Whether anyone was ready for it or not, earlier this week came news like a bolt of lightning out of the blue that Speaker Kevin McCarthy had been ousted from his position by a slight
majority vote of the House of Representatives.
Conservative boat-rocker Florida Representative Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate was initially passed over and dismissed as unserious by most in the eternally swamp protecting and skeptical establishment media, but the concept remarkably came to fruition thanks to an outlier band of eight Republican representatives teaming with 210 gullible Democrats to remove McCarthy. The corporate media talkers provided a plethora of reasons why things happened the way they did, and a rehashing of those rationales isn’t helpful here.
The most important dilemma now is, what happens next? The House (under a temporary stand-in Speaker) adjourned almost immediately after the vote and the Republican conference plans to meet next Tuesday to try and select one individual to fill McCarthy’s newly vacated shoes. Intellectually speaking, the challenge won’t be difficult to do so – former Speaker Kevin was no brain surgeon, put it that way. But finding a leader who can herd the proverbial House GOP cats won’t be simple, either.
The shock of the moment led many conservatives to speculate wildly about who that person could be, with Fox News personality Sean Hannity even tossing out the name of former President Donald Trump as a willing candidate – not for president, but for Speaker. According to this story from The Hill, Hannity said:
“Sources telling me at this hour some House Republicans have been in contact with and have started an effort to draft former President Donald Trump to be the next Speaker, and I have been told that President Trump might be open to helping the Republican Party, at least in the short term, if necessary.”
That Sean, he’s such a kidder, ain’t he? One wonders what “sources” would be in on such a wild rumor, though several Republican representatives (Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.), Greg Steube (Fla.) and Troy Nehls (Texas)) floated the idea of nominating Trump when the House GOPers reconvenes to select a new living, breathing body (who doesn’t need to be a member of the House) to take up the post. Trump certainly would meet opposition to the notion from someone within his own Republican conference, though when former members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were purged from their seats last year, they took the last openly hostile to Trump mouths with them.
Trump himself subsequently squelched the rumors by declaring that he wasn’t interested in taking on the Speaker’s duties (check out this story, also from The Hill). Trump said to reporters covering one of his trumped-up criminal trials:
“’Lot of people have been calling me about Speaker, all I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party,’ … ‘My focus is totally on [running for president in 2024]. If I can help them during the process, I’ll do it. But we have some great people in the Republican Party that could do a great job as Speaker,’ Trump said.”
I’m not sure if anyone truly took Hannity seriously regarding his “sources” telling him that Trump would entertain being voted in as Speaker, but one of the former president’s rivals (if you could call anyone a “rival” right now) for the Republican nomination thought that Trump as Speaker was a terrific idea. Vivek Ramaswamy commented (again, through a story in The Hill):
“’This isn’t crazy. We need to shake things up in there,’ [Ramaswamy] said of the idea in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.”
This type of thing is expected from an “outsider” like Ramaswamy who had the verve to run for president with next to zero name recognition and next to nothing except a personal fortune built on entrepreneurial spirit and vividly evident smarts to carry him far. Vivek spoke of the value of “chaos” in the process and change needed on capitol hill, which served as quite a contrast to the stodgy swamp creatures providing opinions on cable news about McCarthy’s ouster, who universally complained it made Republicans look bad and would hurt their “ability to govern.”
If the federal elections were being held tomorrow, I can see where forcing such a hasty change might influence some voters’ minds. At the same time, I’m having difficulty envisioning that the type of people inclined to vote Republican are suddenly saying to themselves, “Oh, gee, the House Republicans are in disarray; I need to drop them and my conservative beliefs and switch to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats instead.”
But assuming Republicans can get together next week to elect a new leader, the expected positive changes to the GOP House members’ attitudes and improvements in the legislative process will far outweigh any negativity from the temporary political drama. How do I know this? Does anyone recall the mess earlier this year when Republicans took something like four days and fifteen ballots to elect McCarthy Speaker in the first place?
The only ones still even mentioning the dust-up now are the same establishment media voices who swear the Republicans are doomed in the next election (thirteen months away) and have provided all the fodder the party’s enemies will ever need to convince Americans that the dysfunctional GOP conference can’t do anything right.
It begs the question: Who is defending the status quo here? Where is the group of Republicans, well, besides Mitt Romney, who would prefer that nothing ever change? Does anyone hanker, for instance, to re-nominate Paul Ryan or John Boehner for Speaker? I don’t know what either is doing right now, but if boy-wonder Ryan has suddenly run out of media adoration and Boehner has exhausted his supplies of cigarettes and Merlot, maybe one of the two would be willing to return and give it a shot?
One would need to be blind not to see that the old ways of doing things – namely the go-along-to-get-along mentality – if it still exists, is on the run and in danger of being swept away like a sand castle on the beach at high tide. So much was evident in January when the now-famous group of conservatives refused to budge until McCarthy (supposedly) promised them concessions and procedural evolution.
McCarthy delivered on some of those things but didn’t put up nearly enough fight to satiate those who demanded more – much more -- and the urgency of the times required. With federal debt piling on top of federal debt, there simply isn’t opportunity to kick the proverbial can down the road any longer. If for nothing else, government spending needs to be cut to ease senile president Joe Biden-inspired inflationary pressures, which are killing the poor and middle class.
For getting the ball rolling, Matt Gaetz might be seen as a goat (not the G.O.A.T., by the way) right now, but someday soon he could be viewed as a hero. Will the House reform itself? It remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, no one could blame Trump for deflecting calls for him to fill the vacated Speaker’s chair. There are several reasons why it made sense to turn it down before he was even offered the position. First, Trump doesn’t have enough relationships in the House GOP conference to make it work. Undoubtedly, some of them are establishmentarians who were elected under different pretenses – would they cooperate with his agenda?
Second, Trump has always been an executive, and he’s not used to working with a bunch of publicity seeking and needy show boater legislators to come to consensus on decisions. Call him a dictator if you like, but at least with Trump, there’s never a doubt where the buck stops. Trump revels in the notion that he’s responsible for everything, a trait that annoys people but also provides security. The former president only gets ornery when his minions rebel and start blabbering to the press.
Third, Trump is correct – he’s got a big lead in the GOP presidential race, a major lead-in to what he wants to do, Make America Great Again. Trump’s intra-party competitors would love it if Trump were suddenly to head to the House of Representatives, because it would basically remove him from the horserace before the starting gate even opens.
But if Trump were gone, what would Chris Christie do? Thankfully, I don’t think we’ll ever find out.
Lastly, Trump wouldn’t accept the Speaker’s position because there’s not much he could get done on his own to accomplish his MAGA goals. No major legislative initiatives could be passed without the senate – and president – giving their go-ahead. Trump doesn’t want to be at anybody’s mercy, least of all senile Joe and “Chucky” Schumer.
Trump also wouldn’t have any power over judicial appointments and very little say in foreign policy matters. He could arguably yield the power of the purse – which is where McCarthy failed badly – but how much say does the Speaker really have? The Speaker also doesn’t have power to issue executive orders, and, of course, there’s no real bully pulpit involved with the position no matter how hard Nancy Pelosi tried to use one.
Another reason could be that the House already has a number of capable, combative conservatives who could take McCarthy’s performance and improve on it, significantly. Representative Jim Jordan announced he’s running for Speaker, and who would be better than the feisty Ohioan for telling it like it is and never, ever, giving ground to Democrats on anything.
The Republican Party has needed a leader like Jim Jordan for a long time. He deserves a chance, doesn’t he?
Or how about Florida Rep. Byron Donalds? He’d be great, too.
No one suggests the battle for the next Speaker will be docile and quiet, but then again, wasn’t the House of Representatives created by the Founders to be somewhat tumultuous? With Kevin McCarthy out of the picture, conservatives and Republicans hope his replacement will be the type of advocate for liberty we’ve always wanted. Will we get it? Will Matt Gaetz deserve the credit?
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