The divide within the House Republican caucus is not complicated. One side wants to be a caucus. The other wants to be powerful.
To an outside observer, the events that have unfolded in the U.S. House this week would seem understandably perplexing. The leader of the Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), has been blocked from election as House speaker by a group of about 20 members of his party. Over the span of 11 votes, the numbers haven’t changed much: McCarthy saw about the same level of opposition in the most recent vote as in the first. This despite regular updates on breakthroughs in negotiations putatively aimed at creating a path for McCarthy’s election by responding to the anti-McCarthy faction’s demands.
That’s the perplexing thing. If McCarthy faces the same level of opposition despite these concessions, despite multiple days of negotiations, it suggests that the negotiations aren’t addressing the actual motivation for the opposition. We’ve heard various rationalizations for this — they just need a deal in writing, etc.
But there’s another, probably more useful indicator of the problem: The words of the anti-McCarthy group themselves.
The first person to nominate McCarthy was Republican Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), chair of the Republican conference in the prior congress. Her speech followed the expected outlines, declaring a “promise to the American people that this new Republican majority will stand up for an economy that’s strong, a nation that safe, a future that’s built upon freedom, and a government that’s accountable to the people.” And who better to lead that effort than McCarthy, who’d engaged in a number of robust efforts (as delineated by Stefanik) aimed at that outcome.
“His relentless effort,” she enthused, “has yielded an extraordinary new House Republican majority that represents our country’s greatness from all walks of life.”
McCarthy didn’t win the vote. So it was Jordan’s turn. He stated that the caucus had three goals in this congress: passing legislation to fix America’s various problems, ending a legislative process that allowed large spending bills to pass quickly and to use the majority to conduct oversight, his personal political hobbyhorse.
“We had better come together and fight for these key these three things,” Jordan said. “That’s what the people want us to do.”
McCarthy didn’t win the vote. So it was Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise’s turn.
“We all came here to get things done,” Scalise said as he began. “To get things done to solve the problems. And I hope when we get through today that all of the members on both sides of the aisle will join together with us to solve the problems» like inflation, the border, fentanyl and energy prices.
“If the administration doesn’t want to fix these problems,” Scalise concluded, “people call on us to do that.”
McCarthy didn’t win the vote.
