Kevin McCarthy ALREADY moves into Speaker’s office and insists ‘we will have a good day tomorrow’
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House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Tuesday would be a “good day” after his staff spent Monday morning moving his office furniture into the speaker’s chamber.
Looking somewhat stressed out Monday afternoon, the California Republican was running out of the US Capitol when questioned by reporters about the next day’s full-House vote to choose his house leader.
McCarthy’s campaign for the gavel has been somewhat rocky for weeks, but the pressure has increased in the past 48 hours with as many as 15 members of the GOP reportedly set to vote against him. He can only lose four votes to clinch victory.
Earlier in the day, his staff had been seen moving belongings and pushing carts into the office of the Speaker of the House in the United States Capitol.
The measure is a standard protocol, according to CNNbut it means he will have to retire if more than four House Republicans rebel against his cause, which is becoming an increasingly likely scenario.
A group of five Republicans leading the ‘Never Kevin’ movement appear to have inspired more to join their cause. One of them, Rep. Bob Good, told Fox & Friends on Monday that he expected 10 to 15 people to vote against McCarthy.
He said the Republican leader is “part of the problem, not the solution.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by nine other House Republicans in a New Year’s Day letter.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy looked somewhat embarrassed as he left the US Capitol on Monday afternoon.
He was questioned by reporters about whether he trusts Tuesday’s presidential vote.
Previously, his staff were seen moving boxes into the Speaker’s chambers.
McCarthy told colleagues on Sunday that he was ready to make certain concessions to win support that he and the moderators at the conference had mistrusted for weeks. The most controversial of these is a motion to vacate the seat, which under currently proposed rules would allow five House Republicans to call to vote for a new president.
But all nine current and incoming House Republicans signed a letter calling McCarthy’s announcement “almost impossibly late.”
However, he told reporters in a video shared by NBC News’ Haley Talbot: “I think we’re going to have a good day tomorrow.”
McCarthy needs 218 votes to win the presidency, which means he can only afford to lose the support of four Republicans.
And in a dire sign for his campaign, even McCarthy supporters are again talking about a Plan B.
Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate, wrote an opinion piece in the daily call on Monday, he called McCarthy’s leadership “excellent” but reaffirmed that he was willing to work with Democrats to find an alternative should the rebellion against McCarthy succeed.
“Much has been made of me saying that I would work with moderate Democrats to elect a more moderate speaker,” Bacon wrote.
“But my actual words were that if the five refuse to unite around what the vast majority of the conference wants, I’m willing to work across the aisle to find a likable Republican.”
Virginia Rep. Bob Good (right) told Fox & Friends that he expects as many as 15 Republicans to vote against Kevin McCarthy’s candidacy for House Speaker on Tuesday, claiming the current Republican leader is part of the ‘cartel of the swamp’
In his interview with Fox on Monday, Good said his constituents in Virginia’s 5th congressional district “told me not to support Kevin McCarthy” for president.
He also said that while the group of 14 lawmakers who have already publicly said they won’t back McCarthy don’t necessarily have an alternative in mind, they just want to stop him from replacing outgoing Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi.
‘If not Kevin, who would you vote for?’ Good was asked on Monday.
“What we will do is block Kevin,” he replied. “I suspect there will be 10-15 members who will vote against him on the first ballot tomorrow, who will vote for Andy Biggs.”
‘But then I think you’ll see on the second ballot an increasing number of members voting for a real candidate who can represent the conservative conference. Motivate the base,’ Good said.
He did not elaborate on who he believed the eventual winner would be.
The House majority has only failed to select a speaker on the first ballot once since the Civil War, and the last time it happened It was exactly 100 years ago in 1923.
Support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s candidacy appears to be waning in the Republican Party, as 14 lawmakers have publicly said they oppose his candidacy, a day before the vote.
Nine current and incoming Republicans warned in a New Year’s Day letter that electing McCarthy would be a “continuation of Republican failures.”
McCarthy has tried to curry favor with those against him by acceding to the demand that he lower the threshold required to remove a House speaker from office.
A ‘motion to vacate chair’ has only been used twice in the history of the United States. In practical terms, it is similar to a ‘no confidence’ vote in which members can submit a request for the current leader to step down.
Parliamentary procedure was first invoked in 1910 against Republican President Joseph Cannon and the second time was more than 100 years later, in 2015, against Republican President Mark Meadows, who later served as chief of staff to former President Donald Trump.
The five original ‘Never Kevin’ legislators who spoke out against McCarthy are Representatives Good, Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
The nine additional Republicans who pledged to vote against McCarthy in Sunday’s letter are Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Harris of Maryland and Andrew Clyde. from Georgia; along with Representative-Elect Andy Ogales of Tennessee, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, and Eli Crane of Arizona.
Perry, who is chair of the House Freedom Caucus, posted the letter on his Twitter calling for a change and shake-up in leadership.
“Nothing changes when nothing changes, and that has to start at the top,” Perry wrote. It’s time to make the change or get out of the way.
Good criticized McCarthy for allowing the House to pass huge collective spending bills before the holidays.
McCarthy published a New Year’s Eve letter titled ‘Restore the People’s House and end business as usual’, where he admitted the House’s dysfunction and vowed to put it right.
“There’s nothing to tell me that he’s going to change his pattern since he’s been in leadership where he’s part of the swamp cartel,” the Virginia Republican said. ‘He’s the reason we on the Republican side passed massive collective spending bills that the Republicans in the Senate just swallowed us. He was part of that in leadership.
The “swamp sign” reference comes from Trump, who called Washington, DC a “swamp” in his 2016 presidential campaign and said he was going to the nation’s capital to “drain the swamp.”
“There is nothing about Kevin McCarthy that he will bring about the change that is needed in Washington or that is needed in Congress, or that he will bring about the fight against the Biden-Schumer agenda and represent the interest of the voters who sent us to Washington to bring us real change.
On Sunday, McCarthy held a private conference call with Republicans in an attempt to rally support for his vote for the presidency on Tuesday, January 3, when the new Congress takes office.
“For someone with a 14-year presence in the House Republican leadership, Mr. McCarthy bears squarely the burden of correcting the dysfunction he now explicitly admits to during that long tenure,” the nine Republican members wrote in their letter.
They added that their “statement comes almost impossibly late to address the continuing shortcomings before the opening of the 118th Congress on January 3.”
‘In this state, it is not surprising that expressions of vague hopes reflected in too many of the crucial points still up for debate are insufficient. This is especially true regarding Mr. McCarthy’s candidacy for speaker because the times call for a radical change in the status quo, not a continuation of past and present Republican failures,’ the letter stated.