Consider This from NPR - How GOP Hardliners Have Managed To Block Their Party's Path In Congress

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

A small group of Republican hardliners set out to block Kevin McCarthy, their party's leader in the House of Representatives, from becoming Speaker. That same faction has taken on GOP leaders before.We speak to Paul Kane, senior Congressional correspondent and columnist for the Washington Post, about the history behind this week's standoff in the House and what it means for Congress.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. On paper, Speaker of the House is a great job. Like, you get to set the legislative agenda, you're second in line to the presidency, you get to whack a big gavel. But in reality, well, here's how former Republican Speaker John Boehner put it in his memoir. I was living in crazy town now. And when I took the Speaker's gavel in 2011, I became its mayor. For the past decade or so, a faction of hard right conservatives

has made life very unpleasant for Republican speakers of the House. Boehner called them the chaos caucus. Here he is in 2021. Sometimes I get the idea that they'd rather tear the whole system down and start over because I've never seen anything that they were for. I know what they're against, but I've never really seen what they're for. As so-called Tea Party Republicans, those conservatives helped push lawmakers into a government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act back in 2013. Reorganized as the House Freedom Caucus, they booted John Boehner out of the speaker job in 2015. And that is when they first turned their sights on Kevin McCarthy. All right. I think I shocked some of you, huh? That year, the California Republican dropped his bid to succeed Boehner as Speaker

in the face of objections from the Freedom Caucus. I'll stay on as Majority Leader. But the one thing I found in talking to everybody, if we are going to unite and be strong, we need a new face to help do that. Fast forward to this week, and the Freedom Caucus is still working to keep the speaker's gavel out of McCarthy's hands. As of Wednesday afternoon, Kevin McCarthy had failed to secure the job after six votes on the House floor. It's been a century since it took more than one vote to elect a House speaker. After the first three rounds of votes, Congressman Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota

voiced the frustration of establishment Republicans this way. There's a small group of members in our conference who have a unique and, quite frankly, enviable political position. They win when they lose. If they lose to the Democrats, they can blame the left. If they lose to the Senate, they'll blame the swamp. If they lose to Republicans, they can blame the left. If they lose to the Senate, they'll blame the swamp. If they lose to Republicans, they'll blame the establishment. And they'll continue down that path without ever actually having the responsibility of having to govern.

Consider this. Year after year, a small band of hardline House Republicans has managed to throw obstacles in the way of GOP leaders, disrupting their own party's plans and sometimes even grinding Congress to a halt. We'll look at how they've done that and what it means for the next two years. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Wednesday, January 4th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

It's Consider This from NPR. Despite three defeats on Tuesday, Kevin McCarthy still seemed pretty confident heading to the floor on Wednesday. He insisted that he would eventually win the speakership. We're going to continue to talk. We'll find an agreement where we all get together and we'll work through this and we'll get it done. Instead, no member elect haven't received a majority of the whole number of votes.. No member elect having received No member elect having received the majority of the votes cast. A speaker has not been elected.

After three more votes on Wednesday, as of 5 p.m. Eastern time, McCarthy had come up empty again, stopped by the far-right Freedom Caucus. This is the group that has been tormenting House Republican leaders for years. NPR talked with one of McCarthy's opponents, South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman, about his objections. Norman said he doesn't see McCarthy as a true fiscal conservative.

He wanted McCarthy to agree to insist on major spending cuts or force a government shutdown this fall, which is an echo of what happened back in 2013. I want to know, here's my question, if next September, if we're faced with another crisis and either raise the debt ceiling or shut the government down, will you shut the government down? If he says no, I'm out. I'm out. He's got to do that. So how did this relatively small group of lawmakers come to punch so far above their weight? Well, to tackle that question, my colleague Mary Louise Kelly caught up with Paul Kane, senior congressional correspondent and columnist for The Washington Post. If I were to ask you, just describe this group that is set on sinking McCarthy's speaker hopes. What would you tell me? They are the sort of latest outgrowth of just a hard right faction of House Republicans that really came to the forefront in 2009 and 2010 as the Tea Party started to sort of brew

in response to Wall Street bailout and other big government spending programs. And they've evolved and evolved. By 2015, they created something called the House Freedom Caucus. But this is sort of the latest iteration. A lot of these folks that are now McCarthy's biggest antagonists have only been around a couple terms. Some of them are actually, you know, freshman elect who have never even taken the oath of office. And can't until the speaker is elected. There's no leader. Yes.

And they're really taking the idea of tactical warfare for the sake of warfare. There's really not a whole lot of policy positions that they're advocating. It's more like blowing stuff up just so you can blow stuff up. Well, and you said they have evolved and evolved over the decade or so that this group has been around. I mean, how straight a line would you draw between the Tea Party in 2013 and the Freedom Caucus today? There's definitely a straight line with a few zigs and zags along the way. But, you know, like Jim Jordan was a co-founder of the Freedom Caucus. But the longer he was there, the more Jordan sort of realized that he was more

and more senior. And wow, he could become the top Republican on a committee like House Oversight and then House Judiciary. That means he needs actual people in power who become speakers. And so now these other folks who are leading this current fight against Jim Jordan, who is – Jordan is being a big backer of McCarthy. These are the younger, newer folks who don't have these plum gavels to become chairs. So they're the ones who are taking up this fight now. So to what seems to be the central question, how such a small group has so much sway over the larger party, does it boil down to that in a Congress like we have right now where the margin is so thin, it only takes a very small number of people to hold the rest of the party hostage. Yeah. When you have a majority with 222, which is what the Republicans currently have, you only have four votes to spare if you're trying to do something on a party line. There was a belief that Republicans were going to win 20, 30, 40 seats in a big red wave, and they were going to have this enormous majority.

But because they were so unsuccessful, McCarthy and Republicans in so many districts, they only picked up nine seats overall, which got them to 222. And boy, they only have four votes to spare. All of a sudden, these outliers, these renegades realized, wow, we are relevant. We are more relevant now than we have been since. They're more relevant now than they were when Boehner was Speaker. You're making me wonder why Kevin McCarthy or indeed anyone would want the Speaker's job. You know, I think McCarthy has just fallen for this lore of wanting to win for the sake of winning. I think he just has been in leadership so long that he just thinks, well, I'm supposed

to be speaker. You know, I started out as chief deputy whip, and then I became majority whip, and then I became majority leader, and then I became minority leader. It's like he wants to do it just because he thinks he's supposed to do it. Last question, just to step back, to broaden this out, because this is bigger than the speaker's job. One way or the other, they'll presumably at some point figure out who's going to be speaker. But you're reminding me of an interview I did earlier this week with Brendan Buck, a communication strategist who worked for John Boehner and Paul Ryan when they were speakers. And he had real concern that wherever this lands, it does not bode well for Republicans' ability to run the House efficiently and get anything done

at all going forward. Do you share that concern? Brendan is a very smart, smart man and who knows the House very well. You know, the vote for the House speaker is supposed to basically be the easiest vote of the two-year Congress. If it's this big of a trouble to elect a speaker, what happens when there's a really big, important vote policy-wise that is coming down the pike. That was Paul Kane, senior congressional correspondent and columnist for The Washington Post, talking with my colleague Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. IU makes bold investments in the future of bioscience and cybersecurity, cultivates visionary

work in the arts and humanities, and prepares students to become global citizens by teaching more languages than any other university in the country. Indiana University. Nine campuses. One purpose. Creating tomorrow today. More at iu.edu.