Kevin McCarthy’s Epic Self-Humiliation
Despite being the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line to the presidency of the United States, Kevin McCarthy had the gavel taken out of his hands in a recall vote just 269 days after taking office. On October 3, orchestrated by the far-right Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, voted against McCarthy. a short-lived political coalition of Democrats and seven other Republicans who supported Gaetz voted for a motion to vacate McCarthy. With the removal, McCarthy has dishonorably gone down in history as the only Speaker of the House ever forcibly removed from office in the United States.
Let’s turn the clock back to January 2023 for a moment. The Republican Party had regained its majority with a series of aggressive promises and fervent campaigning, leaving McCarthy, the House Republican leader at the time, raring to go and ready to effectively shutdown Biden’s potentially truncated presidential agenda. However, the nomination process, which should have been a breeze, took four days and fifteen consecutive nominations to pass, and it was Gaetz who started the situation.
In order to satisfy the far-right, McCarthy not only promised to agree to all the demands of the members of the far right, but also agreed to an unprecedented and insulting clause that only required the nomination of one member of the House of Representatives in order for Congress to initiate the recall process. With these conditions in place, as early as McCarthy’s nomination was still in the process of being approved, media pundits were already predicting that he would be an incompetent and weak political leader.
The trigger for this political storm was a vote on a short-term budget bill to avoid a shutdown of the US government. The far-right wing of the Republican Party, represented by Gaetz, demanded that any federal budget bill passed next must make massive cuts to the federal budget and tighten border controls, but members of the Democratic Party, without exception, declared their resistance to this demand. As the date drew closer, McCarthy, who did not want to be responsible for plunging the federal government into a shutdown, had no choice but to cooperate with House Democrats and pass a budget bill over the objections of 90 Republicans.
Before the removal vote was unleashed, Democrats, who currently hold a slight disadvantage in the House, had already united and decided to support the proposal to recall McCarthy. For Democrats, McCarthy was, by any measure, an erratic opportunist who could not be trusted. Even after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, McCarthy refused to endorse the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won, in the name of the top Republican House leader, along with 146 other Republicans. Shortly afterward, in an effort to make sure he didn’t lose former President Trump’s support, he flew to his private address at the same time the former president was facing impeachment for sparking this riot to renew his loyalty to him.
After being elected Speaker, in addition to embracing all far-right political positions wholesale, McCarthy also refused to do anything with the Democrats on any topic with broad political consensus, including aiding Ukraine and investing in infrastructure, and staged impeachment hearings against Biden without any real evidence, triggering an unprecedented level of dislike among Democrats for him, unlike any other former Republican Speakers.
A CBS “Face the Nation” interview McCarthy gave after working with Democrats to pass a short-term appropriations bill, on the other hand, led directly to Democratic members calling an emergency meeting and ultimately voting unanimously in favor of a motion to remove Gates from office. “I was not sure it was going to pass,” McCarthy said in the interview, and claimed that it was Democrats’ refusal to cooperate that pushed the government to the brink of a shutdown.
This elicited laughter from the host, Margaret Brennan; she told McCarthy that it was Democrats who allowed the bill to pass, while 90 Republicans voted against it. For the House Democratic leadership, in the words of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, “It is now the responsibility of the Republican members to end the House Republican Civil War.”
Overconfidence in his political momentum and underestimating the disapproval of far-right detractors are what eventually sunk McCarthy’s Speakership. Technically, this week was supposed to be recess after the passage of the short-term budget. McCarthy posted on X to tell Gaetz “bring it on,” almost similar to a gunslinger accepting a duel in the wild west, in his gesture and confidence that he could withstand this challenge. He also waived the right to wait for 48 hours to make calls shoring up support before the formal voting process, as well as offering nothing in interviews and privately to convince any Democrats to support him in this removal effort, believing that he has enough votes in his own party. Eventually, the levels of betrayal and disapproval is too much for enough people, forcing him to taste the sour defeat.
Under House rules, Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, was appointed Speaker Pro Tempore following the passage of the recall process, and is serving temporarily as Speaker Pro Tempore to maintain the basic functioning of the political process until a new Speaker is formally elected. A staunch McCarthy ally, McHenry was not pleased to assume the position; when he announced his appointment and the official vacancy of the Speaker’s position, he banged his gavel heavily with obvious anger and frustration.
After McCarthy was ousted as speaker, the immediate reaction of the right-wing political media ecosystem in the United States was one of shock and confusion. After the motion was officially passed, Capitol Hill reporters heard screams, sighs and even cries. Privately, some House Republicans plan to discuss calling for a motion to remove Gaetz from the committee or even kick him out of Congress, but such retaliation, whatever its effect, would do nothing to save McCarthy’s political career. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican and leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that his colleague, House Republican Matt Rosendale of Montana, who supports McCarthy’s ouster, may be “in the same prayer group as Nancy Pelosi.”
McCarthy’s ouster means it’s back to square one. With more than a year to go before the next election, whatever Republicans think is still possible for their dream of regaining full control of Washington is becoming less likely with this momentous turn of events.
Few on the right cheered McCarthy’s ouster. To them, however uncharismatic and unlikable McCarthy was, his very existence symbolized a kind of partisan unity that has now been utterly destroyed. No legislative agenda can move forward without a new speaker, and with a weak majority in the House, it will not be easy to get enough 218 votes to elect a new speaker.
The situation is also bewildering for the Senate majority, now controlled by Democrats, and the White House. The turmoil in the House now also presents a dangerous governing challenge, as they have just 43 days left to avoid a November government shutdown and secure critical aid to Ukraine, and it is now unclear who will lead the House GOP. Despite their reluctance to bring him back for obvious reasons, his ouster would still mean a ticking time bomb would begin, with potentially disastrous results for everyone in the Washington political game; The government budget and key funds that Ukraine needs to protect itself from Russia will now depend on the ideological far-right’s decision on who will lead the House.
The Speaker’s removal has plunged U.S. federal politics into uncharted territory; there is no clear answer as to who might become the next Speaker of the House. A popular choice will be presented by the current House Majority Leader, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who is more ideologically extreme than McCarthy and has been endorsed by Gaetz.
Another wildcard choice proposed by Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas would appoint former President Trump as Speaker, as there is no rule in the House of Representatives that explicitly requires the position to be held by a sitting member of Congress. However, given that Trump is still facing four separate felony indictments, doing so may only lead to infighting and dysfunction within the Republican Party, resulting in a shutdown of the federal government and possibly another shutdown as the mid-November deadline approaches.
McCarthy’s ouster, though unprecedented, hardly comes as a shock. For a weak leader who needed 15 nominations to win, and who was widely seen as lacking management skills and personality even before he took office, facing defections and overthrowing from within his own party was a certain inevitability from the start. Now, with the 2024 elections looming, it is inevitable that the Republican Party, which after ten months in control of the House has failed to introduce any effective political resolutions, will face another blow to its credibility as a result of the turmoil.
Whoever becomes the next Republican speaker will face the difficult task of balancing a group of doers who want to live up to conservative political values with reactionaries like Gaetz, who simply want to prove that government cannot govern itself. No amount of cozying up to the destructive perception of Trump and the political platform he represents will serve as a fire to Republicans who actually want to govern. Former Speaker Paul Ryan, who promised a series of reforms before McCarthy took office but announced in 2018 that he would not run again because he foresaw a crushing defeat in the midterm elections, is the most vivid example.
In a political system that continues to be hijacked by Gaetz, Trump, and the reactionary ideology, whoever, at any given moment or stage, speaks out against their demands will, like McCarthy, be left with a bleak view of the camera.
