Reality is starting to sink in for Republicans who aren’t Kevin McCarthy or Freedom Caucus maniacs that they are going into Jan. 3 and a House majority without any kind of a plan for what happens when they can’t agree on a speaker. Kevin McCarthy promised in a CNN interview Thursday “I’ll never leave. … I’ll get 218.” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona—and it must be said Kyrsten Sinema’s bestie in the Arizona delegation—reiterated “I’m not bluffing” in his challenge to McCarthy. He is not going to drop out.
That’s a stalemate since Biggs has a definite three members, and probably a fourth, on his side and McCarthy can only afford to lose four. Right now it’s mostly bluster on both sides. McCarthy’s allies insist that they will keep voting with him however many ballots it takes and they are in “early discussions” about how to handle that on the floor, including whether or not they allow a recess as the balloting continues. They don’t want to allow the maniacs to win here.
Meanwhile, their guy and his team are courting the maniacs to figure out how to win them over, including by promising the really key committee assignments, according to people in the know who talked to CNN. Which means, of course, that those guys are ratcheting up their demands. Seven hardline Freedom maniacs have written to their GOP colleagues with a laundry list of promises McCarthy must make to get their vote.
That includes giving them the power to call for his ouster any time they want and to get a vote on their motion, to pack key committees with Freedom Caucus members, and to stay entirely out of primaries. They want at least 72 to hours to read bill text before they vote (as if they’ll actually read the things) and demand McCarthy commit to using the debt ceiling—and every other must-pass bill in Congress—to further their personal dystopian vision for America. The Freedom Caucus has always existed in a bubble in which they imagine that they really do have the majority of Americans behind them.
They really seem to be operating under the assumption that the extremely narrow victory the GOP got for the House would have been a blow-out if everyone had run on a full MAGA platform just like they did. “The American People send us to Washington to do what we said we would do—namely, to limit spending, and fight to advance a conservative agenda,” they write. “We must organize ourselves to ensure there is a ‘check’ on the swamp and reform the status quo.”
And these are the guys McCarthy is working hardest to appease while McCarthy’s supporters are left pleading with them to relent. This group of maniacs has total control even though they’re a minority of the conference and even though their platform clearly tanked at the polls this year.
“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio rightly pointed out to CNN. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘why can’t you guys just get things done?’”
What is he going to do besides plead with the hardliners to relent? Nothing, apparently. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker,” is all he’s got. Same with Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has made the most noise about staving off the “Never Kevin” group as they like to call themselves. “Our initial plan is vote for Kevin and let him fight this out repeatedly. … But if they think they’re going to use this to infinity to drive him out, well, we’re not going to bend to their will,” he told CNN.
While their guy is bending to the maniacs’ will by negotiating with them. Ridiculous.
Well, that was an awesome way to finish out the 2022 election cycle! Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard revel in Raphael Warnock's runoff victory on this week's episode of The Downballot and take a deep dive into how it all came together. The Davids dig into the turnout shift between the first and second rounds of voting, what the demographic trends in the metro Atlanta area mean for Republicans, and why Democrats can trace their recent success in Georgia back to a race they lost: the famous Jon Ossoff special election in 2017.
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