GOP threats to McCarthy come into sharper focus

GOP threats to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) leadership from Republicans unhappy about his commitment to spending cuts are coming into sharper focus, with critics signaling the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden won’t necessarily save him.  

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), one of the fiscal conservatives, said that a push to oust McCarthy is “definitely” something he would be “willing to entertain” in the coming weeks. 

“Clearly, it’s not a big stretch for me. I never voted for Kevin McCarthy in the first place,” said Crane, who was one of the House Republicans who withheld support from the Californian during his marathon Speakership election in January.  

“I’m not thrilled with the job he’s done. More importantly, neither are my voters. So, I would love to see stronger leadership in the House,” Crane said.  

Lawmakers like Crane who have long been thorns in McCarthy’s side are using the pressure of a motion to vacate — a move to force a vote on ousting the Speaker — as leverage in the spending fight.  

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has been at the forefront of the threats to McCarthy since January, is threatening to initiate the motion unless McCarthy meets a series of demands on spending and impeaching Biden. Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a funding measure to prevent a shutdown.  

Gaetz signaled Wednesday on conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s show that if McCarthy does not “come into compliance” in the next two weeks, he could start calling for votes to recall McCarthy. 

McCarthy has largely dismissed Gaetz, saying Monday that he was “not at all” worried about a push to oust him, adding: “Matt’s Matt.”  

On Tuesday, McCarthy referenced his apparent belief that Gaetz wants him to intervene in an open House Ethics Committee investigation into the Florida congressman. 

“He can threaten all he wants. I will not interject the Speaker into the independent Ethics Committee to influence it any way at all,” McCarthy told reporters. 

But the threats to McCarthy aren’t just coming from the Florida Republican.  

“I’m prepared to support a change in leadership through the mechanism of the motion to vacate the chair if necessary,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said this week. “I continue to be in the same spot.” 

A looming threat 

The threat of a motion to vacate has loomed over McCarthy since his drawn-out election in January, when he agreed to lower the threshold to make such a motion from five members to one member in order to sway the Republican holdouts. 

Lawmakers such as Crane never moved to McCarthy and still view him with some suspicion. 

Conservatives say that McCarthy has not followed through on other promises about spending and floor consideration of certain bills that he made in January to earn their support. 

If McCarthy thought that opening an impeachment inquiry would help him build goodwill with the hard-line conservatives who have been battling with him for months over top-line spending levels, they are showing him this week that he is not. 

Gaetz dismissed McCarthy’s opening of an impeachment inquiry Tuesday as a “baby step,” warning that if McCarthy puts a “clean” stopgap bill to fund the government on the floor, he will call motions to vacate the chair to force recall votes on McCarthy’s Speakership every day.  

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said Tuesday that the issues should “be dealt separately.” 

And some Republicans worry that McCarthy is overtly trying to use impeachment as a distraction, dismissing McCarthy’s argument that Republicans must approve a stopgap measure to fund the government in order to keep their probes into Biden and his family’s business dealings moving.

“I will not be intimidated into falling for this false argument that we can’t continue to pursue impeachment inquiries or issue subpoenas,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) told The Hill last week.  

A stalled Pentagon bill 

In a sign of how launching the impeachment inquiry has not made it any easier for McCarthy to win votes on spending, conservatives Wednesday forced GOP leaders to punt plans to bring floor action on a Pentagon appropriations bill Wednesday, just a day after McCarthy opened the impeachment inquiry. 

Some Republicans remain optimistic that GOP leaders will find a path forward. They say the overall environment in the House GOP conference is more collegial than it can appear from the conservative rabble-rousers’ statements.  

“I expected there to be a lot more tension, but people accept the reality of this situation, and I think people are working in good faith to resolve upon it,” said one House GOP member who supports McCarthy. 

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the loudest advocates for making steeper cuts to appropriations measures, offered a somewhat optimistic take Wednesday.  

He said that “there’s been more conversations today than there’s been in a long time,” and suggested that the deadline pressure on McCarthy ahead of a government shutdown deadline is having an effect.  

“It’s kind of funny what happens when the pressure is on. It kind of forces people to have to make some tough choices,” Roy said. 

Crane and Gaetz, along with Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), were the only four members of the initial group of 20 House Republicans who opposed McCarthy’s speakership to never vote for him, switching to “present” on the last ballot. 

Biggs, though, did explicitly commit to supporting a move to oust McCarthy. 

“My position has always been that motion to vacate is a tool that should be available. It’s just a matter of whether it really will come to pass,” Biggs said. 

And while Gaetz is being more vocal about making a motion to vacate, McCarthy is for the moment facing far less of a threat than he did in January. 

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), one of that group of 20 who opposed McCarthy, said he is not thinking about any motion to vacate push. 

And Bishop, who has said he would like to see McCarthy out, indicated that strategy is an important factor. 

“When and whether to bring a motion to vacate the chair has a lot of other considerations attended upon it,” Bishop said. “I’m not here to show off or do things on my own.” 

McCarthy’s leadership, Bishop said, is “a secondary issue to what ought to be the main focus, which is we must move forward, we must put a plan on the table.” 

Still, a lack of a consensus on where to go next might not prevent at least symbolic attempts to force recall votes. 

Gaetz said Tuesday that if he has to start “every single day in Congress with the prayer, the pledge and the motion to vacate, so be it.”