In the wake of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's reliance on mostly Democratic votes to temporarily avert a government shutdown, the threat of ouster from his fellow Republicans is more apparent – especially after Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz's signaling that he will move forward with a "motion to vacate."
According to The Washington Post's Aaron Blake, it wouldn't take a whole lot of Republicans voting to oust McCarthy to give Democrats an advantage.
"Given that McCarthy has just five GOP votes to spare while keeping a majority, a relatively small number of Republicans voting to oust him could give the Democrats leverage," Blake writes. "For every Republican who would vote to oust McCarthy beyond those five, he would need to pick off a Democrat willing to keep him in the job. So, for example, if the 20 Republicans who initially voted against McCarthy for speaker voted to remove him, McCarthy would need around 15 Democrats to vote to keep him in the job."
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Democrats are keeping their cards close to the vest in regards to whether they'll vote to oust McCarthy. Some are suggesting they want to use the instability behind his speakership as a bargaining chip to obtain concessions from Republicans.
"As for what those concessions could even be? It’s entirely unclear. McCarthy undoubtedly lost any shot he had at goodwill with Democrats by recently launching a speculative impeachment inquiry into President Biden that they regard as a cynical and baseless attempt to save his own skin," writes Blake. "The Post has noted that he could promise votes on certain Democratic priorities — perhaps on something like Ukraine funding — give Democrats more representation on committees, allot them more spending earmarks or promise to govern more from the center."
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Speaking to The Post, Matt Glassman, an expert on the politics of the House and the speakership at Georgetown University, said that it seems "exceedingly unlikely — basically impossible — for McCarthy to create a durable bipartisan procedural coalition."
“And even if he tried, that would require completely adjusting his policy program toward the Democrats that he would be bargaining with, and that would probably make more Republicans abandon him.”
Read the full article over at The Washington Post.
