For the second day in a row, Kevin McCarthy suffered a remarkable humiliation in the House when he failed, repeatedly, to win enough votes among Republicans to become the next Speaker. Though, despite all odds, the California Republican maintains he’s hopeful that he will stop losing: “We will get 218, will solve our problems and we will all work together,” he told reporters, leaving the House floor to talk with his detractors.
The scene on Wednesday was one of déjà vu. On Tuesday, a group of hard-right Republicans blocked McCarthy’s bid for speaker three times over. By midday Wednesday, the vote totals had not changed: 20 Republicans stood firmly in the anti-McCarthy camp. By the sixth vote, McCarthy’s campaign for 218 Republican votes only looked more doomed. On Tuesday these holdouts were voting en masse for Jim Jordan, who himself had personally nominated McCarthy for the post. On Wednesday, the group of GOP rebels held firm in their defiance of McCarthy, with a new alternate: Florida Republican Byron Donalds, nominated by Chip Roy, then by Lauren Boebert, then by Scott Perry. “The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes,” Donalds, who became the 20th Republican member to switch his vote from McCarthy to Jordan on Tuesday, said. Donalds voted for himself Wednesday.
Why Donalds? Roy said his nomination would be historic: for the first time, “there have been two Black Americans placed in nomination for the Speaker of the House”—a statement met with a standing ovation from both Republicans and Democrats. But Donalds’s nomination never seemed to be meant as some kind of consensus alternate, but rather a symbol of McCarthy’s failure. In the fourth round of voting, the same 20 Republicans that had defected the day prior cast their votes en masse for Donalds and one, Victoria Spartz—previously a McCarthy supporter—voted “present.” Colorado’s Ken Buck said to CNN, “what I’ve asked is that if Kevin can’t get there, that he step aside and give Steve a chance to do it.”
It didn’t even matter that Donald Trump had both posted on Truth Social, and reportedly personally called the holdout Republicans, urging them to vote for McCarthy. “Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off—I think it actually needs to be reversed,” Boebert said on the House floor. “The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”
By mid-afternoon, McCarthy and his allies were telling reporters that they wanted to pause the voting proceedings and negotiate behind closed doors. McCarthy told reporters he intends to “work” for more votes. According to CBS News’ Robert Costa, part of this push came from a place of fear: the more failed votes for McCarthy, the worse the situation could become for the California leader. Republicans expected some drama (McCarthy could only afford four Republican defections). “We all have family up here for the swearing-in,” one member told CNN’s Jake Tapper following Tuesday’s session. “Let’s just say many of us told our families to dress in their second best outfits today.” But the spectacle has been worse, perhaps, than even they could have imagined. By 5 p.m., the House pause its voting and gave Republicans times to deliberate.
McCarthy is now the first Speaker candidate in a hundred years not to be voted in on the first ballot. As the realities have set in among Republicans, there is a growing appetite within the party’s ranks for an alternate, unifying candidate. Among the names being floated are Steve Scalise and Fred Upton. But McCarthy, whose ambitions for the speakership have been well documented for nearly a decade, remains undeterred.
The race for Speaker has been a perfect picture of the GOP’s disarray. Republicans, fresh off an underperformance in the November midterms, were at least supposed to be able to celebrate their House majority. But instead of a victory lap, they are having a battle between the extreme Trump wing and the…well, very extreme Trump wing—all to the bemusement of the unified Democrats.
Tensions between Republicans have spilled into the open. Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Dan Crenshaw didn’t hold back in criticizing the McCarthy holdouts in his party’s ranks. “I’m tired of your stupid platitudes that some consultant told you to say on the campaign trail, alright. Behind closed doors tell us what you actually want, or shut the fuck up,” he said of the 20 defectors to a reporter for The Washington Post. The proceedings have opened a new rift between Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and other hard-line defectors, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who somehow, against all odds, is practically sounding like an establishment Republican. “If the base only understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard earned Republican majority right now,” Greene tweeted. “This is the worst thing that could possibly happen.”
Abigail Tracy , Eric Lutz
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