What Do You Think-- Gaetz Gets Expelled Or McCarthy Vacates The Chair?

Gaetz: "Next Week, If Kevin McCarthy Is Still The Speaker Of The House, He Will Be Serving At The Pleasure Of The Democrats

Who says no one likes Matt Gaetz?

During the long drawn-out battle to confirm McCarthy as speaker did anyone doubt that when the extreme right forced him to accept a rule making it easy to depose him that he was signing his own political demise? And now Matt Gaetz, the chief instigator of that rule, says he plans to use it this week. He tried on Saturday but the chair, a McCarthy ally, brought down the gavel signaling the session was over before Gaetz could speak. Yesterday he spoke on national television instead, making his intentions clear both on ABC and here on CNN:

Right after Jonathan Karl interviewed Gaetz yesterday, he brought on an upstate New York freshman who presents himself as the anti-Gaetz, Mike Lawler. Lawler launched right into his attack: “I think what I just heard was a diatribe of delusional thinking… [B]y putting this motion to vacate on the floor, you know what Matt Gaetz is going to do? He's going to delay the ability to complete that work over the next 45 days. And, just like he and some of my colleagues did during the past three weeks, they delayed the process by voting down the rules, violating our conference rules. They delayed the process by refusing to come to an agreement within the conference on a conservative CR that would have cut spending by 8 percent and enacted border security. They are the reason that we had to work together yesterday with House Democrats to pass a CR. That is not the fault of Kevin McCarthy, that’s the fault of Matt Gaetz.”

Lawler claimed that “Putting a motion to vacate forward, in defiance of conference rules which requires a majority of the majority. So, you know, I hear Matt constantly talking about the need to follow regular order, follow conference rules. Kevin McCarthy lied. He violated this. He violated that. Matt Gaetz voted against the choice for speaker of the conference. He voted to take down rules. And now he's putting a motion to vacate on the floor in defiance of conference rules which requires a majority of the majority. So, you know, this is a guy who says one thing out of one side of his mouth and speaks another thing out of the other side. He’s mealymouthed and, you know, frankly duplicitous… I think it is destructive to the country to put forth this motion to vacate… [Our work] will all be torpedoed by one person who wants to put a motion to vacate for personal, political reasons, and undermine the will of the conference and the American people, who elected a Republican majority to govern.”

Ryan Lizza, Rachel Bade and Eugene Daniels noted yesterday that when Gaetz starts the vacate the chair process— and there could be more than one— his biggest pocket pf votes “will be the Democrats in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They hate Gaetz, but more important, it could be suicide for any of the CPC’s 100-plus members to vote to save McCarthy.” Pramila already announced that the CPC won’t help save McCarthy. And AOC, the CPC’s most influential member, said the same thing. She told Jake Tapper yesterday that “It’s not up to Democrats to save Republicans from themselves, adding, when Tapper pushed her, that Democrats won’t support him “for nothing… I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak speaker. He clearly has lost control of his caucus. He brought the United States and millions of Americans to the brink, waiting until the final hour to keep the government open and even then only issuing a 45-day extension, so we’re going to be right back in this place in November… The Republican Party is completely out of touch with the American people… We saw them go through every possible iteration of cutting benefits. They tried to cut across the board 30 percent of the budgets of critical agencies like the Social Security Administration. Some of the most ‘moderate’ members of the Republican Party casted votes for things like 80 percent cuts under the Department of Education to low income schools. This is not a moderate party period. There are not moderates in the Republican Party. There are just different degrees of fealty to Donald Trump.”

Lizza, Bade and Daniels wrote that “If McCarthy survives with the help of Democratic votes, Gaetz will no doubt relentlessly attack him, as he has already, as ‘the Democrats’ speaker.’ The overall effort will have done a lot of damage. What if Gaetz offers a second Motion To Vacate, as anyone who knows him realizes he surely would, and McCarthy again has to survive with Democratic help? What happens on the second or third vote? Does Gaetz garner more Republican support? Does McCarthy need to find more Democratic support? There’s no limit to how many times Gaetz could do this. Eventually, this would become untenable for McCarthy. So Democrats who take a position on the first MTV will need to consider that they may be locking themselves into a position on a vote that might be repeated.

What might a deal with McCarthy look like from Jeffries’ perspective? It is highly unlikely that Jeffries would ever demand all Democrats vote to save McCarthy; several Dem members told us this morning that was impossible to imagine. But what he could do is decline to lock down the caucus and let Dems vote their conscience (or their district). That could leave [conservative Dems] with room to help McCarthy. But surely those individual moderates would also want something from McCarthy. Maybe a promise not to spend NRCC money in their races? There are a lot of ideas floating around out there.

McCarthy has a card to play if he survives the first (or more) attack from Gaetz. He could try to pass a rule that raises the threshold for a motion to vacate from one member, where it is now, to, say, 10 members. How would he get the votes? Perhaps some of the Democrats who cut a deal to save McCarthy agree to vote for this rule as well. That would finally decapitate Gaetz.

The big question all Democrats have to answer— and quick— is whether it’s better to have McCarthy as speaker or not.

On the pro-keeping-McCarthy side of the ledger is that he’s the devil they know, and there is nobody better waiting in the wings. By avoiding the government shutdown, he also just showed he can be more responsible than some Democrats had believed. It could also take two weeks for another speaker to emerge from the ashes of the chaos, all while the White House and Democrats are trying to push through aid for Ukraine and fund the government over the next 45 or so days. And if you are at the White House and care about all of this, in addition to the fate of the impeachment inquiry, which Democrats have already raised as an issue in any discussion of helping McCarthy, then McCarthy may be the better bet. This is the institutionalists’ argument.

The other side of the argument is that McCarthy is the GOP’s greatest fundraiser, and getting rid of him would help Democrats take back the House. No replacement for McCarthy would have the same set of relationships and the donor network and political operation. In addition, the argument goes, the GOP chaos in the House would pay political dividends.

One thing is clear: For the 53-year-old Jeffries, this is an unprecedented situation, one that no minority leader has ever faced. He suddenly has enormous leverage, but will have to weigh carefully how aggressively to use it.

A team of Fox.com reporters wrote that there are House Republicans seeking to expel Gaetz. “The House Republican members will seek to expel Gaetz if the ethics committee report comes back with findings of guilt, Fox News has learned. One member told Fox News the report is mostly written but does not know what it contains. Yet following threats to vacate McCarthy, the member said of Gaetz, ‘No one can stand him at this point. A smart guy without morals.’ It takes a two-thirds vote to expel. And Republicans are treading on thin ice with their majority. The House is down to 433 members. It’s unclear where things stand with federally indicted Rep. George Santos (R-NY). If you were to have members expelled, retire or die, the majority could be right on the edge for the GOP.”

So what will the Democrats do when Gaetz pulls the trigger? The silliest thing I’ve heard about it is when Jeffries and his team says they haven’t thought about it. Why not just say “we haven’t decided?” He’s still new at this. Pelsoi warned him not to bail out McCarthy. So did Pramila. And AOC, McGovern and several other progressives said they’d vote for him— for a steep price. This morning, Politico called the Democrats’ decision, the big question of the week. Will Democrats overcome their scorn for McCarthy and step in and save him? Does Jeffries even have the clout to get the caucus behind him to do that?

“The party,” wrote Rachel Bade and her team, “is still smarting that McCarthy refused their pleas to give Democrats a mere 90 minutes to read the CR text on Saturday. And they were downright disgusted to see McCarthy blame their party for the shutdown brinkmanship on Face the Nation yesterday— just hours after they put up votes to help him pass the CR. ‘It was an astonishing show of bad faith,’ one senior Democratic aide told us. ‘The dumbest political move I’ve seen in a long time,’ one Democratic lawmaker agreed. ‘You need us, you fucking idiot!’ Beyond that, Democrats have massive trust issues with McCarthy— particularly after he reneged on the budget caps deal he struck with the White House: ‘He’s created this situation, entirely of his own making. where he doesn’t have the benefit of the doubt,’ another top Democratic aide added. Despite their fury at McCarthy, Democrats spent the weekend texting and calling each other to discuss how to handle the situation— and swapping wish lists of possible concessions they could extract. Beyond demanding an end to Biden’s impeachment, some Democrats have floated reallocating committees to give Democrats more seats, giving Democrats equal representation on the House Rules Committee, not to mention Ukraine aid. One Democratic lawmaker told us concessions would be aimed at sidelining the House’s hardcore MAGA faction and ‘stopping this cycle of absurdity’ so the House can function in a bipartisan manner. One thing that’s not negotiable: Forcing McCarthy to stick to the spending caps deal he inked with Biden in May. That, Dems say, isn’t a concession, it’s a given.”

“Extracting any concessions,” they wrote, “will require Democrats to unify around a strategy, and it’s a major test for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. McCarthy potentially needs only a couple of dozen Democrats voting present or simply not showing up to vote to save his skin. Already House Democratic leaders are emphasizing the need to act in unison, with Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) telling her caucus that they will discuss the matter before any vote to oust McCarthy. The message of the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter was clear: No freelancing.”

Keep this in mind from the crew at Punchbowl: “Once Gaetz files his motion, the GOP leadership has two days to schedule a vote. There are some preliminary steps that have to take place before the vote on that motion, though. One is called a ‘Question of consideration.’ If a majority of the House simply doesn’t want to deal with this issue, they can kill it… [Also] a McCarthy ally will offer a motion to table Gaetz’s proposal. At that point, McCarthy’s best hope is that a large group of Democrats either sit out the vote or vote present, thus lowering his threshold to win without formally backing the speaker. Or Democrats vote to table the motion, arguing they don’t want to be dragged into a Republican civil war… McCarthy will run into trouble on rule votes and other party-line procedural measures if he relies on Democrats to keep him in the speaker’s chair… If McCarthy gets Democrats to back him in some way, Gaetz and his supporters will say the speaker bought them off somehow. The House Republican Conference could become even more unstable.”

Last night, I spoke with a high level GOP staffer who I've known for decades. He told me there’s a lot of talk about expelling both Gaetz and Jamaal Bowman at the same time. “I don’t have to tell you,” he told me, “I’m living among misfits and drunkards… They’re never going to be able to expel either one of them. Maybe if they had something useful to do, there wouldn’t be all this intrigue and dysfunction… Have you see Red White & Royal Blue yet?”