McCarthy, After Being Ousted as Speaker in a GOP Revolt, Declares He Won’t Run Again for the Post

Speaker McCarthy has lost his job following a historic vote to vacate his chair, making him the first speaker of the House in American history to lose his position mid-term — and says he won’t seek to win back the post.Just eight months into his tenure, a handful of Mr. McCarthy’s conservative detractors ousted him from his position for a host of reasons, including his brokering a deal on Saturday to keep the government open when some Republicans preferred to let it shut down if they couldn’t get the deep spending cuts they were demanding. There will now be another speaker election. The House cannot conduct any new business until its new speaker is tapped.The House adopted the motion to remove Mr. McCarthy by a vote of 216 to 210, with all Democrats and eight Republicans voting in favor. Once that vote was finalized, Mr. McCarthy was immediately removed from his position, leaving the speaker’s chair empty until a candidate can reach a simple majority of the House to win the gavel. One of Mr. McCarthy’s most committed antagonists, Congressman Matt Gaetz, made the motion to vacate the chair on Monday evening. The vast majority of Republicans came to the former speaker’s defense, but Mr. McCarthy was doomed by concessions he made in order to win the speakership that allowed any member to introduce a vote to throw him out. In the end, Mr. Gaetz took the opportunity. The Florida conservative’s followers offered passionate speeches for why they moved to oust the speaker. Congressman Bob Good, who voted to remove Mr. McCarthy, called the situation “totally avoidable,” but said it was necessary because GOP leadership was relying on Democratic votes to pass spending bills, short-term funding legislation to avoid a government shutdown, and the debt limit deal earlier this year. Yet a close ally of Mr. McCarthy, Congressman Tom Cole, came to the speaker’s defense during the hour of debate. “I think he did the right thing for our party,” Mr. Cole said of the spending and debt limit deals Mr. McCarthy reached with the Democratic Senate and administration. The vast majority of Republicans then gave Mr. Cole a standing ovation. The House majority whip, who could succeed his California colleague as speaker, Congressman Tom Emmer, also stood up to defend Mr. McCarthy. “Kevin McCarthy’s earned this,” the congressman said. “We’ve shown Americans what success looks like when we come together as a team.”When Congressman Jim Jordan took the microphone to speak, it was a watershed moment for Mr. McCarthy. In 2015, when Speaker Boehner resigned and Mr. McCarthy was in line to succeed him, Mr. Jordan led the conservative revolt to end his candidacy. Mr. Jordan took to the floor to defend the job Mr. McCarthy has done in his first nine months as speaker, saying the “oversight” conducted by the House GOP — including the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Biden — was the fruit of Mr. McCarthy’s labor. Mr. Gaetz responded by calling the investigations into the Biden family nothing more than “failure theater.”Speaker Gingrich, writing in the Washington Post on Tuesday, called for Mr. Gaetz’s expulsion from the House Republican conference. “Gaetz has gone beyond regular drama,” the famously combative former speaker writes of the Florida congressman. “He is destroying the House GOP’s ability to govern and draw a sharp contrast with the policy disasters of the Biden administration.” Earlier on Monday, Mr. Gaetz spoke from the floor to deride what he called Mr. McCarthy’s “secret Ukraine deal” that had been made with Mr. Biden and Senate leadership. Following the passage of a short-term funding deal on Saturday that keeps the government open until mid-November, a bipartisan group of senators made assurances that aid for the besieged nation would be included in the final budget that will be adopted later this year if all goes according to plan. The leader of House Democrats, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, convened with his caucus on Tuesday morning to discuss strategy. Ultimately, House Democrats agreed that they would not do anything — neither voting against the motion to vacate nor voting “present” to make it easier for the speaker to keep his job — in order to help him retain the speaker’s gavel. Mr. Jeffries wrote to his colleagues just minutes before the vote to table the motion to vacate, saying that “House Republicans have undermined that principle at every turn and unleashed chaos, dysfunction and extremism on hardworking American taxpayers.”“House Democrats remain willing to find common ground on an enlightened path forward,” he continued, signaling that he is open to supporting a more moderate GOP speaker. “House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair.”It was never likely that Democrats would help save Mr. McCarthy’s position without some serious concessions from Republican leadership, including returning spending to the higher levels that Messrs. McCarthy and Biden negotiated earlier this year but to which conservatives later objected. Mr. McCarthy’s launch of an impeachment inquiry against the president also did not endear him to the left side of the aisle. Immediately after the motion to vacate passed and Mr. McCarthy was removed from his position, House Republicans convened in a closed-door meeting to discuss next steps. Just two other House speakers have faced motions to vacate during their tenure — Mr. Boehner in 2015, who decided to resign from Congress rather than fight the motion on the House floor, and Speaker Cannon, who led the chamber between 1903 and 1911. Seen as power-hungry by some House Democrats and even some of his Republican colleagues, Cannon introduced a motion to vacate against himself in 1910 in order to show he still had the support of the majority of the House — a vote he won, allowing him to retain the speakership until the end of his term.________This dispatch has been updated from the bulldog.

McCarthy, After Being Ousted as Speaker in a GOP Revolt, Declares He Won’t Run Again for the Post

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