had responses for both.“After tweeting ‘bring it’ and after engaging in profane-laced tirades at House conference, he just lost a motion to table, so I wouldn’t necessarily call that over performing expectations,” he said in rebuttal to Emmer. As for Jordan, who as chair of the House Judiciary Committee is deeply tied to the mission of oversight taken by House Republicans, Gaetz decried their efforts as “failure theater.”The rebelling Republicans received their strongest condemnation from Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., who decried their efforts as nothing more than another entry in the cycle of “clicks, TV hits, and the never-ending quest for the most mediocre celebrity” that “drives the decisions in this body.”Praising McCarthy’s efforts to allow all members to speak on the floor and amend bills as part of conservative efforts to reform the House, Armstrong saw McCarthy’s tenure as speaker as an overall win for the democratic experiment. “We have done regular order, we have had open amendments and every single members has the right and opportunity to be heard on the floor. It’s been messy, it’s been raucous, and at times it’s been chaotic. God Bless every minute of it because democracy is supposed to be hard.Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who led the pro-McCarthy side of the floor debate, argued that ousting the speaker would be chaos – Gaetz responded with a knock about how the continuation of regular D.C. financial policy was such – and that appears to be what is next for the House.Following his ascension to Speaker Pro Tempore, Rep. McHenry called for a recess of the House before the body had to begin undertaking votes for a new, permanent Speaker. The House will appear to be in recess until next Tuesday -- with the House Minority Whip Katherine Clark telling members no votes are to be expected the rest of the week -- with elections for Speaker to begin Wednesday. Loading ...

34568c8bae0bc3439f9c06a73eea0ec3bbce854bab60ebfa8e30d47c71d2cfcc6829c17a90be664cby JACKSON SINNENBERG | The National DeskTue, October 3rd 2023, 6:26 PM UTC8VIEW ALL PHOTOSRep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., leaves the House floor after being ousted as Speaker of the House at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)Kevin McCarthy has been ousted as Speaker of the House, becoming the first holder of that office in U.S. history to be forcefully removed from power.Livestream will begin shortlyThe final vote count stood at 216 to 210 on the motion to vacate...

Kevin McCarthy will not run for House Speaker again after ouster

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