Wild & Woolly Speaker Drama

there in Washington. I think everybody in politics is surprised by how this played out so far. Well, it's a big deal. What's happening. It's the first time in a hundred years that the House speaker vote went to multiple ballots. And right now the House is in recess until noon on Wednesday. And noon on Wednesday we'll find out what happens next. There were three rounds of balloting, and on each of the three nobody had the two hundred and

eighteen votes needed to win the speakership. And so this battle, this battle is waging. You and I are are recording this on Tuesday evening, after the House is adjourned, but before they've gathered in the morning. I am confident there are multiple furious conversations ongoing right now all across Washington.

Conversations between Kevin McCarthy and his allies, conversations between the rebels who are opposing McCarthy, and and they're they're likely our negotiations going on right now, but we won't know at least until tomorrow what happens. Uh And and it's uh uh, it's not going to be dull. Yeah, it's not going to be dull. Let's talk about the history

of this. There there are people, and this is even on the Democrat side, that say, hey, we don't like this type of precedent, because then what you could end up happening in the future is when you have tight elections like we just add in November, if certain people on either side of the aisle refuse to kind of you know, coalesce behind their team, then you could always be holding good people hostage. That's how this has kind

of played out on TV. There have been others have said this has just become too personal with three or four or five different members of Congress and Ken McCarthy, where it really isn't about the country. It's more of a personal issue. I think this is a very unique moment where you see twenty people say, all right, maybe we go with a Jim Jordan. We've heard people talk

about Steve Scalisee. Does that really change anything? And if you're a member of Congress right now, especially a new member of Congress, how confused are you by all of this on your first day. Well, let me say several things. First of all, I'm staying out of the speaker fight in the House. I've got plenty of fights over on the other side of the Capitol and the Senate. We are in the middle of big, big battles in the Senate, and so I am watching with considerable interest, but not

engaging in the middle of their leadership fight. That being said, I'll make several observations. Number one, A big part of the reason this is playing out is because the election was disappointing. The election, we did a lot less. Republicans did a lot less in the election than we should have. We should have a majority in the Senate, we should have a big majority in the House. If we'd come out of the election and it was a thirty thirty five vote Republican majority in the House, I doubt this

fight would be playing out at that level. I think Kevin McCarthy would have had pretty easily the votes to be elected speaker. And if you win a big victory, that is typically the result. What is driving this is it was instead a very frustrating election where we didn't win a majority in the Senate. In fact, we lost a seat in the Senate, which is beyond infuriating. And in the House, the Republicans have a majority, so that's good, but it's the narrowest majority imaginable. It is a four

vote majority. Now, I'll say for any speaker, being speaker of a House with a four vote majority is an absolute mess because you're right, when you have a tiny majority, all sorts of groups of members are incentivized to hold out for what they want. And that's true from conservatives, from moderates, from liberals across the spectrum. I think it's

also more true on the Republican side. On the Democrats side, Nancy Pelosi had a very small majority, but the Democrats are command and control, the Democrats are authoritarian, the Democrats follow orders. It's a strength of theirs, and it's a weakness of theirs on the Republican side, A strength and weakness we have as Republicans is we're a bunch of individualists were all over the map. That's true in the

Senate and it's true in the House. And so what's playing out here in significant part, is playing out because the majority is so narrow and what it led to look you and I Ben have talked to on this podcast about the leadership battles in the Senate, and I led the fight in the leadership battles of the Senate

to reevaluate what our leadership was doing. And in particular, I was the one that made the motion to delay leadership elections until after the Georgia runoff, to delay them and to have a real debate about how Republicans should lead. And I ended up getting eleven votes that well, getting sixteen votes in favor of delaying the election, and then ultimately there were eleven votes cast either against Mitch McConnell or one senator who wouldn't know who voted present. That

was a big deal. We needed twenty five to have delayed the elections. We got within nine of that happening. That's the first leadership battle in the Senate we've had in the decade I've served in the Senate, every other time Mitch McConnell has been elected by acclamation. The same forces that drove that leadership battle in the Senate are driving the leadership battle in the House. But why is

the result playing out differently? And there's a very important structural difference between the Senate and the House, which is why you're getting a lot more drama on the House side. In the Senate, the Senate Republican leader is elected only by Republicans. In other words, it was the vote of what was then fifty of us, and so Mitch to remain Senate Republican leader had had to win twenty six of those fifty. He had those votes pretty solidly in

his pocket. In the House, last month, the House Republicans got together and Kevin McCarthy won a sizable majority of House Republicans. But the way the House operates is different because the very first thing after the new members are sworn in that happens in the House is you have what we're seeing right now, a vote on the floor of the House to elect the speaker. And it's not just a vote Republicans if this was a vote of only Republicans. Kevin McCarthy would have won handily like he

did last month. This is a vote of every House member, and to be speaker you need a majority of the members who are present and voting. So they're four hundred and thirty five members of the House. One member, a Democratic member passed away, so they're only four hundred and thirty four members right now. That means you need two

hundred eighteen. What happened on the first ballot Andy Biggs from Arizona, it's a conservative, it's a good friend of mine, and he ran against Kevin McCarthy, and it ended up that there were nineteen votes cast against Kevin McCarthy. Mind you, five was sufficient, he could only lose four. Well, the second ballot, instead of Andy Biggs being the lead opposition player, it was Jim Jordan, and this time there were nineteen

votes for Jim Jordan. Now there is some irony in this and that Jim Jordan is at least at present, vocally supporting Kevin McCarthy to be speaker. Yeah. Ji. He actually told one member that voted for him, like, I don't want this job, and they said, tough luck. Basically, we're gonna nominate you and vote for you anyway. Well, and it's even more than that. Jim Jordan, on the second ballot had literally stood up and nominated Kevin McCarthy.

So he was nominating Kevin McCarthy, and in turn, Matt Gates got up and nominated Jim Jordan, and nineteen Republicans voted for Jim Jordan. Then the third ballot, chip Roy nominated Jim Jordan. Chip Roy is my former chief of staff. It's a strong conservative, is a very dear friend. Chip Roy gave a passion speech for Jim Jordan. And what happened next was significant. Look in these battles of momentum matters, and so everyone is watching, Okay, are the vote totals

going up? Are going down? And on the third ballot, McCarthy's numbers went down, and in particular Jim Jordan. Instead of getting nineteen, which is what he got on the second ballot, Jordan got twenty and and and the vote that flipped was Byron Donalds, who is a second term House member from Florida. He's African American. He's a good principal, very well liked member. There were gasps of the floor

of the House when Byron shifted his vote. That dynamic, I think played a real part in the decision to say, Okay, let's suspend everything till noon tomorrow. When you look at that suspension and before we actually before I even ask you that I want to go back to Chip Rowing, what he said was something that I think was very interesting because I was watching this on all the channels when it was happening, and even CNN said, Okay, Chip

has a point he's making here. He wasn't opposing Kevin McCarthy as much as he was advocating for actually debating amendments and having transparency in government from the floor of the House, and even the panels said, there's a lot of Americans they're gonna watch Chip Roy, maybe for the first time ever, that are going to look at this and say, you know what, what he's saying right now actually make some pretty good sense. Just take a list and if you miss this, America, this is what he

had to say from the four of the House. So this is what the chamber looks like when we're actually debating in the bodies or in the chairs. How many times have we been down here giving speeches and there's not a soul in the chamber yet. This is what it takes to get four hundred, four hundred and thirty five people in the chamber and have an actual debate. The American people are watching, and that's a good thing.

What we're doing is exercising our rights to vote and have a debate and have a discussion about the future of this country through the decision of choosing a speaker. This is not personal, it's not This is about the future of the country. This is about the direction of the country. American people who are looking at this body and wondering why we can pass one point seven trillion

dollars bills that are unpaid for it. They can just slide in forty five billion dollars for Ukraine but not pay for it, forty billion dollars for emergency spending and not paid for a ten percent increase in defense spending, six percent increase in non defense spending, and not pay for it, and not do a thing except put language in a bill that prohibits our ability to use the

money to secure the border. That bill gets rammed through, and we know exactly how it gets rammed through because the defense world and the non defense world come together and say, you know what, We're gonna cut a deal and we'll all go to the mic, so we'll all give speeches, and the American people are the big losers. That's what happens. We know, that's what happens. The Rules Committee sits up there and passes a bill, sends it to the floor, and we have no debate on the

floor of this body. We haven't been able to offer an amendment on floor of this body since May of twenty sixteen. The former leader and I've discussed this right here. That's true. But the fact is this place has to change. It has to change, and the change comes by either adopting rules and procedures that will make us actually do our job, or it comes from leadership. And people ask me what do you want. I want the tools or I want the leadership to stop the swamp from running

over the average American every single day. I mean, Senator, when you hear that, as he said, this is not about the speaker as in the person's name. This is about rules and procedure. I understand now why Chip was your chief of staff and why you like him so much, because for many Americans whether you are a Republican or Democrat, you hear what he just said and it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Look, Chip is very smart, he's

very principled. As you noted. When I was newly elected, he was my very first chief of staff, so I had been in a lot of foxholes side by side with Chip, and he is absolutely right at having this debate about what Republicans will stand for is important irrespective

of a speaker election. It's important to say how are we going to operate and lead because I believe one of the reasons we didn't have the kind of election that you and I wanted us to have in November is that Republican leadership was not leading boldly and drawing a clear contrast. And I've focused my time and attention on the Senate, that's obviously the body in which I serve, and on trying to press Mitch McConnell to stand up and be willing to fight. I think Chip is exactly

right that this omnibus was an absolute monstrosity. It was a disgraceful bill. Now here's one of the weird dynamics. Mitch McConnell was urging Republicans to support the one point seven trillion dollars omnibus because he said it would help Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy was publicly urging Republicans in the Senate to vote against the omnibus. He said it will hurt me, hurt Kevin McCarthy. That dynamic playing out is ongoing. And you know Chip's point about we're actually sitting in

the chamber talking to each other. That happens so rarely in either House that having a debate about Okay, we shouldn't fight on everything always, that doesn't make any sense, but we should have a strategy to pick issues that matter and stand and fight for them and deliver for

the American people. Now, Chip has been leading the insurgents in the House, and the main thing he has been pressing for is something that is called the motion vacate, which it used to be that any individual member could stand up in the House and file a motion to vacate the chair and you could force another vote like the vote we're having right now, you could force at any time. That meant that the given speaker at any given point had to be able to hold two hundred

and eighteen votes. That makes the job of speaker significantly more perilous. It is the tool that was used to topple John Bayner, who I think was truly an abysmal speaker. Nancy Pelosi changed those rules, and she changed those rules to prevent an individual member from filing emotion to vacate. Why. Because she didn't want to get toppled. She didn't want any rebels to be empowered. And so what those who are opposing McCarthy are pressing for is a procedural step

that an individual House member can file emotion vacate. Why are they pressing for it? Well, the argument they give is that it then gives a check on leadership. McCarthy, at least so far, has been unwilling to agree to that. He's publicly agreed to allowing emotion to vacate that five members support, but not that an individual member support. Right now, I think there are a number of things that are

going on. Number One, it is entirely possible, and I will say I have zero inside knowledge on this piece, but it is entirely possible that McCarthy's team is negotiating with the ring leaders of the opposition, and perhaps they make concessions on the procedural grounds sufficient to get their support. That's one outcome we could see at noon on Wednesday. Another outcome is you could see growing support behind Jim Jordan. I don't know if that will happen or not. As

I said, Byron, Donald's vote was significant. A third outcome is you could see a potential third candidate. You could see someone else. Steve Scaliz, who's the number two behind Kevin McCarthy, has been discussed as that now Steve nominated Kevin McCarthy. Steve is publicly and vocally supporting McCarthy. But

in chaos, all sorts of strange things happen. A fourth outcome that would be a terrible outcome is it is possible some of the more moderate or liberal Republicans could team up with Democrats and we could end up with a speaker that's a true train wreck, that is either an extremely liberal Republican or god forbid, a Democrat. Now, I think the chances of a Democrat speaker coming out of this chaos are very very low. I don't know that they're zero, but they're very very low. But a

disastrously left wing Republican speaker is a possibility. I don't think that will happen. But in a world of chaos, all sorts of things can happen, and so those negotiations I think we're happening all across DC right now. I think we'll end up with a resolution, and we'll end up with a resolution that will either be a negotiated solution or a consensus candidate somehow emerges. At this point, I have no idea. All right, let me ask you this before we wrap this up, because obviously there's a

lot that we don't know. But there is the optics of this. The media is playing this Senator. The headlines are everywhere right now. You can see it all over the country. The establishment media is saying the Republicans are in chaos, this is anarchy, This is making the squad look normal, as one headline put it refer to the AOC and the crazies on the left, making them look rational. As another way it was put a moment ago on TV. I don't believe this is catastrophically negative in any way

for the Republicans. I think a grand debate is not a bad thing. Do you see this as some massive debacle taking place? Or is that just the media doing what the media does saying, let's seize on this moment. Look like this is insanity when it really this isn't. This is just watching the sausage be made. Look, the media are left wing propagandists. They hate having a debate about Republicans leading about Republicans being conservative. The media are

apoplectic about it. By the way, one of the reasons Nancy Pelosi didn't face this kind of challenge is she just gave in to the radicals. AOC was basically the speaker last term. On every radical left wing issue. Nancy Pelosi just said yes, yes, yes, you can have it, impeach the president, Okay, yes, do it again, yes, yes, everything you want, yes, yeah, I mean, and they all just followed the extreme left. That's the difference. The Democrats the last two years ran hard hard left, and they

had unity running hard hard left. The reason there's disagreement among Republicans is is there some Republicans that want to be strong conservatives. There's others who disagree with that, and you end up with something like the one point seven trillion dollars omnibus in the Senate. What was it? All the Democrats and a handful of Republicans. You see that pattern over and over and over again. I will say one of the complicated pieces of this also is Donald Trump.

So Trump likes Kevin McCarthy. They are friends. In fact, Trump with some regularity refers to Kevin McCarthy as Mike Kevin, and they just on a personal level get along. Well. I get that. I like Kevin McCarthy personally, a very affable guy. He's difficult to dislike on the one on one basis. Trump has been vocally supporting McCarthy not long ago.

An NBC reporter tweeted out exclusive. Former President Trump declined to say if he's sticking by his endorsement of Kevin McCarthy for speaker tonight, telling me in a brief phone interview he has had calls all day asking for support, and quote, we'll see what happens. We'll see how it all works out. That's a potential big deal depending on what Trump does in the next twenty four hours. If

he continues to support Kevin, that's one outcome. If he decides to withdraw his support or support another candidate, that could change the dynamic very significantly. Well, and in that tweet that you just mentioned to talk about the five that started this. Congressman Gates immediately tweeted that out, saying, you know, in quoting it, and then said Trump knows McCarthy can't get there, so he sees that moment to say, Aha, see I'm winning here because Donald Trump didn't come out

tonight and say I still stand behind Kevin McCarthy. Well, and unfortunately, you're also seeing divisions within within the House that that are getting pretty tense. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene went out and blasted Chip Roy and blasted Matt Gates because she's supporting Kevin McCarthy, and so she had had some very angry things to say. Um, they're all sorts of strange dynamics. Look, one of the things that drove it, as I understand it, is the House Republican

Conference met today and I wasn't in the room. I'm not in the House, but from the public reports, leadership came out really strong and aggressive. Indeed, anonymous quote supporting leadership, we're saying that McCarthy quote, they'd never seen anyone taken to the woodshed as much as as Kevin took the

the the rebels to the woodshed. And in particular. H It's been reported that Mike Rodgers stood up and threatened Republicans who didn't vote for Kevin would lose their committee assignments, that they would be punished and stripped off of committees, and that Chip Roy has been very vocal that that pissed him off, and that threat, if anything, drove the numbers the other way. And and I could see that sometimes leadership gets punitive. And you know what, if you've

got a thirty vote majority, leadership can be punitive. If you've got a four vote majority, it's it's pretty dangerous to make threats because it can end up making those who disagree with you dig in. And and that may be playing out there as well. It's gonna be very interesting how this ends up. What a way to go back to Washington for a new Congress. I still agree with you in what you said a moment ago. This

is just going to be entertaining to watch. I do not believe this is quote hurting the Republican Party or some sort of horrible debacle that will never you know, will never be able to overcome. I just don't buy those liberal headlines from the lefties. Over the next ten twelve hours center. It's good to get back in a rhythm with you. I know you're exciting. And let me say one more thing as we wrap up. Yeah, which is something else happened today that I thought was actually

quite shocking, and it was on the Senate side. So on the Senate side, the new senators was sworn in. That always happens. That's swearing in happens on the floor of the Senate and the Vice presidents who's the president of the Senate, swears them in, and then afterwards you go to the historic Senate Chamber and you do a

reenactment of the swearing in. And the reason you do that is because family members are not allowed on the floor of the Senate, so when you're actually getting sworn in, your wife can't be there, your husband, your kids, your parents, and so what has always happened, certainly for as long as I'm aware of it, is after the officials swearing in, you go to the historic Chamber and the Vice President

will swear you in. And you know, in my case when I was sworn in ten years ago, Heidi holds the Bible and your kids are there, your parents are there, your family's there, and it's Look, it's a great like it's it's a big exciting thing when you're being sworn into the Senate. It's nice to be with your family

and celebrate it. Well, something an historic first occurred, which is Kamala Harris's office put out a notification to the senators being sworn in that anyone attending the the swearing in reenactment must have a negative COVID test within twenty four hours performed by a capital physician, or you wouldn't be allowed in. And this was true for anyone over two years of age. Wow. And I gotta say, look, the vice president, particularly in a fifty one forty nine Senate,

has almost zero responsibilities. You know. The old, uh famous quote from John Nance Gardner is the is the vice president is presidency isn't worth a bucket of warm spit About the only thing the vice president does is swear in the new senators. You break a tie, but in a fifty one forty nine Senate, they're going to be a lot fewer ties. Um. And so Kamala is literally saying I'm not gonna do my damn job. And it was astonishing, and I have to admit offensive. And it

pissed me off. And and and I'm gonna give a shout out to one of the new senators, Mark Wayne Mullen is new Republican from Oklahoma who who decided he and his family screw you, We're not going to do it. And he put out a quote that says COVID just exists for those who are in the bubble, and that his family has things to do back in Oklahoma, such

as going to a school and wrestling tournament. The senator said he didn't want a false positive on a COVID test unnecessarily complicate things when going back to Oklahoma, and quote, I really don't care about a picture with Kamala Harris. He added, Now you've taught for you to take him to dinner, right, This isn't This could be your new

best friend. Look good for him for standing up. But I gotta say like that the absolute dripping arrogance and condescension of I will not allow you to be in the room with me unless you take a COVID test, and I won't do my job as a result. I've never seen anything like it. And including two right relationships between the White House and the Senate, we're already not very good. And and and this that was just Marie Antoinette would be proud of Comula's performance today. You can't

make it up. Senator. It's going to be a very very interesting year in Washington. We'll keep you all updated on it. We'll have the latest on what happens with the Speakers vote that we can promise you that again, great to be back with you in the new year, sir. I know you had a nice little vacation with your family as well. Uh. And we'll be back with all you guys that are listening right now in just a couple of days.