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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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McCarthy helped create the environment in which he got motion-to-vacated but the trigger for it happening now was his willingness to work with Democrats in order to avoid shutting down the government. I don't agree with him on most issues but I recognize that some non-zero amount of bipartisan cooperation is essential for actually running the country, and in this case McCarthy did cooperate and the Democrats did not. I think that was both a moral error and a strategic blunder: US government dysfunction is visible to the entire world, the House is crippled until McCarthy is replaced, and whoever does replace him is probably going to be less cooperative than he was.
McCarthy reneged on a spending deal he made with Biden, and then refused to even allow a vote on a bipartisan spending bill proposed by the Senate. The only reason he worked with Democrats in the first place (at the eleventh hour, I would add) is because the alternative would have been a government shutdown entirely caused by the GOP -- and he probably still would have lost his job in the end. He's shown himself to be untrustworthy, uncooperative, and spineless when it comes to the MAGA wackos in his party; honestly, the only reasonable choice was to give him the boot.
That's all true, but the Republicans still have a majority - one of them is going to be the next speaker. Is there a Republican who is better than McCarthy? Does he have the support of his party? If not, are Democrats going to vote for a Republican?
Sounds like a problem Republicans caused for themselves. Why are they allowed to act like children?
IMHO the bar has to at least be someone who is not on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Caucus
Also, just about any of the Republicans on this list would be better than McCarthy. The ones who haven't been ousted since, at least. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/house-republicans-january-6-commission/index.html
In the House, voting to support a speaker is not a one-and-done thing. The Speaker sets the agenda for the House sessions, but that agenda needs a majority to approve it, every single session. There is an underlying commitment that after the Speaker is elected, the members who elected him support his agenda moving forward.
Nestor's "dad" tried this route first, after the Debt ceiling "deal" (which McCarthy eventually broke, but that's besides the point). The next time the House met, the MAGAs started voting against McCarthy's agenda, and since the opposition party always votes to oppose that the House was also paralyzed, because the agenda could not be approved so nothing could happen. McCarthy made even more crazy concessions to get their votes back.
So if any Democrats supported McCarthy in this, then McCarthy would have had to count on their support from that point forward. And let's face it, even if McCarthy had promised stuff for those votes, who would trust him to deliver after the Debt ceiling bill went South?
I still think there's room for Democrats in this, but only after Republicans keep twisting in the wind. After their fifteenth (or fiftieth?) vote with no resolution, some Democrats and Republicans may agree on a moderate Republican to support. (It will have to be a Republican, as long as they still have an overall majority). But from that point on, that person will need to rely on support from that entire bloc that voted for them to get shit done. If that does happen, though, expect Nestor's "dad" to scream even louder about a Uniparty....
I understand the logic here, but I think it’s worth rethinking this assumption. Why does it have to be a Republican speaker? Why do several democrats need to be the ones to reach across the aisle? For many of the speakership votes in January, Jeffries (the minority leader) won the most votes. The democrats were united while the republicans were splintered. It seems just as reasonable to expect a handful of republicans to make a deal to support a democrat for speaker. It doesn’t matter how many republicans are in the house if they aren’t able to agree.
I understand your thinking, but elections do have consequences, and there are more Republicans in the chamber than Democrats.
I don't think Democrats are at all interested in seizing the Speakership while in the minority, because they want to be in the majority in the next Congress and dont want to set the precedent that a minority member can squirm in to the Speakership. Not do the Republicans want to set a precedent that the majority party can cede a key post like that.
That's a really good point - I didn't think that Democrats voting for a new, Republican Speaker was realistic, but if they're willing to do it then they can probably get someone a lot better than McCarthy.
Republicans have a majority in the chamber, even if they expel Gaetz because they are all sick of him and send him back home to be with his "son". Both sides understand that. So as long as they all show up, I don't think anyone expects a Democrat to end up as Speaker after all this.
Jeffries will be nominated, of course, and get all the Democratic votes, but will not become Speaker unless someone stages a Ted Nugent concert on the Capitol steps to lure all the MAGAs out of the chamber during the vote.
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