California Representative Kevin McCarthy has been ousted from his position as Speaker of the House. This makes him the first Speaker of the House to ever be voted out of the position and one of the shortest-serving Speakers in U.S. history.
But why was Representative McCarthy removed as Speaker? Well, it’s mostly due to the same Republicans who delayed his confirmation back in January.
Freedom Caucus
A group of far-right Republicans calling themselves the “Freedom Caucus” have been causing all kinds of trouble as a means of blustering and getting themselves the attention and power that they feel they deserve. Many of their members refused to vote for McCarthy back in January, allowing them to effectively hold the House of Representatives hostage until they got what they wanted. In order to appease these far-right Republicans, McCarthy gutted the House Ethics committee and awarded multiple members of the Freedom Caucus with high-profile placements on important committees.
McCarthy also changed the rules, allowing any single House member to file a “motion to vacate” in an attempt to boot him from his seat.
Yes, McCarthy is literally in a Monkey’s Paw situation where a deal he made to get himself into office is also the reason he has now been removed from said office less than a year later.
Why now?
Representative Matt Gaetz claims that the reason he put forward a motion to vacate was because McCarthy was “working at the pleasure of the Democrats” after making deals with Democratic representatives in order to avoid a government shutdown. He also said that one thing both parties could agree on was that they didn’t trust McCarthy.
Of course, there are many layers of hypocrisy to these statements. Gaetz and his Freedom Caucus only accounted for eight of the votes that ultimately removed McCarthy, meaning that Gaetz is now guilty of the exact thing he claimed McCarthy was doing: working with Democrats to accomplish his agenda. Additionally, he may be right that Democrats don’t trust McCarthy, but that’s largely due to the massive allowances McCarthy made in order to win over the votes of the Freedom Caucus.
Also, to clarify, while the Motion to Vacate has been weaponized against previous Speakers of the House as recently as 2015, this is the first time a move like this has been successful, meaning there’s very little stopping the Freedom Caucus from trying again.
The Republicans are in a jail of their own making; they wanted the far-right vote and now they are being held hostage by it at every turn.
(featured image: Alex Wong, Getty Images)
