As you know, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was booted from his seat by members of his own party. But that doesn’t mean all Republicans are happy about the ousting or how it all went down.
In fact, 45 House Republicans have now joined together in calling the removal of McCarthy a shameful thing and something that should never be allowed to happen again.
If you remember, McCarthy was never really a favorite among his own.
I mean, it took him 15 tries and votes to get the seat to begin with. Part of the deal of his getting in was that should he do something the party didn’t like or agree with, only one member of the House Republican Party was needed to bring a motion to vacate the speaker chair forward.
That one member was Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. When it came to a vote, eight other GOP members, along with the entire Democratic Party, voted to oust McCarthy.
"I know this, if it's Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise there will be very few conservatives in the country who don't see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy." — @RepMattGaetz@BiancaDLGarza pic.twitter.com/iHhdCo4ISp
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) October 4, 2023
But some feel that just one name shouldn’t be enough.
As a letter the 45 wrote on the topic said, “We cannot allow our majority to be dictated by the alliance between the chaos caucus and the minority party that will do nothing more than guarantee the failure of our next Speaker.”
And so far, Steven Scalise, one of only two possible replacement candidates for McCarthy’s chair, says he’s open to changing the one-member rule.
But as he says, “It’s going to take everybody in our conference working together if we’re going to change that.”
Part of the problem will be deciding what the new rule should be. For instance, Pelosi required that a majority of her caucus to back a motion to vacate when she became speaker in 2018.
So maybe there should be a happy medium to the rule, say having 10 or 20 members required to bring forth such a motion for the next speaker, especially if the party actually has faith in that individual.
What do you think?
