Open revolt: McCarthy rejected a second time

Kevin McCarthy again failed to secure the votes for speaker in a highly unusual second ballot, as his dozen-plus detractors refused to relent in their push for fresh leadership atop the party.

This time, conservative hero Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) personally urged his colleagues to back McCarthy in a speech before the vote. Instead, all 19 GOP defectors voted for Jordan on the floor — sending their leaders scrambling in what is only the second time since the Civil War that a party will need multiple attempts to elect a speaker on the House floor. Privately, some members were questioning if McCarthy could get the votes.

McCarthy's allies insist they will keep voting until a path emerges for him to seize the gavel, instead of trying to adjourn for off-the-floor strategy sessions between ballots, as McCarthy hopes to grind down his opponents. But as chaos continues to consume the first day of the new Congress, it’s not clear how McCarthy and his allies can quell the revolt. Every conservative who opposed McCarthy during the first round remained firm on the second ballot but with one key change: All voted for Jordan.

So far, they remain locked in a game of high-stakes chicken.

“I think it’s going to be increasingly clear that he’s not going to be speaker. We will never cave,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said after conservatives blocked McCarthy from winning the gavel, urging him to drop out.

In a bid to cut off the opposition at their knees, Jordan gave an impassioned speech nominating McCarthy speech, but that did little to move the California Republican’s opponents. Unlike in the first round of voting — where McCarthy picked up undecided House Freedom Caucus members, including Reps. Ben Cline (Va.) and Clay Higgins (La.), and Rep.-elect Mike Collins (R-Ga.), who had previously pledged to vote against the GOP leader — McCarthy didn’t pick up any new support in the second round.

How long the speaker’s fight will last has become the House’s favorite parlor game, as it heads into a third vote. McCarthy acknowledged on Tuesday that it “could” last for days. In the meantime, the House GOP risks a chaotic floor fight, with no rules of the chamber yet in place. The House cannot even decide to adjourn without a majority of members in favor.

“The thing we have in front of us right now is Kevin. He’s in. He’s got no plans of leaving. He’ll stay in for months if that’s what it takes,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).

Some members even declared their support on the floor: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said, as she cast her vote, “No matter how many times it takes, Kevin McCarthy.”

Those dozen-plus opposition votes came despite fierce pressure from McCarthy and his wide band of allies that he has honed over the years — with some members even vowing to punish defectors from removing them from committees.

“No one in this body has worked harder for this Republican majority than Kevin McCarthy," New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, said in a booming floor speech delivered moments before lawmakers began to vote.

After brewing for years, the revolt against McCarthy materialized on the floor in front of all 434 seated members (with the seat of the late Rep. Don McEachin [D-Va.] still vacant). On a day of plenty of pomp and circumstance, dozens of lawmakers brought squirming children, including at least one crying infant, as they sat through the full roll-call vote.

The substantial bloc of opposition against McCarthy marks an increase from the day prior, when only five House Republicans had publicly declared they would vote against their party leader.

But storm clouds were brewing over McCarthy throughout Tuesday. Just before heading to the floor, House Republicans gathered for a tense — and at times, raucous — meeting where McCarthy and his top supporters erupted at the dozen-plus conservative hard-liners vowing to block his speaker's bid.

In a fiery speech to his conference in the closed-door meeting, McCarthy underscored the extensive concessions he has made to those who have vowed to oppose him, largely those in the House Freedom Caucus, according to multiple members in the room.

But he also told members that there were about 20 GOP lawmakers who plan to vote against him, far more than the five who have publicly opposed him — in a preview of the chaos that he met on the floor.

“I earned this job. We earned this majority, and God dammit we are going to win it today," McCarthy said to a standing ovation, according to lawmakers in the room.

It wasn't just the California Republican calling out the conservative hard-liners. Many of McCarthy's frustrated supporters, too, unloaded on the band of detractors. At one point, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, pushed the idea that any Republican who opposes McCarthy should be stripped of committee assignments.

One of McCarthy's chief antagonists, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), spoke up to defend his position — and lashed out against Rogers' remarks about keeping fellow Republicans off committees, shouting profanities at his colleague. Rogers said after the meeting that his warning that the Steering Committee will block McCarthy opponents from getting committee assignments wasn't just a threat: "I promised it."

Roy wasn't the only Republican vowing to vote against McCarthy to speak up. Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) both reiterated their stances to the conference. The GOP leader responded to Perry: "What’s left? What do you want?"

Other anti-McCarthy members, including Perry and Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), publicly railed against McCarthy after the closed-door meeting, arguing that his allies were resorting to political threats instead of making a deal.

“This [meeting] was about a beat down and a simulated unity in the room that really doesn’t exist,” Perry said.

McCarthy appeared unbowed Tuesday morning after what he described as an “intense conference," saying "I'm not going anywhere."

Even before the explosive meeting, early signs Tuesday didn't point in McCarthy's favor. Perry offered blistering criticism of McCarthy just before the meeting, saying conservatives had asked for several concessions like commitments on committee seats that, in turn, would get him to 218 votes, but that the California Republican declined.

“Kevin McCarthy had an opportunity to be Speaker of the House. He rejected it,” said Perry, the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

McCarthy has worked fervently to lock down support, releasing a long list of concessions he’s prepared to make on rules changes, including making it easier to depose a speaker.

In a significant win for conservatives, McCarthy set the number of Republican backers needed to force a vote on deposing the speaker at five, to the dismay of some rank-and-file members. It’s an about-face from just weeks ago, when the conference set the threshold to prompt such a vote, known as the motion to vacate, at a majority of its members. And some conservatives argue that’s not good enough — they want one member to be able to force such a motion.

Democratic leaders, meanwhile, aren’t looking to make it any easier on McCarthy. They’ve told their members not to miss any ballots, which would have lowered the number of votes the GOP leader needed, and to vote for the incoming minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

Some Republicans say McCarthy should make a deal to persuade about a dozen Democrats to leave the floor after several ballots, allowing him to skate through despite a handful of opponents among his own conference. Others, like Bacon, have floated that if conservatives block McCarthy, they could work with a band of centrist Democrats to elect a more moderate Republican instead.

But after weeks of behind-the-scenes drama, Republicans say they're ready to keep fighting on the floor.

“If they think they can ask Kevin McCarthy to strong arm the rest of us into going somewhere we don’t want to go they are sorely mistaken,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a close McCarthy ally said. “The five percent do not get to roll the 95 percent.”