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The Guardian in the UK reports that:
eight hard-right Republicans joined 208 Democrats in supporting McCarthy’s removal
So it was really the Democrats who ousted McCarthy. But McCarthy seemed as sympathetic to the Democrats as any speaker is likely to be, and his replacement is likely to be further to the right, so it seems an odd thing for the Democrats to do. Do they have some genuine reason or were they just trying to embarrass the Republicans and highlight the factional infighting?
Question #1
So it was really the Democrats who ousted McCarthy.
Short Answer
No, the Democrats weren't responsible but they did seem to enjoy the spectacle.
Answer
It was clearly the 8 out of 221 Republicans who ousted McCarthy. A Republican issued the vacate motion, triggering the floor vote. 8 Republicans denied him his party's majority support. His ousting falls on them, because without them Kevin McCarthy would still be speaker.
The conservative news media know who's at fault.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican and psycho killer, led the smallest caucus in Congress this week across the aisle and into the lap of Democrats.
Other Media:
The Democrats never voted for McCarthy in the first place; it's not a responsibility of the minority party to keep the majority's officers in place. Kevin McCarthy's position was always dependent on his party's majority, as is every speaker. Kevin McCarthy's majority was smaller and more fractured than most. His days were numbered the moment he allowed a motion to vacate rule with a single vote into the rules of his Congress. That was among the many conditions the Matt Gaetz / Jim Jordan faction wanted, and they always planned to use it. They said as much when they got it.
Really, Kevin McCarthy has only himself to blame. In order to get the support of the "Freedom Caucus" initially, he had to buy them off, and in doing so he gave them the gun they used on him. He gave them important committee chairmanships, a pledge not to work across the aisle with Democrats, and the power to vacate his office over a single vote. These concessions gave the "Freedom Caucus" power which far exceeded their coalition's support and, it appears, competence. Kevin McCarthy needed to do that to get into the speakership, and once having done so he would never get to hold his office for very long.
Question:
What did the Democrats have to gain by ousting Kevin McCarthy?
Short Answer
When your opponent is shooting himself in the foot, don't interfere. Loosely based on a 19th century Napoleon Quote.
Answer
The Democrats have a lot to gain. I guess the main thing the Democrats decided was, they could do better than Kevin McCarthy.
a. Donald Trump was investigating Biden 4 years ago, which was what his first impeachment was about. Manufacturing evidence against Biden.
Impeachment inquiry transcripts reveal shock and concern over Trump plot
Two senior American diplomats warned congressional investigators a White House plot to manufacture political dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine had undermined US national security interests and shredded faith among foreign service personnel, according to transcripts released on Monday by committees pursuing an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
b. Speaker McCarthy at the beginning of 2023 authorized three important House committees to conduct nearly a 9 month investigation into Joe Biden. Each of which Found nothing.
i. House Oversight and Accountability Committee
ii. House Judiciary Committee
Republican Congressman Accidentally Admits There’s No Proof of Biden Corruption
Representative Nick Langworthy tried to defend Republicans’ Biden investigation, and ended up rejecting their main talking point instead.
iii. Ways and Means Committee
Republican congressman struggles to answer questions about allegations Biden influenced the Justice Department Jason Smith, the Ways and Means Committee chair, was asked to explain how documents provided by his panel showed evidence of wrongdoing or a two-tiered justice system.
c. Sept 1, 2023, Speaker Kevin McCarthy pledges not to open impeachment inquiry without Congressional vote.
McCarthy says he won’t open impeachment inquiry without House vote
d. Sept 12, 2023, Speaker McCarthy opens an impeachment inquiry on his own authority without Congressional approval
Speaker McCarthy directs the House to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden without a house vote
With no evidence of any wrong doing turning up after 9 months of three important committee investigations into President Biden. Kevin McCarthy in a bid to gain support from the Freedom Caucus decides to publicly announce an impeachment inquiry with no charges and give it to the same 3 Freedom Caucus chaired committees?
Sept. 28, 2023, House GOP’s impeachment witnesses say there's no evidence yet that Biden committed a crime
Conclusion: House Democrats have reasons to believe Kevin McCarthy isn't someone they can work with. That he is an political extremist ideologue / hack, demonstrated by their previous experiences with him. That Democrats can hope for better.
What else do Democrats get?
Most Republicans supported Kevin McCarthy. Matt Gaetz and the other 7 Republicans who ousted Kevin McCarthy aren't all that popular now among their Republican peers.
Jim Jordan, Matt's spiritual compass, is now running for speaker. I'm guessing the 200 Republicans who voted with Kevin McCarthy will not support Jim Jordan for speaker. So ultimately, the more mainstream Republicans will either have to get down on their knees and bow before the clown car wing of their party, which I think is unlikely, or they will propose a more acceptable option from their faction. Then the Democrats will support that guy. And he will probably need their support too, because the "Freedom Caucus" seems unwilling to compromise.
So beyond someone better for the office, the Democrats now get to expose the dysfunction inside the Republican party, as we repeat the embarrassing 15 rounds of votes it took to place Kevin McCarthy in the speakership in the first place. Their demonstration will be: not only can't the Republicans perform the core function of governance, funding the government, they can't even elect their own leadership.
Politico: The rudderless GOP careens toward 2024
Kevin McCarthy’s undoing underscores a bigger problem — the inability to govern itself — that risks imperilling the party’s chances in 2024.
This time it might be longer than 15 rounds of votes to elect a new leader, as there is no consensus candidate among the Republican majority to start with. So the entire Republican majority will be tainted by a handful of over-empowered extremists, over and over and over again on world-wide TV. Remember it's likely that, after 5-10-15-20+ painful rounds of votes, it will still be the Democrats who will get to play the heroes and decide the next speaker. It's either that, or the "Freedom Caucus" would have to accept someone from the Republican majority, or the majority of Republicans will have to accept a freedom caucus member. Both rather unlikely near-term options.
The Nail in Kevin McCarthy's Coffin
Kevin McCarthy went on the Sunday morning talk shows after the Democrats helped him pass the 45 day continuing resolution on Saturday. On the shows, Kevin McCarthy blamed the Democrats for trying to defeat the continuing resolution. It was an unfathomable statement which even the shows' hosts protested, on air. 90 Republicans voted against the Saturday continuing resolution, 1 Democrat did so. I'm guessing Kevin McCarthy was trying to avoid the vacate motion which had not yet been issued by throwing the "Freedom Caucus" some red meat.
Prior to deciding whether to support Kevin McCarthy in the vacate motion, Democrats played the tapes of these recent statements by Kevin McCarthy along with reviewing a long list of other grievances with the speaker. It was decided that the Democrats could do better than Kevin McCarthy.
Kevin McCarthy's 'original sin': What drove the House speaker's historic downfall.
Inside their closed-door meeting Tuesday (just before the vote to vacate), Democrats watched video of McCarthy’s interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” in which he trashed their party as having egged on a shutdown, even though it provided the bulk of votes to keep the government open. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., called it “a huge misstep” that clarified the thinking of fence-sitting Democrats. “One of the most stupid things somebody could do on the eve of your survival vote,” he said.
From Comments:
Can we stop with the clown car analogy? Clowns are neither incompetent nor evil, the GOP is both.
The analogy is definitely present. I thought about removing that, but they aren't my words. Those are the words newspapers, journalists and Congressmen, including GOP congressmen are using to describe the GOP. That expression is part of the story.
Congress isn't going to get anything done until the GOP works this out. They aren't going to work it out until they realize how much damage they're doing to themselves. At least we're not backed up against defaulting on the national debt like we were last time they tried to shutdown the government, that was the scary clown with a knife to the throat of the nation. Shutting down the government now, while political suicide prior to the 2024 election, it's not akin to defaulting on the national debt.
Why would a Democrat vote for McCarthy?
McCarthy (so far as I can tell) offered Democrats no incentive to vote for him, and gave them lots of reasons not to. Well, aside from offering McCarthy pity votes, I suppose…
Republicans have a majority in the House. They shouldn't need to depend on Democrats to elect a speaker of their choosing, and if they do need to do so they should be ready and willing to offer Democrats compromises and considerations for the favor. The problem is that the GOP is no longer a single party. The GOP is now two distinct parties — Republicans and Trumpists — formed into a de facto coalition government, all within a two-party system that doesn't support coalition governments. Trumpists are too small a minority to accomplish anything on their own, but just numerous enough to monkey-wrench the coalition whenever they feel like it. And they seem to feel like it a lot.
The current dispute over the speaker position makes the Republicans look like they are incompetent, out of control, at war with each other, and unable to perform even the basic functions of government. Even Fox News agrees that this is the case. At the risk of stating the obvious, this situation almost exclusively benefits the Democrats. As Democrat Representative Primalya Jayapal said before the vote:
As much as many people here would like to make this a Democrat problem, it's a Republican problem. They supposedly have the majority and should be able to choose their own speaker. We have our our [candidate for] speaker, Hakeem Jeffries.
They are thinking (with great justification) that any problems resulting from this (including a possible future government shutdown) will be blamed on the Republicans. It's conceivable that if the chaos continues the Democrats may be able to strike a deal with 5 or more Republicans to pass temporary government funding on terms that make them look good.
TLDR: Chaos in the Republican party is good for Democrats.
Hard to say what their real reasons might be, but regarding McCarthy even though he agreed with them on the continuing resolution, they apparently could not forgive him other stuff:
Democrats blasted McCarthy for going back on his word in the debt ceiling agreement and advancing a series of spending bills at far lower levels. But it didn’t end there. McCarthy’s handling of Saturday, his last-minute decision to put a bill on the floor that kept the government open without giving Democrats the courtesy or time to read the bill and then forcing them to use procedural tactics to do so, became a major point of tension.
“A lot of it comes down to the budget agreement during the debt ceiling,” one member in the meeting said.
McCarthy’s comments this morning on CNBC that he wouldn’t cut a deal with Democrats was another major issue for Democrats. They were never going to save McCarthy for free.
“He just doesn’t keep his word. It is a habit for Kevin to just say things. It undermined what some of us had been leaving open that there could be some exchange. Not only did Kevin say this morning he wouldn’t do that, even if he were to, most people couldn’t trust what he said anyway,” the person said.
Other Democrats said they resented him for walking back his commitments on the Jan 6 investigation and the impeachment inquiry on Biden. Also, some Democrats still seem to entertain the possibility that a more bipartisan speaker might emerge, even if they describe that as a "long shot".
Finally, although this comes from a columnist rather than a Congressperson, another possible motivation is that exposing the inability of the Republicans to make use of their nominal majority (due to internal factions) would perhaps drive some swing voters/districts away from them, in the next elections.
Well, the top voted answer seems well enough on point:
The Democrats have successfully embarrassed the Republicans and gotten rid of a Speaker they had ample reason to dislike. They've exposed the rabid unreasonableness of folks like Gaetz and Taylor-Greene. Big wins.
What the Democrats haven't apparently cared all that much about is, you know, the effect on the country as a whole.
Consider this:
For all his faults, Mr McCarthy overcame thin margins during his time in office. In June he managed to raise the debt ceiling, to avoid unnecessarily forcing a default. Then, on September 30th, he pushed through a last-minute bipartisan deal to delay a costly government shutdown. The next speaker may find the job more difficult still, even without the same baggage that some in the unruly Republican Party felt that Mr McCarthy carried.
The immediate task will be funding the government. The deal to avert a shutdown keeps the government going only until November 17th. Without quick action, Mr McCarthy’s replacement will be overseeing a shutdown after a few weeks on the job. The gaping divide between moderate Republicans and hardliners, particularly in the House Freedom Caucus, will not go away simply because a fresh face is running the conference.
By helping to squash the challenge to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Democrats could save Congress from a lot of wasted time – time that's needed to, you know, govern.
If McCarthy is removed, another speaker has to be chosen. Does anyone remember the last time this question was before the House? It took four days in January to elect McCarthy to the speakership because of the fractures in the GOP. It was the most protracted vote for speaker since the mid-1800s.
The first time US debt was downgraded by another major credit rating agency, S&P, came in 2011. Even though lawmakers were able to reach an 11th-hour deal to stave off defaulting on debt, S&P felt the discourse was so substantial that it called into question the trustworthiness of government when it came to paying its bills on time.
The S&P move had tremendous market impacts, leading to steep stock market declines and rising bond yields.
Fitch reached the same conclusion in August, downgrading US debt from AAA to AA+. The move triggered a stock market sell off and pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to what was then its highest level since November. But it wasn’t long before markets recovered those losses.
Since then, all eyes have turned to Moody’s, which has maintained a AAA rating of US debt since 1917.
A Moody’s downgrade could cause yields on Treasury notes to spike even higher, underscoring the increased risks associated with holding US debt. That would increase the cost of borrowing money since banks and other lenders often base interest rates on US bond yields.
Now, I could very well be eating my words in 6 weeks about this point of view. It could very well be that the House gets its house in order and governs effectively. A better speaker than McCarthy - not a high bar, in theory - could emerge and lead a more bipartisan half of Congress. The spending drama may not materialize. Gaetz and Taylor-Greene may be marginalized.
Alternatively, the next Republican Speaker, because he will be Republican, may very well have been confirmed that any aisle crossing will be the kiss of death from his loonie fringe, while the Democrats will "stand on principles". I find it hard to understand how the most powerful elected Republican official getting successfully ousted by a third rate Sophomore congressman is supposed to lessen the power of Republican extremists myself.
Naively, I would think that the Dems, who can't get a Speaker since they don't have enough votes, would pick a "least worst" Speaker from the Republican camp. This seems obvious to me now, but it the same calculations also applied during McCarthy's initial election a while back (among other things they might have avoided that 1-vote, 1-expulsion procedure concession McCarthy made and gets criticized for).
Didn't have to be "the Democrats" either, only half a dozen congressfolk were needed in this case. I seem to recall that's how government is supposed to work, compromising and getting things done.
This is a really weird framing. The Democrats voted for their leader to become Speaker of the House, just like they always have before. There's noting at all unusual about that, and we'd only require an explanation if they did something else.
Recall back in January there were 15 house floor votes before a speaker was decided upon by a majority vote. In all 15 of those votes, all 212 Democrats unanimously voted for their leader, Hakim Jeffries, to become speaker. Here's what the final (15th) vote looked like:
In fact, McCarthy never really had the majority of House votes required to become speaker. His Republican detractors eventually just started voting "present" to lower the amount of total actual votes cast to a level where his 216 he could get was enough.
As far as that unified Democratic vote, this is typical parliamentary behavior out of the minority party, and can be counted on. In fact, it was counted on by Gaetz and his crew, which is how they got so many concessions out of McCarthy for their abstention, including that sword-of-damocles provision that one person could initiate a vote to oust the Speaker.
The prediction at the time was that McCarthy's tenure wasn't going to last past the first time he did something that Gaetz or one of the other dissident Republicans didn't like. Since one of their demands initially was that he induce another one of the periodic Republican debt-ceiling government shutdowns, speculation was the next time the debt ceiling was reached (at the time predicted to be this summer) was likely when it would happen. Turned out we made it an extra month or two, but otherwise the predictions were dead on.
There was absolutely no reason to expect the Democratic caucus to vote any differently this vote than they did in the previous 15 that were held ten months ago, or than the opposition party voted in any other such vote in the previous 236 years of the Republic. Giving them credit for what happened when Gaetz decided to cut loose his sword makes about as much sense as listing the cause of death of someone who jumped off a high-rise roof as "gravity".
Within the last month there was an impeachment trial in the legislature of Texas for its attorney general. As you can imagine, Republicans dominate this legislative body, and these Republicans ultimately acquitted the attorney general. So why the trial? The Democrats in Texas back the Republican Speaker candidate most sympathetic to Democrats. After observing the Democratic Party's political gains in Texas on the heels of this impeachment trial, the Democrats are looking to generalize the pattern from Texas in Congress. The Democrats believed that they could form a coalition with the softer Republicans in Congress to select a more Democrat-sympathetic Speaker. The temporary Speaker, I understand, is a close associate to McCarthy, so judging by how he threw Nancy Pelosi out of her cushy office space, I suspect that the Democrats may have miscalculated.
