House GOP Split on Whether To Keep Rule That Doomed Kevin McCarthy

Shell-shocked House Republicans are all over the map: Should they change the rule that allowed one member to call a vote to oust a speaker?

Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s ill-fated reign as House speaker came to a screeching halt Tuesday after eight GOP defectors, led by Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, welcomed Democrats in using an obscure procedural motion to boot him from power. 

The unprecedented coup further upended Congress, leaving legislative activity in limbo as House Republicans now scramble to pick a new leader. And now they're wrestling over whether the same "motion to vacate" tool that Gaetz employed against McCarthy should apply to McCarthy’s yet-to-be-determined successor. 

“I think the rules that we adopted are good,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington said on his way out of a Wednesday morning meet-and-greet that Texas Republicans arranged to court their conference-leading 25 votes. 

Arrington, who said he pressed the visiting candidates about their commitment to following his non-binding spending blueprint and securing the southern border, noted that the single-member threshold that McCarthy agreed to during the weeklong power giveaway he endured in January appears to be having the intended effect. 

“It's there to hold us accountable. And to force us to follow through on the promises we make about open process, about enforcing budget rules and being fiscally responsible,” the Texas Republican told The Messenger of the current motion to vacate’s utility, adding, “I think it’s necessary. 

Former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed the motion to vacate parameters in 2019, allowing it on the floor only if a majority of either party supported the procedural challenge.

But kowtowing to sweeping demands from his right flank, McCarthy went along with a switch to a single-member threshold as part of concessions he made while navigating a marathon process to fulfill his lifelong dream of finally clinching the gavel. 

Lesson Learned

“Why would you do that?” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said he recalls warning McCarthy as the California Republican mulled his motion to vacate options during his harrowing 15-vote speaker gauntlet in January. 

In the end, the warning went unheeded and McCarthy gave every single one of his detractors the power to short-circuit his career. 

The ultraconservatives promised the motion to vacate would be a tool of last resort. But just nine months later, McCarthy found himself on the losing end of the parliamentary purge. 

Womack predicted this moment would come in an op-ed he wrote for his local newspaper shortly after McCarthy caved to every conceivable demand made of him shortly after the 118th Congress gaveled into session. 

“The last line I'll paraphrase for you: Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker of the House because six members of his party voted present,” he said, recalling his prose. “And his speakership will hang in the balance for the duration because those six members remain present.”

A few hours before the vote to oust McCarthy, Rep. Mike Garcia said he thought the single-member threshold should be higher, but he was not sure the juice was worth the squeeze. 

His opinion may have changed since the rebellion against McCarthy succeeded, given that he never understood McCarthy’s decision to lower it.

“I likened it to dousing yourself in gasoline and handing 220 matches out to your closest friends and expecting them all to be rational,” Garcia said. “I don’t know why Kevin signed up to that. I wouldn’t have.”

‘A Fine Rule’

Ahead of McCarthy's ouster, Republican Main Street Caucus Chair Dusty Johnson said he, personally, didn’t think that most GOP colleagues would appreciate a sudden motion to vacate the rewrite. 

“Because that would be a pretty aggressive change,” the South Dakota Republican estimated.  

Less than 24 hours after McCarthy got bounced, Johnson seemed to be overruled by much angrier members of his 70-plus member voting bloc. 

“The ability for one person to vacate the Speaker of the House will keep a chokehold on this body through 2024,” the Main Street Caucus warned online. 

Top McCarthy ally Rep. Garret Graves said that before the conference taps a new speaker it needs to reconsider installing safeguards. 

“If we're going to continue to have guys like Matt Gaetz as part of the Republican conference, then you're gonna have to have rules in place that prevent him from doing his charade every single week, every single month … where he creates some manufactured crisis,” the Louisiana Republican said.

Graves urged Republicans to “at least” raise the threshold for triggering a motion to vacate. But he said they should also add “teeth” to the internal guidance stating that the motion to vacate privilege “should only be available with the agreement of the Republican conference so as to not allow Democrats to choose the speaker.”

“What Matt Gaetz did yesterday violated the conference rules,” Graves said. “There's just not a penalty or an enforcement action.”

Rep. Bob Good, one of the rebels who pushed McCarthy out, said he supported the one-member threshold but that it wasn’t a top priority for him in January. McCarthy had originally proposed a five-member trigger, which would have resulted in the same outcome, the Virginia Republican noted.

Good said he and others he’s talked to want to stick with the single-member privilege since that was the rule for 200 years before Democrats’ change.

“I think we're going to elect the kind of speaker that's not going to feel threatened by that,” he said. “Certainly the ones that I've heard speak have already said that they think it ought to stay in place and they're not concerned about that.”

Rep. Warren Davidson said Republicans wanting to restore Democrats’ majority-based rule wouldn't have the votes. 

The Ohio Republican likes keeping it at one, but also said McCarthy’s original offer of setting it at five made sense since that was the number of Republicans it would take to block party-line legislation in the narrowly divided House. 

“I think it's a fine rule,” Davidson said. “I don't think it was right to use it. But it is a privileged motion for a reason.”

Davidson voted against a procedural effort to kill Gaetz’s motion to vacate but did not vote to oust McCarthy, who he said he supports. He said disposing of the motion wouldn’t have made McCarthy’s larger headaches go away since he had more than five Republicans in the conference opposing him on many bills he tried to move anyway.

Rep. Bruce Westerman said Republicans should have a larger look at their rules and make changes that better help them govern. That includes the thorny motion to vacate, which the Arkansas Republican said should, at a minimum, be set at a higher threshold. In fact, Westerman endorsed requiring a majority of the conference to act. 

“The conference selects our speaker candidate,” Westerman said. “So until the conference changes its mind on our speaker candidate, I don't think we should be vacating the chair.”

Not Our Call

McCarthy ally turned replacement speaker hopeful Jim Jordan was asked whether he would support changing the single-member threshold were he to get the top job.

"I haven't talked about that," Jordan said. "This is up to the conference."

Rep. Kevin Hern, the Republican Study Committee chair who is considering a speaker bid, also said he’d leave the decision to the conference. 

But he is fine leaving the threshold as is. 

The Oklahoma Republican said any speaker candidate looking to raise it would be signaling that they want to insulate themselves from the consequences of making bad policy. 

“I’m not afraid of that,” Hern said. “That’s not something that would be part of my platform. If the members want it, that’s fine.”

Stephen Neukam contributed to this report.