Rep. Kevin McCarthy walked into the House chamber at noon on Tuesday hoping to find the votes to become speaker, knowing he didn’t have them.
When he left five hours later, McCarthy still didn’t have the votes. And his apparent plan to win the gavel by calling the bluffs of a small group of detractors just revealed a fundamental truth about McCarthy: He’s not holding a winning hand.
In fact, over the course of three ballots, McCarthy lost support.
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After adjourning in the wake of the third vote, the House is set to reconvene at noon tomorrow. Faced with the reality that they may never convert his opposition, McCarthy and his allies are now scrambling to come up with a plan B to rescue his hopes for the speakership.
The initial options taking shape on Tuesday night in the Capitol did not look promising—and some would be unprecedented in the modern history of the House.
Asked how McCarthy might win over most of the 20 Republicans who opposed his bid, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE)—referring to them as the “Taliban 20”—said there were “a couple of tricks up our sleeves.”
“But we ain’t there yet,” he continued.
Bacon, who has been a member of the “Only Kevin” faction of the conference, also suggested to reporters that the California Republican may have to woo Democratic lawmakers in order to get the 218 votes needed to become Speaker, by offering them improved committee assignments.
Democrats, who were unified in their support for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), have so far rejected any talk of playing ball and helping to elect McCarthy. And when Jeffries was asked Tuesday night if Democrats would consider supporting a Republican for speaker, he said Democrats were looking for “a willing partner to solve problems for the American people, not save the Republicans from their dysfunction."
If Democrats have no interest in bailing out McCarthy—or any other Republican, for that matter—then Republicans will somehow have to find a solution in their own conference.
On Tuesday night, Bloomberg News reported that members were apparently discussing the possibility of negotiating subcommittee chairmanships in exchange for votes. And McCarthy still appears open to even more concessions, after caving on things like the threshold for the motion to vacate to remove a speaker and reinstituting the so-called Holman Rule, which allows the House to fire or even reduce the salary of specific federal government employees.
Both Bacon and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), another McCarthy backer, seemed to hold out hope that outside pressure from influential conservatives might sway at least some of the defectors.
“We'll see what happens when Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating up on these guys,” Reschenthaler told Punchbowl News. “Maybe that'll move it.” (Tucker Carlson later attacked McCarthy at length on his show Tuesday night.)
Hoping for help from Hakeem Jeffries, Sean Hannity, and Ben Shapiro is not where McCarthy wanted to be on Tuesday night. He may also not get any additional help from the man who he staked his political fortune on for years: Donald Trump.
According to NBC News, Trump—despite getting calls to intervene on McCarthy’s behalf on Tuesday—is declining to say if he sticks by his endorsement of McCarthy for speaker.
"We’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told NBC. McCarthy later told reporters that he had spoken to Trump and that the ex-president offered him his support.
Despite being considered the GOP’s speaker-in-waiting for years—and facing no specific credible challenger—McCarthy is now firmly on the ropes, with his party and the entire House paralyzed until the leadership drama is resolved.
One of the earliest and most vocal McCarthy holdouts, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), told reporters Tuesday night that McCarthy never had the votes—and the reasons why are not going to change by noon tomorrow. In attempts to win the support of his detractors, McCarthy had agreed to almost all of their demands.
The fact that it was not enough, many Republicans believe, is testament to the fact that hardliners never would have voted for McCarthy simply because they didn’t want to, and they don’t like him.
“For you to be asking me the question, the votes that he couldn’t get over a decade, that he couldn’t get over these last several weeks—you think he’s gonna get them overnight?” Gaetz told reporters. “That's a dumb question.”
But McCarthy will nevertheless try. As soon as the chamber adjourned on Tuesday evening, Republicans began yet another round of negotiations and fraught meetings.
McCarthy’s allies entered the evening with bones to pick, insisting his detractors didn’t negotiate in good faith. The long list of demands brought by ultra-conservative members, including a push to renew a rule that would allow any one member to force a vote to oust the speaker, has only been partially met.
Yet it was more than most wanted to give up in the first place.
“There’s anger because we negotiated in good faith and gave a lot more than we ever wanted,” Bacon said.
“I do think you have had a number of people who are not good faith negotiators. They have been asking for lots of things. Some of them may not have any interest in actually cutting the deal,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD).
Neither side seems prepared to offer even more concessions. Bacon said that McCarthy’s concessions—like letting five members force a vote on removing the speaker—should be taken off the table, given that those demanding the changes did not offer their votes in return. But withdrawing those offers would give the anti-McCarthy faction even fewer reasons to consider voting for him, when the reasons to vote for McCarthy were already waning.
One consideration that has complicated negotiations is that the members who have already voted against McCarthy now worry they could face retribution for their votes—a possibility that was only bolstered Tuesday when Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) reportedly threatened in an internal meeting that anyone who voted against McCarthy shouldn’t get to serve on committees.
And when Rogers was pressed on those comments later Tuesday, he didn’t do himself, or McCarthy, any favors. “I didn’t threaten them; I promised them and that’s a difference,” he told NBC.
After Tuesday’s lengthy, painstaking rounds of voting, a sense has emerged in Republican circles that many of these Never Kevin members may, in fact, never be prepared to change their votes on policy alone. The issue for some appears more personal—viewing McCarthy as an outdated relic and an embodiment of status quo GOP leadership.
Simply put, some Republicans just don’t like him. There are serious doubts about if McCarthy can actually do anything to change that element of his situation.
Inevitably, it only takes five Republicans to block McCarthy from the gavel, barring any Democrats cooperating with Republicans to get to 218 votes. Some reporters tweeted suggestions Democrats—out of boredom or disengagement—might start missing future Speaker votes. But there’s no indication that Democrats will help Republicans get over this embarrassment.
Although these votes are equally time consuming for Democrats, who have to be present to maintain the maximum threshold for McCarthy to win, there’s little political motivation for Democrats to move things along. Several told The Daily Beast that they had no plans to miss votes and make things any easier for McCarthy.
Members on both sides of the aisle can’t do anything—be it legislating, investigating or beginning work on committees—until the speaker vote is complete. For Democrats, that means an opportunity to delay Republicans priorities in their newfound majority, if even for a few days.
And though some Republicans have floated scare tactic scenarios of Democrats working with Republicans to find some sort of unity candidate—like a very centrist member of either party—that remains a microscopically small likelihood. No serious names have been floated for a compromise candidate.
“Anybody who’s imagining some sort of unity or fusion approach, I think, is probably paying more attention to Aaron Sorkin movies than they are to how this place normally functions,” Johnson, the South Dakota Republican, told reporters on Tuesday.
There is also a lack of a clear second candidate to McCarthy—at least, one that openly wants the job. And even though it appears the second-ballot move to Jordan was strategic, the Ohio congressman is still insisting he’s for McCarthy. He voted for him on every ballot Tuesday.
Other names floated—like Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC)—are also declining to break ranks. As members adjourned, McHenry simply said he’s only “interested in getting Kevin McCarthy across the line.”
Regardless of McCarthy’s eventual fate, the day marks a historically rocky start for the 118th Congress. Usually, the first day of a new term is full of pomp and circumstance. Members get coveted photos with their families next to the speaker, shaking hands as they are officially sworn in. Every session since 1923, the speaker has been elected on the first ballot, making the first day typically a coronation and celebration of the party’s leader.
But for Republicans, Tuesday was a knife fight. And it brought out unusually bitter invective and personal threats thrown between fellow Republicans. The tense divisions revealed by this leadership battle raise the question of how McCarthy—and the House GOP—might recover, even if he ends up winning the gavel.
Bacon said McCarthy could come out of this battle stronger not because he would have unified the party, but because he would have been “the first guy to stand up” to a small faction that has terrorized the broader conference for years.
“From just a decency standpoint, we got 91 percent of the vote,” he said. “If you’re the 9 percent, you say, ‘OK, you know what, we’re part of a team, we’ll come together.’ They’ve gotten a lot, that 9 percent… they should be happy, but they won’t take that for a win.”
