Since the U.S. House of Representatives convened on Tuesday, chaos has reigned, but one thing has remained constant: Kevin McCarthy has been losing.
Across 11 votes over three calendar days tallying nearly 18 hours, the California Republican has been stuck in a purgatory of defeat. He’s not getting any closer to victory, but he’s also not noticeably closer to withdrawing his bid for the speakership; a hardline faction of 20 lawmakers have persistently blocked him from the gavel, but progress in negotiations—with breakthroughs seemingly just around the corner—have allowed McCarthy to continue his bid.
Republicans realize that McCarthy can’t keep losing. But, on Thursday night, it looked like he was at least starting to lose with purpose. After hours of private haggling, the GOP leadership team reportedly negotiated the outlines of an agreement with the holdout faction—or, at least, a faction of the faction.
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The deal would likely represent a near-total capitulation to McCarthy’s dissenters’ demands. It could include not only giving a small hardliner bloc the power to force the speaker’s ouster at any time, but also installing conservative Freedom Caucus members on influential committees and giving them unprecedented influence over Congress’s most essential tasks.
Republicans expect such a deal, if accepted, to move about 10 of the 20 holdouts. Still, even then, McCarthy would be far from out of the woods. He would still have to cut the remaining detractors in half. Those 10 Republicans seem basically intractable, and there doesn’t seem to be a real plan on how to get them.
No matter.
McCarthy’s team was simply focused Thursday on manufacturing some momentum in their direction, at the risk of the deadlock simply ending McCarthy’s hopes for the speakership this week. And so, McCarthy was putting all of his speaker dreams on a prospective deal.
Key brokers of the agreement were mum leaving the Capitol on Thursday night. But it was clear that those involved viewed these talks as merely the beginning of a lengthy process of electing a Speaker.
“This is round one,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), one of the holdouts, told reporters. “It’s on paper, which is a good thing.”
McCarthy himself was even more optimistic. “It’s not how you start,” he said Thursday night, “it’s how you finish.”
But McCarthy’s big problem right now is the math. In order to win the gavel, he needs to convert all but four of the 21 lawmakers currently opposing his bid.
“I think it brings several of them closer,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). “We’re still a few out though.”
McCarthy’s tortured balancing act doesn’t stop there. If he satisfies his far-right flank, he also has to keep the other 200-some members of the House Republican conference on board with whatever deal he strikes. Some key moderates have warned that if McCarthy caves too far, their votes won’t be assured.
Privately, some Republicans are realistic that they may have to stomach whatever McCarthy does, if only to just move on.
Asked if the conference would just accept any agreement, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) demurred, noting that members would have the power to directly ratify or reject any deal through their votes on the forthcoming rules package—or on McCarthy himself.
“I think the feeling is we want to see what the agreement is,” said Fleischmann, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee. “We want to continue to move people toward Kevin McCarthy as speaker.”
But even before this week, McCarthy had demonstrated an expansive willingness to concede on a number of fronts. He agreed to relinquish so much power that many lawmakers and aides simply concluded that there was nothing he could offer to sway the hardliners’ votes. With McCarthy squarely on the ropes, the sense seemed to be that these lawmakers simply wouldn’t rest until they had knocked him out of contention.
The fact that a deal came together on Thursday, after so many rounds of failed votes and bitter barbs lodged between members and various GOP camps, was welcome news—but welcomed with a sense of exasperation.
“It’s frustrating because it’s stuff that honestly would have been very easy to just hash out,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). Crenshaw said the offer for a deal came from the hardliners, not leadership, but also said many of the hardliners who “literally have no clue” what they want.
“There’s still some that are—you know, we’ll see who they end up being, it’s kind of hard for us to tell who they are—but that just want to burn the House down. They think that’s a good idea,” Crenshaw told reporters.
For a third consecutive night, House Republicans adjourned without a Speaker. They will convene again at noon on Friday.
Aside from the political chaos, McCarthy’s purgatory is inflicting broader consequences on the functioning of the House. Without a speaker, members are not officially sworn in, and without sworn-in members, committees effectively do not exist.
That means committees can’t hire additional staff or do much of anything, including paying staff.
For Republicans, the inability to hire is an especially pressing problem. Since they just won the House majority, each committee needs to hire dozens of new GOP staffers.
Given that their committees will be the vehicles for their aggressive plans to conduct oversight of the Biden administration, the GOP’s internal war is having the ironic effect of hamstringing the one achievable political goal that seems to unite them.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, joked to The Daily Beast that he hoped Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY)—in line to be chairs of the Judiciary and Oversight panels—“put the dates on their subpoenas in pencil.”
“Really, the frustrating part to me is, some of this is going to be incredibly difficult and time-consuming to do,” Armstrong said. “And every day we miss, we’re missing a day.”
Beyond that, both Democratic and Republican member offices spent a day mired in confusion and frustration over what, exactly, they have the power to do while the House remains disorganized and members are not sworn in.
There has been particular murkiness when it comes to offices’ ability to address constituent requests for help from federal government agencies. Helping constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy—from the Internal Revenue Service and the Veterans’ Administration to obtaining passports if there’s trouble—is a key responsibility of congressional offices.
On Thursday morning, Democratic leadership sent out an email notice to member offices, obtained by The Daily Beast, advising that they could not handle casework “at this time because Members have not been sworn in.”
Less than an hour later, a Democratic staffer with the House Administration Committee emailed all offices to clarify that they could, in fact, handle constituent requests. The “miscommunication,” the staffer said, “is a result of the ongoing chaos created by the House Republicans’ failure to elect a Speaker. Our offices should continue to work For The People.”
But some lawmakers seemed to confirm that they are unable to work with federal agencies right now. “Congressional offices like mine aren’t able to help our constituents with casework requests while we wait to be sworn in,” tweeted Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL). “The small minority obstructing the speaker election is causing real consequences for Americans.”
Several offices, however, could not confirm to The Daily Beast whether any of their casework requests had been turned down.
