America's Talking - Scalise, Jordan Announce Bids to Replace McCarthy as Speaker of the House

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

U.S. House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La, both announced Wednesday their bid to replace Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as Speaker of the House. A vote for a new speaker is reportedly not expected until Oct. 11, giving lawmakers about a week to plan their next move. McCarthy, who was pushed out after striking a deal with Democrats to keep the government open, said he does not plan to run again for the position. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. We are recording this on Friday, October 6, and it's been another tumultuous week in the nation's capital. Eight Republicans joined all Democrats in the U.S. House to vote to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his leadership position. this is the first time in the nation's history for that to happen. Of course, now the race is on to replace him. Heading into this week's vote to oust him, McCarthy was confident he had the votes to survive. That certainly didn't prove to be the case. Why don't we start there before moving on to what's next case, he thoughts? Yeah, I mean, you're right. McCarthy definitely projected confidence. It's unclear whether he really believed that or whether he thought, you know, that was the best strategy to help him, you know, get the confidence of other Republicans. I was pretty surprised that he announced he's not going to run again because it's really, you know, some things are starting to happen now to make this speaker's race take shape. But I really didn't think there was a clear, obvious replacement for McCarthy. There's some, you know, guys like Tom Emmer, Steve Scalese, who. are well known within D.C. and have a lot of support among other Republicans, but they don't

have that same national name recognition. And many of the Republicans who do have that national name recognition are a little bit probably too conservative for some of the moderate Republicans to stomach. So, you know, it's going to be really interesting to watch. But now there are some Republicans who are starting to make inroads and who have announced that they are going to run to replace McCarthy. You mentioned or you said name recognition. How does Donald Trump do what from the name and recognition standpoint? Is there anyone better? Dang.

Trump towers around the world. Trump, all caps, the apprentice. No, I mean, Trump is the definition of name recognition, right? And yeah, I mean, there was rumors talk about could Trump run. Even Trump seemed to suggest that he could do it part-time, just temporarily until Republicans figured out what they were going to do. But it turns out if you're being indicted for felony, you can't really be Speaker of the House. Of course, Trump has not been convicted yet,

but that just being indicted is enough to not be Speaker under the House GOP rules. So it looks like Trump's not going to be Speaker anytime soon, although that was just... Let me just add in there. Oddly enough, I guess oddly enough, depending on your viewpoint, you do not have to be an elected member of the House of Representatives to be the Speaker of the House. So an outsider, you know, theoretically could be voted in as Speaker. But as you mentioned because of the felony indictments against Trump, he cannot. Well, no, say no more, Dan. I have your support. Tell me more about your platform. You're an outsider. I think that felony indictment stuff, you finally, that was dealt with a couple, a few months ago, right? So you should be good

to go now. No felony indictment. I wouldn't want the job, even if everyone wanted me for the job, Casey, it just seems like a huge, I don't know, circus in Congress right now. Have you ever been to, for your kids did a school chaperone on a field trip? Oh, of course. Yeah, that's what it reminds me of, I think, just hurting a bunch of kids at the zoo. And it just sounds really, really difficult. And they don't, none of them get along. And one wants to go see the guerrillas, another wants to see the lions. And the other thinks that the field trip was too expensive and we shouldn't have paid for it. So. And believe or not, though, we do have at least a couple of, I guess, would we call them leading candidates, those who have thrown their hats in the ring for the position, that being house,

Judiciary Chair, Representative Jim Jordan, who's committee has led the investigation into the Biden family, and then majority leader, majority leader in the House is the second to the House Speaker. Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, they both thrown their hat in the ring, former President Trump, who we mentioned as, like Marjorie Taylor Green, threw him out there as a potential House Speaker candidate. He has come out this morning, I think, and endorsed Jim Jordan's candidacy. Tell us more. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that Steve Scalise is more of the, he has a lot of respect among the other members. I think he would naturally be ahead of Jim Jordan if they just

voted today that they would, you know, I think Scalise would get more votes. But Jordan has a lot more popularity among the conservative base of the party. Matt Gates, the Florida Republican who filed the motion to vacate McCarthy and has really been the thorn in the side of the a lot of the Republican Party in the last couple weeks. He has basically said he would support Jordan. So Jordan is definitely pretty outspoken. He leads these weaponization efforts. There's a new committee that was created as part of the, I guess, the deal to get McCarthy in place,

which is called basically the committee on the weaponization of government, which is when they went after a lot of how federal law enforcement and the Biden administration, even pre-Biden, how some of federal agencies were targeting. certain Americans. And so he's led some of that effort. He's been very aggressive on the investigations against Biden. He's very outspoken. And so he's got a lot of points with conservative Republicans around the country and in, you know, in the house. But I don't know that he projects this what a lot of people want to speak or which is a dealmaker, someone who is going to be a level head, who's going to be able to get a bunch of different opinions in a

room and strike a deal that that pleases everyone. He's more of a firebrand, I think. But, you know, this new Republican Party, who knows what they really need and what they want? I mean, it may be that a firebrand is what it will take to satisfy Gates and the other, you know, members of the Republican Party who have been holding out on this. Right. But House Republicans had the slimmest of majorities. It only took eight Republicans, along with the entire Democratic caucus in the House, to oust McCarthy. There's some speculation because of infighting within the Republican Party, the Democrats are going to have more say over who the House Speaker is than Republicans. Yeah, I mean, that has happened at the state level. Didn't that happen in Illinois?

Not in Illinois, in Texas, certainly, where Dade Feelein was voted by almost all Democrats as the House Speaker considered, you know, by critics, a rhino Republican. But, and Dade Fieland is the one who led the impeachment inquiry into the Attorney General in Texas. And there were, the House impeached Texas's attorney general. The Senate acquitted him, all kinds of criticism over that. But it had to do with essentially Democrats stepping in and supporting Dade Feelein. Republicans, the majority of Republicans did not support him, but Democrats largely did, whoever, have a much smaller or a much more significant minority than Republicans do in Texas. So it has happened in the state, yes. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, there is a chance of that happening. I think at the national level,

the division between the two parties is just so strong that it'd be hard for me to imagine that, but not impossible. And the other thing to remember in all this data is we have another government shutdown coming up in the middle of November. And so if the government was funded, it through the next election, I think this Congress, this House and this Congress would be a lame duck because there's so much division, they would just try to get some kind of speaker. It might take him forever to do it. And the Senate is Democrat controlled anyway. So there's no real big legislation, legislative efforts coming out, I think, especially when they're going to, lawmakers are going to start campaigning for reelection next year because it's election year. So if it weren't for this

government shutdown, I'd say nothing's going to happen and nothing's going to get done. But they have to do something because they have just a few weeks, not only to elect a speaker, but also to fund the government. And it may be that, you know, the speaker who gets elected can only get elected if he promises not to do another continuing resolution short-term thing. So the good chance he's going to have to pass all, you know, more appropriations bills in time to fund the government. And then those are going to have to be to the liking of enough, you know, of course, House Republicans, but then the Senate Democrats who might have to vote for it. All right. We have to wrap up here. Casey, but last point, we're expecting a vote or votes as soon as next week.

A reminder that it took, what, 16, 17 votes, maybe more than that before McCarthy was actually elected. So there could be multiple votes again. I think almost certainly will be yet. I appreciate your insight into this ongoing story. Listeners can keep up with it and more at thecentersquare.com. But we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeelan. please subscribe thank you for listening