Kevin McCarthy ousted as U.S. House Speaker

The first-ever ouster of a sitting Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives opens a period of disarray that could last days.

The chamber now faces an urgent task to which all other issues will take a backseat, from passing a budget to funding Ukraine: that task is appointing a new leader of the chamber, third in line to the presidency.

Kevin McCarthy was ousted by eight members of his own party, who voted alongside 208 Democrats to remove him in a 216-210 vote.

It could take days to resolve and it’s unclear whether McCarthy will run to regain his title.

As Republicans spewed venom at each other, Democrats watched in silence.

Members of the opposition party sat crossing their arms, smiling, refusing to either participate in the debate or to lift a finger in McCarthy’s defence.

It is a historic flashpoint in a years-long battle between what some view as the Republican Party’s governing wing versus its cable-television self-promotional wing.

“It’s disgusting. It’s what’s disgusting about Washington,” shouted one McCarthy defender, Republican Garret Graves of Louisiana, waving his phone, showing how his party’s malcontents were raising money off their revolt.

“My phone keeps sending text messages. Saying, ‘Hey, give me money!’ Oh, look at that. ‘Give me money — I’ve filed a motion to vacate.’ It’s disgusting. It’s what’s disgusting about Washington.”

The fears for Ukraine

This was on a day that President Joe Biden called world leaders including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reassure them that U.S. support for Ukraine will continue.

The U.S. is by far the biggest military backer of Kyiv, and current funds are believed to be enough to last, at most, several months.

Ukraine funding was part of the stated rationale for the ouster attempt, which was launched by the flamethrowing Floridian Matt Gaetz, with the support of some hard-right commentators like Steve Bannon.

McCarthy had expressed support for more funding.

The broader charge from Gaetz, however, is that the Speaker is a liar. He said McCarthy promises everything to everybody, from the White House to Republicans, then breaks those promises.

“The thing we have in common: Kevin McCarthy said something to all of us at one point or another that he didn’t really mean, and never intended to live up to,” Gaetz said.

He said McCarthy hasn’t fulfilled promises to conservatives he made earlier this year in a gruelling effort to gain the speakership, including cutting debt.

Meanwhile, many Republicans muttered unprintable things about Gaetz, who is detested by many colleagues. They accuse him of lying about the events that led to this moment, and scoff that he’s doing it to boost his own political profile.

‘This institution will fail’

One of many staunch conservatives who backed McCarthy warned that an ouster of the Speaker would make the chamber ungovernable.

“This institution will fail,” said Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

It’s worth noting that Massie is usually one of his party’s most vigorous rebels, a thorn in the side of past leaders.

It’s also impossible to assess this week’s events without looking back at the trajectory of the last few years. The story it tells is of a system cracking and of political institutions increasingly paralyzed by partisanship. Starting with the Republican Party.

Consider this sequence of history-making, precedent-shattering events.

In 2020, we witnessed an effort — the longest since 1876 — by a defeated presidential candidate, Donald Trump, to undo an election result.

In 2021, there was the unprecedented spectacle of Jan. 6, the attack on the U.S. Capitol, an effort to stop the election certification.

In 2022, after the midterm elections, Republicans won the House of Representatives but couldn’t agree on a leader.

There was the longest fight since 1855 to name a Speaker. That’s when McCarthy finally gained the post after 15 rounds.

Now, in 2023, McCarthy becomes the first Speaker stripped of power, ever. In fact, he was the first Speaker to even face a removal vote since 1910.

Past Speaker spats

Flashback to 113 years ago: Republicans came close to ousting their leader, a decades-long veteran of the institution, Joseph Cannon, who represented the party’s traditional pro-business wing, and faced a rebellion from members of his party’s ascendant populist wing.

“The real truth is that there is no coherent Republican majority in the House of Representatives,” Cannon told the chamber, drawing applause from critics on his own side.

But he won the subsequent vote. An office building next to the Capitol is now named after him.

These days, Republican leaders are less durable.

In 2018, Paul Ryan cut short a once-bright political career after a brief stint as Speaker. Before him, John Boehner resigned in 2015, amid a rebellion from his own side.

Boehner’s memoirs are dripping with disdain for these lawmakers, people he says have no interest in achieving practical goals, like attainable budget cuts, but who push maximalist, uncompromising positions in order to become cable TV stars.

His book refers to “knuckleheads,” “lunatics,” and “crazies,” people he said would block everything and claim it was out of principle, but were in reality attention-seeking phonies.

“Most of these guys weren’t about principles. They were about chaos and power,” Boehner wrote, adding: “Don’t get me wrong — the Democrats are far from guilt free in all of this.”

In the end, Democrats decided not to spare any votes to save McCarthy, who has infuriated them, both by reneging on a previous budget deal, and by launching an impeachment hearing into Biden.

Gaetz won his showdown.

What he insists he wants is deeper budget cuts — to attack the soaring $33 trillion US national debt, and to end funding for Ukraine.

What Gaetz is reportedly interested in: moving back to Florida, and winning the Republican nomination to become the next governor.

He’s now more famous than ever.

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