The NPR Politics Podcast - Speaker McCarthy Fired By Hardliners As GOP Coalition Collapses

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida was joined by seven other Republicans and the Democratic party in a first-of-its-kind maneuver. There is no plan for what comes next.We want to hear from you about the show: npr.org/politicssurveyThis episode: White House reporter Deepa Shivaram, political correspondent Susan Davis, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. Whenever I meet a politics podcast listener out in the wild, the first thing I say is thank you.org slash politics survey, all one word, so we can keep making this show better for you. Thank you so much, and here's the show. Hi, this is Shell in Worcester, Massachusetts, just back from an amazing six-month sabbatical in London, where we joined in coronation celebrations, regardless of opinions about royalty, and observed the, by recent American standards, tame differences between Tories and liberals, while still getting my daily NPR politics fix and writing a medical textbook. This podcast was recorded at 6.30pm on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this,

but the book is not quite finished, so it's back to editing nights and weekends for me. Okay, here's the show. Sounds like a lovely sabbatical. I know. It certainly does. Editing all the time, we know what that's like. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And we're in your feeds a little later than usual because, in case you've missed it, it's been a very eventful day for now former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He was ousted from his job earlier today.

On this vote, the yeas are 216, the nays are 210. The resolution is adopted. Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. The office of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant. Florida Republican Matt Gaetz was joined by seven of his peers in the GOP along with House Democrats in his motion to fire McCarthy. It's the first time the House has ever fired a speaker in this way. All right. So, Sue Deirdre, what does this mean for Congress? Can this House do anything without a speaker? Well, the Congress can't get anything done until it elects a new speaker. What happened after the vacancy was declared is there are rules of the House that allow for something called a speaker pro tem. That is now Patrick McHenry. He's a Republican

from North Carolina. But this is largely a ceremonial role. This job was created to create stability in the House in case of the vacancy of the speakership and really exists just to preside over the election of a new speaker. No legislation can come before the House. The House is essentially paralyzed until a speaker can be elected. And while eight Republicans succeeded today in throwing out the speaker, there is no plan on how Republicans can now elect a new speaker. And I just saw the new speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry, leave a meeting with the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy. He looked absolutely stone-faced.

He now has a security detail. He wouldn't answer any questions about what comes next. And by the look on his face, he looked pretty upset. I mean, a lot of House Republicans who back McCarthy are really angry right now. And they're really admitting they have no idea what comes next. A few of them are saying they want McCarthy to stick with it, but others are already talking about other alternatives, and they're going to huddle tonight. And it's really unclear that anyone could get votes from a Republican minority to be elected a new speaker. One thing that was really striking that Deirdre and I were talking about

has all this played out is just how quiet everything was. Like going into today, I just sort of expected like more animation on the floor, uproar, even when the vacancy was declared. And like the floor was silent as they were counting these votes. And even in the reporters all huddled around the chamber, like everyone was just watching. I just feel like the silence will stick with me of like nobody could really seem to believe that this was happening, even though it seemed pretty clear almost from the

first day of this Congress that this was bound to eventually happen to Kevin McCarthy. I mean, you could hear a pin drop. I did hear one member in the back say, what happens now? I saw that. I saw that on your Twitter. This is, I mean, this is the crazy thing is like, as you guys are talking, as I was watching the floor, I mean, I kind of have chills in a way because this is so wild that this is even happening. And to your point, Sue, we have an entirely paralyzed House of Representatives at a time when, you know, we have another impending government shutdown in another 40 so days. Ukraine aid is on the table. This is

not exactly a time where you can look at the House and be like, oh, you know, they don't really have to get anything done. So this is a really big deal. And my question is, why did Matt Gaetz do this? What caused this uproar of sorts in the first place? He's been vowing he was going to do this for, you know, weeks. I mean, he was threatening the Speaker. As soon as the Speaker agreed to put a bipartisan bill to fund the government and avoid a shutdown, he clearly said, you know, once you cut a deal with Democrats, I'm going to, you know, Democrats will have a chance to vote whether you stay Speaker. So, I mean, Matt Gaetz never supported McCarthy for Speaker in January. I mean, he extracted all these demands, and one of them being the fact that any one lawmaker can bring

a resolution to the floor to oust the Speaker. And he was pretty lonely on the House floor today. I mean, he had a couple of members rise up and argue why McCarthy should be ousted. But he spoke on the Democratic side of the floor. And there was a lot of groans, a lot of boos, a lot of, you know, angry stares from House Republicans towards Gates. Part of what's so wild about this is it never would have happened without the consent of Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy agreed to this rules change, knowing what it could mean for him. And it is wild that a member like Matt Gaetz, who I think is very safe to say is unpopular among House Republicans. Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich put out an op-ed during all of this playing out today saying Republicans should eject him from the House Republican conference and say you can't be in our party anymore. It gave him an outsized amount of power to throw out the speaker. And you're just totally right about his issues with the speaker. I'd also add to that there did just really seem to be a personal dislike between these two men. I mean, Kevin McCarthy viscerally didn't like

Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz viscerally didn't like Kevin McCarthy. There have been multiple reports of them getting in screaming matches both on the floor, behind closed doors. So he had a lot of beefs with Kevin McCarthy. And also, he just really didn't like the guy. McCarthy wouldn't even look at him when he was speaking. He was sitting stone-faced, sort of staring ahead, occasionally talking to his staff. But he did not really acknowledge Gates at all. Do you guys think there will be a move from House Republicans to oust Matt Gates

from the party? I've asked a couple of Republicans that tonight after the vote, and they were sort of like, eh, we'll see. You know, the Republicans are meeting tonight in the Capitol. I think that's one of the questions and fights they're going to have in sort of a quote-unquote family meeting is, what do you do about the eight? And, you know, it wasn't just Matt Gates. Seven of his colleagues joined along with him. Most of the eight that voted have been very vocal, very public McCarthy detractors. But these are also the same hardline Republicans that Kevin McCarthy has devoted, had devoted so much of his speakership to keeping happy, to appeasing, to trying to keep them on his side. And I do think there's a lesson here for whoever the next speaker may be,

is that you have to realize at a certain point that there's just nothing that is going to win a certain faction of this group over. And that's going to matter to any speaker when you're only talking about a four-seat majority. Yeah. I want to turn to the Democratic side of things here. And I know there were some deliberations about this this morning, but how did Democrats in the House come to the decision to go along with this vote? This was all Democrats who stood together on this. What was the thinking there? It didn't seem like a heavy lift.

They met this morning and one by one, Democrats from all stripes across the ideological spectrum just vented how much they did not trust Kevin McCarthy. Over and over, they were venting about things that he did in terms of January 6th, how he walked away from the deal he struck with President Biden on the debt ceiling, how just time after time, they didn't believe things that he said. Also, an interview he did on Sunday morning television when he took issue and suggested that Democrats wanted to shut down the government when way more Democrats voted for the bill to keep government funded through mid-November than Republicans. And that clip was played in the meeting and members were really angry. Also angry that McCarthy didn't interview this morning and basically said, I don't need any help from Democrats. And they're like, fine, you're not getting any. I did. I talked to Jim Clyburn. He's a Democrat from South Carolina. And he did say that the speaker's comments in those two interviews were a tipping point for a lot of Democrats. Obviously not the reason that they

voted against him. But I think if anybody had any doubt, I think that that pushed them all over the edge. And I actually thought there was going to be a little bit more suspense. You know, there is sort of the centrist coalition in the House, the problem solvers. There are Democrats in right-leaning districts. Like I thought, maybe there's room here. Maybe we thought Democrats might not show up for the vote or vote present. But it was really a show of force. There was no one willing to give McCarthy a lifeline. And one of the questions I have is, I wonder if Kevin McCarthy was taken a little back about that, because I think he

thought that there might have been more Democrats for the good of the institution who might have just wanted stability. And clearly, Democrats are perfectly happy to sit back and watch the chaos play out. Oh, my gosh. I mean, it just speaks to how unliked Kevin McCarthy is on top of how unliked Matt Gaetz is. Like we are we are in such interesting territory here. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a second. All right. So we're back. And my question is, now what? We're at a true impasse. I agree. I mean, McCarthy's top allies were just meeting with him off the floor, and they all came out and they all had very glum faces. And that shows you, I think if you read the body language, I think that they're now in the mode of, okay, now what do we do if it's not McCarthy? But just talking to some of the Republicans who've

been in these sort of like informal meetings, there is talk about looking at the current leadership potentially, people like Steve Scalise, the number two House Majority Leader from Louisiana, but he's battling blood cancer right now. He's well-liked, but he's also seen as one of McCarthy's deputies. Same goes for Tom Emmer, who's the whip. But it's unclear whether someone who's sort of of the McCarthy circle would be the person who could get a majority of House Republican votes at this time. And like Sue said earlier, any of these possible candidates would have to agree to more demands from the eight who ousted McCarthy. And would any of them agree to do other things?

I mean, what are the demands? I think a lot of House Republicans don't even understand what the demands are. I think it's going to take some time to sort out. And I don't know how many rounds of votes we'll see on the House floor to elect a new speaker. And who in their right mind, if you're a Republican sitting there who might even want to be speaker, who in their right mind would take that with the existing motion to vacate rules? Matt Gaetz can do this or any Republican can do this all over again. So I also wonder if there's going to be some internal debate over should they try to change

this rule? But I'm not sure any of the eight that just successfully used it to throw out a speaker are going to vote for it. And again, I don't think Democrats are all that interested in saving Republicans from themselves right now. One of the Republicans who spoke against McCarthy today said they needed a speaker who didn't want to be speaker. That's a pretty tough person to find right now in the conference. Either people have the ambition for the job or they don't want it. One of the people who has said in the past they do not want it is Patrick McHenry. He is now serving as Speaker Pro Tem, but he is a very popular lawmaker. He has made clear he does not want this job. He's one of the most senior has some credibility in the conference, but not known to have any ambition. If you recall, this is sort of the same scenario in which Paul Ryan became speaker. We've seen this movie before. We've seen this movie before.

People claim, I don't want to be speaker. And then they get talked into it. And here we are. Tom Cole, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma, told me John Boehner predicted that Patrick McHenry would one day be speaker of the House. And today he is. I would also note, but Deirdre and I were talking to Brian Babin. He's a Republican from Texas. And I asked him, like, is it good for the party if you have to do another 15 rounds and multiple days of voting? And he clearly said, no, it's not.

Like, I do wonder if Republicans are just going to fight this out until it's clear someone can get there and do one and done vote. But that could also mean that the House could be in paralysis for days or weeks until they can answer that question amongst themselves. So since all options seem to be on the table here, is there a possibility of some kind of a bipartisan speaker situation? I don't think so. No. All right. So that option is not on the table. I think that the idea of a consensus bipartisan government falls into that sort of Aaron Sorkin fantasy world of how Washington could maybe one day work. That's never how the House works. And that's I don't I don't actually think that Democrats see much political incentive there.

I think they see the political incentive as making the country focus on the Republican Party not being able to govern, especially as they see a very good possibility that they can take back the House in 2024. Right. And Matt Gaetz made the argument that the minute McCarthy cut a deal with Democrats, he would move to oust him. So it would go for any other Republican that tried to do that. So it's just a non-starter. All right. Well, we're going to keep following this as this saga unfolds. More coverage, of course, tomorrow on Up First and online at NPR.org. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.