Why an Overhaul of the Motion Used to Oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy Died

After Kevin McCarthy’s historic removal from the speakership in October, many of the California Republican’s allies vowed not to support a replacement speaker unless they agreed to defang the procedural tool used to oust him.

They were caught in chaos, filled with regret over McCarthy's decision nine months earlier to bend to conservative pressure in his quest to become speaker. To get elected to the post, McCarthy agreed to a House rule change allowing a single Republican to force a vote on a motion to recall him.

It proved to be his undoing.

In the immediate wake of McCarthy's ouster, his allies wanted to make sure no future speaker would ever face the same predicament — a feeling still raging two months after the initial gut punch.

“We looked like a bunch of idiots. We looked like a banana republic a few months ago,” McCarthy confidante Rep. Garrett Graves told The Messenger.

“I don't think you should have one moron that should be able to trigger that vote,” the Louisiana Republican added, in an apparent dig at Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, who forced the so-called motion to vacate vote that deposed McCarthy. 

But back in October, momentum for overhauling the rule allowing a single member to trigger the motion waned as House Republicans spent three hectic weeks vetting and rejecting speaker candidates. They eventually rallied around Mike Johnson, a conservative Republican from Louisiana, without him committing to changing the motion to vacate.

Still, the same week Republicans unanimously elected him to be the new speaker, Johnson predicted Republicans would change the rule.

But two months later, no overhaul effort has emerged, and proponents now admit it is all but dead. 

“I don’t think there’s an opportunity to be honest with you,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez told The Messenger. 

The Florida Republican had been the most vocal among those pushing to change the motion to vacate after McCarthy’s removal. But Gimenez said he quickly found during the speaker selection process that some of his GOP colleagues were not willing to cede their power to remove the House leader. 

“It takes all of us to agree to that, and it's just not going to happen,” he said. “It's a mistake. But I don’t think the speaker is pursuing it because I don't think he can get [the votes].”

Changing the motion to vacate would require a House vote. The majority party typically writes House rules, so changes rarely garner bipartisan support. Not being able to count on Democrats, Republicans would need 217 members to agree, and with McCarthy’s mid-term resignation they only have 220.

“It seems to be politically moot right now,” centrist New York GOP Rep. Nick LaLota told The Messenger. 

Two months ago LaLota said discussions about changing the rule were “very lively in several member group chats,” with multiple ideas being bandied about. Those ideas included raising the one-member threshold needed to trigger a vote on the motion to vacate and requiring motions to remove a speaker to also include a replacement. 

That chatter is no longer happening, LaLota said. 

“There doesn't seem to be any sense, sort of no matter what part of the spectrum the conference, to engage in this,” he said. “So it's probably something that we ought to consider at some point in time, especially next Congress, but probably a whole lot less relevant right now.”

Opposition to changing the motion to vacate is strongest among House Freedom Caucus members who successfully pushed McCarthy to return the one-member threshold needed to trigger a vote. That had historically been the rule until Democrats changed it in 2019 to require a majority of a party's caucus to remove the speaker.

“I’m not hearing much about changing that at this point,” newly minted House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, who favors the one-member threshold, told The Messenger. 

Good was one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy, along with all Democrats. But the Virginia Republican predicted the motion to vacate drama is over — for now. 

“I think most of us hope it would never need to be filed again,” he said, with the caveat “you can’t control the future.”

Freedom Caucus member Eric Burlison was more adamant about leaving the single-member standard as is. 

“I would fight, actually, any efforts to eliminate it,” the Missouri Republican told The Messenger, billing it as a vital resource “that probably should be kept the same.” 

But some conservative hardliners are agnostic. Rep. Tim Burchett, one of the Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy, said if his GOP colleagues can muster the votes to tweak the current threshold, so be it. 

“If they want to do that, that's fine,” the Tennessee Republican said. “That’s not a beach I’m going to die on.” 

House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole said Johnson could reopen the issue but needn’t do so given that he’s in “a very secure position” right now. 

“He may not want to kick over the political beehive that would come with doing it. That's his call,” the Oklahoma Republican told The Messenger. “But if he chose to do it, I would certainly support it.” 

Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Republican who frequently criticizes the party’s right flank, is slightly more worried about Johnson’s job security.

“You can see a small group in there already angry at the speaker,” the Nebraska Republican told The Messenger. “I hope we don't go down that path, but having a single vote to vacate is just silly.”

Bacon would “love” to overhaul the rule but said “there's probably 10 to 20 of the usual suspects that will refuse to do it because they want to hang it over the speakers' head.”

Cole said raising the single-member threshold makes sense to him given all the damage it’s wrought over the past decade. 

“It's been misused and made life very difficult for Speaker [John] Boehner, very difficult for Speaker [Paul] Ryan. Obviously it cost Speaker McCarthy his spot,” he said of those chased off by the “very dangerous tool.”

“I just think it's been used irresponsibly, and it ought to be changed,” Cole said. 

Rep. Patrick McHenry, who famously failed to contain his outrage when the speaker vote rebels succeeded in eviscerating McCarthy, said adjusting that standard before it was too late just got away from everyone. 

“I was for fixing this at the end of last year. We didn't have the votes to do it,” the retiring North Carolina Republican and former acting speaker told The Messenger. 

Graves said there are different schools of thought in the Republican conference. 

“Some people are like, you know what McCarthy had to live under that Mike should too,” the Louisiana Republican said.

But Graves said he feels strongly about changing the standard for removing a speaker, noting that it takes a majority of the House and a supermajority of the Senate to impeach and remove a president or other executive and judicial branch officials from office. 

“In regard to the stability of our government as America, you need to have a higher threshold,” he said.

The “natural place” to debate changes to the motion to vacate, Graves said, will occur after the 2024 election when whichever party wins the House majority will be in charge of writing a new rules package for the next Congress. 

But Graves did not want to rule out action being taken before then. 

“If Mike can get through a couple of these hurdles that he's dealing with right now that are kind of on the front burner, then I think that there'll be some people that would be willing — both Republicans and Democrats — that'd be willing to come together and have that discussion,” he said.

Bacon likewise said it would take bipartisan action to change the motion to vacate while Republicans hold such a narrow majority, but that path is not without its complications.  

“You could probably do it with Democrats, but they're going to want to horse trade,” he said. 

Bacon said he and other members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus had “worked at some give and take” — likely potentially increasing Democrats’ seats on committees — to prepare for an attempted motion to vacate overhaul. But it’s not been a topic of conversation lately, he said. 

House Rules Committee member Thomas Massie said Republicans will likely have much bigger fish to fry in the coming year than fiddling with the leader ejector seat. 

“There's 10 other ways to be dilatory — like taking rules down,” the Kentucky Republican said. 

And given that Johnson will have to manage the Republicans pulling tricks like that, Massie hinted that keeping the motion to vacate in place as a tool of last result may not be a bad idea. 

“The motion to vacate is a motion to put the speaker out of his misery,” he joked.