How a Vote to Oust McCarthy as House Speaker May Play Out

A disgruntled Republican forcing a House floor vote to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the speakership has seemingly become a matter of when — not if.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has said he may soon deploy a “motion to vacate” – the House procedure for removing the speaker – if McCarthy, R-Calif., does not show he can deliver on promises he made to win the gavel in January. 

Other conservatives have expressed outright support or potential interest in such a move, eying McCarthy’s handling of the current government funding fight as a litmus test. 

If a motion to vacate is triggered, there's three main scenarios for how it may play out: McCarthy prevails with the vast majority of Republicans sticking by his side; the Californian survives with a little help from Democrats; or he's removed as speaker but his allies nominate him again in the absence of an alternative speaker.

McCarthy this week admitted he’s “frustrated” with the demands from his right flank. In an angry outburst, he dared his GOP critics to trigger a vote on his ouster. 

“Move the f---ing motion,” he said during a closed-door House Republican Conference meeting Thursday.

Leaving the meeting, McCarthy delivered a similar, but more tempered, message in front of reporters and TV cameras. 

“If it takes a fight, I’ll have a fight,” he said. 

That fight now seems inevitable, McCarthy allies say. 

“That's going to come up before Christmas,” Rep. Mike Simpson said. “I'm 99% sure. That is going to come up regardless of what we do.”

The Idaho Republican even welcomed the vote: “Bring it up. Let's get it over with. I think we would ram it up their rear ends.”

Rep. Tom Cole was less eager to have the vote but said it would serve to contrast McCarthy’s strong support in the conference with the small coalition of his opponents. 

“I don’t think it’s ever beneficial, particularly, to have family fights in public,” the Oklahoma Republican told The Messenger. “But I'm not afraid of doing it. We’ve already done it once, and the outcome is going to be the same.” 

Cole predicted an effort to vacate McCarthy from his leadership post would be a replay of the speaker’s race where his detractors never grew beyond 20 Republicans over the course of 15 ballots. 

Only Two Previous Motions

The motion to vacate is such a tool of last resort that only two have ever been offered. Neither resulted in the removal of the speaker. 

The first instance was in 1910. Insurgents had just voted to strip Joseph Cannon, the Republican speaker at the time, of his secondary power chairing the Rules Committee. Cannon, wanting to save face and prove the insurgency would not hold, called for a motion to vacate against himself. It failed, 155 to 192, with many members abstaining or voting present.

The second came more than a century later in 2015. Then a relatively unknown House Republican from North Carolina, Mark Meadows – who went on to become former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff – filed a motion to vacate House Speaker John Boehner. 

Meadows’ motion to vacate was used as leverage to pressure the Ohio Republican to change his leadership approach. He never took to the floor to force a vote, as House rules allow. But the threat from Meadows and his conservative allies was a factor in Boehner’s decision to resign early from Congress. 

“It’s become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution,” Boehner said in his resignation announcement. 

The speaker’s detractors need not repeat the Meadows’ playbook. They’ve been holding the motion to vacate over McCarthy’s head since January when they convinced him, in exchange for supporting his speaker bid, to revert back to a House rule allowing a single member to force a vote on the motion. (After the threat against Boehner, Democrats changed the rules so it would require a majority of a party caucus.)

McCarthy could pull a Cannon if he’s fed up enough with his critics, but the chances of that seem low. 

Here are some of the more likely scenarios that could play out if Gaetz or another Republican decides to call for a vote on a motion to vacate McCarthy. 

McCarthy Prevails With Republicans Only

The best case scenario for McCarthy would be that he has enough Republican support to defeat a motion to vacate. 

Leadership could move to table the motion to vacate rather than have a direct vote on ousting McCarthy, but either would require a majority of House members to side with him.

If all 433 House members – the chamber will have two vacancies after Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart’s imminent resignation becomes official; Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline resigned in June – are present and cast a “yea” or “nay” vote then the majority threshold is 217. 

With only 221 House Republicans, that means McCarthy can’t risk losing the support of more than four Republicans, assuming all Democrats vote against him.

The majority threshold math changes if any members are absent or simply vote “present.” For every two members that fall into one of those categories, the majority threshold drops by one. 

But that only helps McCarthy if the member not casting a direct vote would have otherwise voted against him.

Bottom line: McCarthy has very little room for defections and more than enough critics in his party that his chances of prevailing based solely on GOP support are low. 

McCarthy would almost certainly need to cut some deals – like he did in the speaker’s race – to win over enough of his detractors. 

Or Gaetz, who has floated the possibility of calling up a motion to vacate next week, could pull the trigger too early. Next week would be before the conclusion of government funding negotiations, which most McCarthy skeptics are eying as their judgment point.

Gaetz “also said that he would do it every day.” Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, one of the Republicans withholding judgment on McCarthy for now, said. “So it doesn't indicate that he has a lot of confidence that it's going to pass the first time.”

McCarthy Gets Help From Democrats

Another less ideal option for McCarthy is asking Democrats to help him survive the vote. 

Democrats wouldn’t have to cast a vote in direct support of McCarthy. They could just vote “present” or miss the vote altogether to lower the majority threshold to one McCarthy could easily surpass. 

Gaetz said he could see that happening if he acts on his threat. 

“I anticipate that there may be some Democrats who get an immediate bout of COVID or some other ailment that may keep them at home and may impact the denominator on a motion to vacate,” he said. “That's my expectation.”

If that happens, Gaetz warned, “I’ll showcase to the country that if it's Democrats bailing out Kevin, that he works for them.” 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to entertain a question on Democrats helping McCarthy. 

“The motion to vacate question is a hypothetical one that is not before us,” the New York Democrat said. “We’ve had no discussion about it. And I don’t expect us to have any discussion about it moving forward.”

Republicans “are going to have to work out their own internal, poisonous, partisan political dynamics,” Jeffries added.

McCarthy Loses, But Gets Renominated 

If neither of the above occur, McCarthy could actually be removed as speaker. 

Cole said that would not break the strong GOP coalition of McCarthy supporters. 

“We’ll renominate him and come right back,” he told The Messenger. “And so if these guys think that’s going to win, it’s not.”

In this scenario floated by Cole, McCarthy is removed as speaker and the House will need to elect a new one. Republicans would meet behind closed doors to nominate a candidate. That only requires a majority vote of the conference, so they nominate McCarthy.

No other serious candidate would want to throw their hat in the ring for speaker under this scenario because they’d be inviting a similar rebellion. 

“There is nobody that could be speaker that's maneuvering to be speaker,” Cole said. “They're all supporting the speaker.” 

McCarthy’s opponents, he added, “are not imaginative enough to figure out a way out of the dilemma they’ve created.”

“They’re not winning any converts. They’re not changing any minds,” Cole said. “And they are making the 90% of the conference that they don’t represent increasingly frustrated with them.”

Simpson, one of the most vocally frustrated, said McCarthy has done a great job trying to placate the right flank but he’s never going to succeed. He believes the speaker is starting to realize that.

“You got to kick back at some point in time,” Simpson said. “When it’s 200 to 20, time to kick back.”