McCarthy Ousted: What Happens Now? Who Replaces the Speaker?

Tuesday’s trainwreck in the House of Representatives leaves the institution unsettled and currently without leadership for the foreseeable future.

As we all saw back in January, the House cannot move forward with any business until a Speaker has been elected by a majority of members. Rep. Kevin McCarthy went through 15 rounds of votes before he was able to cobble together enough support to claim the gavel. He did so at the time with the blessing of former President Donald Trump and an agreement that he could essentially be kicked out in the future if one member decided they didn’t like his style. That moment came this week.

Here are the eight House Republicans, including Gaetz, who voted to remove McCarthy:

Deposing a sitting Speaker, short of doing so because of criminal or unethical behavior, is a first for the House, according to NPR news:

The House has voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker, marking the first time in history that a House speaker has been removed in this way.

The final vote was 216-210 in favor of a motion to “vacate the chair.” Eight Republicans, led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, joined all Democrats present in voting against McCarthy.

Congress has now entered uncharted territory: The House will be forced to hold votes on a new speaker, though McCarthy’s defectors have not named any alternative nominee. McCarthy told his fellow Republicans Tuesday evening that he does not plan to run for speaker again. It’s not clear that any other Republican could win enough votes to secure the gavel.

With McCarthy gone, what did the likes of Matt Gaetz gain in all this? He was able to find seven other votes to join with all the House Democrats and kick McCasrthy out of the Speaker’s chair.

Great. Now what?

What is the grand plan Gaetz and the rest of his band of rebels have to bring forth? The answer is nothing, actually. It’s a tactic of lobbing a grenade into the room and watching the carnage unfold. Some Republicans are openly voicing support to expel Gaetz from the party.

Kevin McCarthy is not without sin and he has made mistakes as Speaker, there’s no denying that. Perhaps his first mistake was relying on Nancy Pelosi to back him up if things went south.

As National Review points out, much of the criticism leveled at McCarthy is valid, but without a plan of succession, Gaetz has accomplished nothing except giving Democrats a victory:

Asked by reporters if he was worried about “throwing this institution into chaos, paralyzing the institution your party runs,” Gaetz replied with a short speech that, in 2023, has an almost grandiloquent quality:

You know what I think paralyzes us? Continuing to govern by continuing resolution and omnibus. You know what I think throws this institution into chaos? Marching toward the dollar not being the reserve currency anymore. You talk about chaos as if it’s me forcing a few votes and filing a few motions. Real chaos is when the American people have to go through the austerity that is coming if we continue to have $2 trillion annual deficits.

You know what? I agree. And that would have been a fine banner to march under — if you had a reasonable alternative to McCarthy. Asked whom he would support as the next speaker, Gaetz says that there are more than 100 Republicans that would suit him; that the caucus deserves “someone better” than McCarthy.

Maybe. But “someone better” is not an answer. It’s little different from “I have nobody.”

The real divide in the Republican Party today is not budget cuts or Donald Trump, it’s the question of ongoing funding for Ukraine, as Reuters reports:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster on Tuesday could signal a shift in the U.S. House of Representatives on aid to Ukraine, with some of his possible successors strongly in favor of assisting Kyiv but others staunchly opposed.

The vote to oust McCarthy came just three days after he led the House to pass a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown that included no new money for Ukraine, highlighting the reluctance of some members of his caucus to back Ukraine funds.

A Ukraine “report card” by Defending Democracy Together’s “Republicans for Ukraine” campaign rated the leading candidates on the strength of their support for past Ukraine aid. Republican opponents of the aid view it as excessive spending and a misplaced U.S. policy priority.

Those ratings ranging from A to F — signifying support or opposition to prior bills — could indicate how likely each would be to bring Ukraine aid to a vote if he becomes speaker.

Representative Tom Emmer, the House Republican whip, got the highest rating, an A. Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, has long been favored to take over as speaker after McCarthy and received one notch lower, a B.

Representative Matt Gaetz, who led the push to oust McCarthy, has said he would support Scalise.

For some reason, many Republicans are bent on sending billions to Ukraine without so much as asking for a receipt as to how it’s being spent. Gaetz is correct to fight against this posture and force the issue to be detached from these massive omnibus spending bills. Most Republican voters are probably on the side of Gaetz on this as well but they wouldn’t have necessarily been in favor of booting McCarthy from the chair over this issue alone. It’s akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face. It doesn’t win anything in the long run.

Ukraine aside, the most fruitful thing Republicans have accomplished since January has been holding Joe Biden accountable for his family’s corruption and foreign influence deals. There’s a lot of smoke and some fire burning in those investigations, but that’s all come to a screeching halt so Matt Gaetz could get a strong fundraising email sent out. In only controlling one-half of one-third of the federal government, Republicans don’t have much leverage but they do control committees and were recently given subpoena power to launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, a change that came directly from Speaker McCarthy.

Democrats as a brand have been suffering for months under Joe Biden’s failures and diminished job approval, why stand in front of your opponents as they’re crashing into the ditch?

There will be other consequences to this move, such as the off-year elections in Virginia where the entire state Senate and House of Delegates are up for grabs. As has often been the case in recent cycles, boneheaded moves in Washington spill across the Potomac and shed filth into Virginia state politics, often serving to motivate Democrats. Gaetz could seemingly care less about anything other than his own standing in the eyes of his supporters.

The result is that Gaetz has won nothing from this move.

There are a handful of names being floated to replace McCarthy. So far, the list includes the following but could practically be any Republican member of the House if they can reach a majority:

• Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana
• Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota
• Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York
• Rep. Mark Green of Tennesee
• Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma
• Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina
• Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Scalise is probably the most senior and most respected but he’s dealing with blood cancer treatments right now and may not want or need the additional stress. After Scalise, it’s sort of an open race with a slight edge for Tom Emmer as the current majority whip.

McCarthy wasn’t perfect as Speaker and he wasn’t a “perfect” conservative either. He was, on the other hand, doing what he could in the House to bury Joe Biden by exposing his family’s illegal and elicit foreign money schemes.

Back in January, when McCarthy was fighting for the Speaker’s gavel, there was one well-known MAGA warrior who came to his rescue:

For Gaetz and the others to now claim the highest level of MAGA adherence is not based in reality. Trump was the king of deal-making and saw McCarthy as inevitable.

As of Tuesday, Trump pointed out the obvious:

Good question. Does Matt Gaetz have an answer?