In a historic vote on Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy was removed from his position as Speaker of The House. The one-hundred-eighteenth Congress, which has a slight Republican Majority, is now challenged with replacing McCarthy. The Speaker of the House serves as third in line to the Presidency and has the ability to select who will serve on committees, a key role for member s of congress and their individual paths to re-election.
McCarthy’s path to the speakership was not easy as it took fifteen rounds of voting and many concessions by the Republican California Representative before being approved. Many of these concessions favored far right representatives of the Republican Party including Matt Gaetz of Florida. The vote to remove McCarthy came after Gaetz deemed the Speaker out of line with the agreements he had made in order to be approved for the position.
We spoke with Dan Schnur, professor at USC Annenberg and Marshall and the Communications Director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign about this party ousting:
Dan Schnur: Oh, in any two party system, you’re going to have very large differences between members of the same party … And so it actually has become somewhat frequent, particularly in the Republican Party in recent years for its most conservative members to become harshly critical of their more centrist leaders. This is the most egregious example of that kind of internal fighting. But the fight itself is not all that unusual.
And as these differences within party lines may not be so unusual, Schnur does find Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry of North Carolina’s timeline to elect a new Speaker of the House to be unrealistic.
Schnur: The acting speaker, Representative McHenry, has said that he wants to host a debate next Tuesday night with the candidates for speaker and have a vote the following day. That’s a very, very ambitious timeline. And while it’s not impossible, it would be very, very surprising if the Republican caucus was able to come together behind a candidate in only seven days.
Two members of congress have already put their names into the race for the Speakership, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. There has also been buzz of former President Trump and Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic Representative from New York being considered for the position as well.
Executive Director of USC Dornsife’s Center for the Political Future, Kamy Akhavan, adds to the sentiment of how difficult it could be to elect a new Speaker of the House.
Kamy Akhavan: It will be very difficult for any candidate to be able to get enough votes to make all the concessions necessary to fight all the fights with the far right and to perhaps make bridges with the Democrats and earn some of their votes. So I don’t know what that path is going to look like for Scalise, for Jordan, or even for somebody who is not a member of Congress like President Trump.
As for what we should expect in the coming days, Akhavan believes it will be a tough road.
Akhavan: I know it will be fraught. I know it won’t be pretty. I know it will be a sad reflection of our social division and political division. And and that’s unfortunate, but that’s. That’s where we are.
Next Wednesday, we’ll see if that debate for Speakership will lead our Representatives to a speedy resolution.