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We don’t yet know who will replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after he was ousted as speaker Tuesday. But he seemed to have a message for whoever it is: Good luck.
In a ranging news conference, McCarthy, at times sounding exasperated, finally let loose on the Republicans who made his brief nine-month tenure hell. But he also painted a picture of an ungovernable GOP majority featuring dishonest people without a conservative ideological North Star but with the power and desire to wreak havoc.
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It wasn’t quite the “legislative terrorism” that former speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) cited in his 2021 book when he discussed the conference he once led, but it was close.
The most telling moment may have been when McCarthy was asked what advice he had for his successor.
“Change the rules,” he said with a wry smile, as if that were the only answer — or even a viable one.
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McCarthy was referring to the rule that ultimately proved to be his undoing: the motion to vacate. As part of a deal with hard-right conservatives to become speaker, he agreed to let one member raise a motion to remove the speaker, at which point a majority could oust him.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) raised the motion after McCarthy this weekend cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open when Republicans were unable to agree on their own package. And the GOP’s slim majority meant just six Republicans had to vote with Democrats to make it so. Eight did.
“If you can always count on the other party to vote in a bloc against it, then you’re allowing four to five people to control whatever,” McCarthy said. “So it doesn’t matter even if you have 96 percent [of Republicans]. So that is not a government that works; that is chaotic.
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“I don’t think that rule is good for the institution, but apparently I’m the only one.”
McCarthy was pressed on a pertinent fact: that this was a rule that he had agreed to. He might not have liked it, but it was the price of power, and he’d fully signed off on it.
Unless there is a sea change in the party after his ouster, and whoever becomes speaker insists on rolling the rule back as a condition — and can still win enough votes, which seems unlikely — it’s going to be a reality for his successor, who will probably be on just as tight a leash.
It was around this point that McCarthy began turning to the eight Republicans who voted to oust him. He mentioned four by name, suggesting they had not only betrayed him, but betrayed both the truth and conservatism — if they ever truly adhered to conservatism in the first place.
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Gaetz? He was the guy McCarthy said promised to vote for him for speaker on the 14th of 15 ballots cast in January but then reneged. “It was personal,” McCarthy said of Gaetz’s spearheading his ouster. “It had nothing to do about spending. … It all was about getting attention from you,” the media.
“I haven’t heard him say one true thing yet,” McCarthy said.
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He suggested Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) was similarly dishonest. He said he called her chief of staff after she accused him Monday of breaking promises. “You know what her chief of staff said?” McCarthy said. “You have kept your word.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)? McCarthy said he considered Burchett a friend but that Burchett on Tuesday mischaracterized a call in which he suggested McCarthy had mocked him for saying he was praying about his vote. “I’m a Christian; I’m not going to offend somebody,” McCarthy said.
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McCarthy also cited the prayers of Rep. Matthew M. Rosendale (R-Mont.). Rosendale said recently that he had prayed for a small GOP majority, rather than a big one, after the 2022 election, because that would enable a small number of members to pull the party to the right.
“When you have members like that that are part of your team, you’ve got a tough team,” McCarthy said.
“The trustworthiness of a lot of individuals makes it difficult,” he said at another point.
Perhaps most bitingly, he repeatedly questioned the conservative credentials of many of his fellow Republicans.
“They are not conservatives,” he said. “They voted against, one, the greatest cut in history, that Congress has ever voted for: $2 trillion. They voted against work requirements. They voted against [National Environmental Policy Act] reform. They voted against border security. They voted against — they don’t get to say they’re conservative, because they’re angry and they’re chaotic.
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“They are not conservatives, and they do not have the right to have the title.”
It wasn’t evident at the time, but McCarthy was painting with a broad “not conservative” brush.
The supposed $2 trillion cut he cited (a vastly oversimplified claim) and work requirements for low-income benefit recipients were part of a debt ceiling deal opposed by nearly one-third of House Republicans — including many McCarthy allies. The border security he cited was in a bill last week to avert the shutdown, with 21 Republicans voting against it because of issues including how far it went on the border and because it funded Ukraine’s defense.
If that is the true number of Republicans making the job of speaker untenable — rather than just the eight who voted against him Tuesday — the next speaker has a major problem.
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And while McCarthy couldn’t possibly have been happy about the state of affairs after his ouster, he seemed more than happy to be rid of his antagonists.
The problem is there is no sign that his successor will have an easier time. The issues McCarthy described are endemic. Nor would any successor be positioned to negotiate a better deal, absent a willingness to go through an even uglier and lengthier process than McCarthy did nine months ago.
Just as with a shutdown, those members will probably demand a whole lot of pain before they ever give in.
If they ever do.
Or, as McCarthy put it in the understatement of the day: “I’m not quite sure those individuals are looking to be productive.”
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