October 3, 2023: Kevin McCarthy, a Republican representing the 20th District of California, including his hometown of Bakersfield, is removed from the office of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It is the 1st time a Speaker had ever been removed by his own caucus, and only the 3rd time it had ever been attempted.
NOTE: While these entries are dated 2022, I decided to backdate the posting dates of events from 2023 onward to the same date in 2022.
The Republicans had gained a slim majority in the Congressional elections of 2022, seemingly elevating McCarthy to his dream job. First elected to Congress in 2006, and joining the Republicans' House Leadership after the 2010 elections, and was in line for the office.
But there were 19 Republicans in the House, all of them beholden to rejected former President Donald Trump and deniers of the 2020 Presidential election result, who had said they would never vote for McCarthy for Speaker under any circumstances. Not that they would cross over and vote for the Democratic Party's new Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a black man from Brooklyn; but that they would try to elect one of their own.
Since they didn't have the numbers to do that, they decided to extract concessions from McCarthy: Choice places on House Committees, promises to do witch-hunt investigations of President Joe Biden and other Democrats, and so on.
And so, on January 3, 2023, when the House gathered to elect its Speaker, all the Democrats voted for Jeffries, and not all the Republicans voted for McCarthy. Jeffries finished 1st, but not with a majority. McCarthy finished 1st among Republicans, but not with a majority. A 2nd ballot was conducted that day, with the same result.
Many observers, including myself, remembered an episode of the NBC drama The West Wing, set at a deadlocked Democratic Convention, with political operative Leo McGarry (played by John Spencer) telling the campaign managers of the 3 remaining Presidential candidates, none of whose bosses could get a majority of delegates but none would give in, "One night of this is great theater. Two, and we look like idiots."
The ballots kept coming, and McCarthy still couldn't get a majority. So he began "giving away the store." He made concession after concession to the "Never Kevins," including the scrapping of the rule that said that it would take 5 Representatives to file a motion to remove the Speaker: Now, it would take only 1. In other words, any single member of the House, including some of the craziest right-wingers ever to sit in it, had the chance to extort McCarthy.
On the 13th ballot, he was still 5 votes short. McCarthy went over to talk to 1 of the last 5, Matt Gaetz of Florida, a man under criminal investigation for child trafficking -- no joke -- and Gaetz just pointed his finger at McCarthy, as if to lecture him.
Matt Gaetz
At this point, Mike Rogers of Alabama couldn't take it any longer, and walked over toward Gaetz, and was physically restrained by Richard Hudson of North Carolina. A 14th ballot was taken, and still, Gaetz wouldn't give in. Meanwhile, every time a ballot began, and a Democrat nominated Jeffries, a chant of "Ha-keem! Ha-keem! Ha-keem!" went up.
Finally, shortly after Midnight on January 7, a 15th ballot was held. Gaetz and the last 5 holdouts voted "Present," rather than for any particular challenger. That meant that McCarthy only had to get a majority of those who actually voted for a candidate, and he now had it, 215-214, instead of the 218 he thought he would need.
No Speaker has ever had so little leverage. Ali Vitali of MSNBC said that, now, every single Republican member can hold whatever McCarthy wants to do hostage for their own purposes. One Facebook poster I saw wrote, "Kevin McCarthy sold his soul and only got a t-shirt that says I'VE BEEN TO MAR-A-LAGO." (Trump's Palm Beach, Florida estate.)
And then, January 10, the House Republicans, "led" by McCarthy, voted to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. Now, who's trying to "defund the police"?
The Republicans had campaigned on reducing inflation, reducing crime, and increasing border protection. They didn't produce bills to do any of those things. They spent the entire year running investigations of Hunter Biden, the President's son, who -- unlike Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner -- did not work in his father's Administration, and had nothing to do with his father's policies.
Meanwhile, a budget for Fiscal Year 2024 had to pass by September 30. There was nearly a government shutdown. But McCarthy worked with Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and averted it. Somehow, McCarthy got enough Republicans to join with the Democrats that Jeffries put together to add up to 218 votes. The price, though, was no new funding for Ukraine in its war of defense against Russia, which the Republicans, still the party of Trump, still owned by Russia, wouldn't have voted for under any circumstances.
It was too much for Gaetz, who wanted absolutely no deals with Biden and the Democrats. On October 3, he filed a motion to vacate the Speaker's office, and it passed. There were some suggestions that the Democrats try to "save McCarthy," for the fear that the next Republican Speaker would be even worse. Instead, the Democrats rolled the dice, thinking that McCarthy didn't deserve to be saved, and that, maybe, just maybe, enough Republicans who weren't beholden to Trump might cross over and vote for Jeffries as the next Speaker. None voted to sustain McCarthy.
The joke was too easy, and came quickly: "If you turn up your base too loud, it can destroy your speaker."
McCarthy was Speaker for just under 9 months -- almost the average length of a human pregnancy. And yet, these Republicans, who proudly declare themselves to be "pro-life," gave the McCarthy Speakership a "late-term abortion."
Patrick McHenry of North Carolina was appointed Speaker Pro Tempore, to serve until a Speaker could be elected for the rest of the term, until January 3, 2025. His first action was to kick Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of California out of the office that McCarthy had left for her -- while Pelosi was all the way across the country, attending the funeral of her fellow San Franciscan, Senator Dianne Feinstein. It was an incredibly petty move, the kind that Trump probably loved.
It took 22 days for the Republicans to agree on a new Speaker. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who voted to de-certify the 2020 Presidential election, couldn't get 217 votes. Nor could Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the leaders of the January 6, 2021 Insurrection, and a former wrestling coach at Ohio State University who looked the other way on evidence of abuse in his program. Nor could Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who, during the 2022 Congressional election, posted a video on Twitter that showed him firing a fully automatic machine gun with the caption "#FIREPELOSI."
Finally, on October 25, they elected James Michael "Mike" Johnson of Louisiana, 51. He also supported overturning the 2020 Presidential election, and had a record as a "Christian nationalist," making him an extremist on issues relating to women, gay people and racial minorities. In other words, by refusing to "save" McCarthy, the Democrats allowed the next Speaker to be somebody noticeably worse. As the old saying goes, the Democratic Party never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Nevertheless, in 2024, Johnson did work with Biden and Schumer to get some things done to help the country. This angered some of the Republican hardliners, including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who filed a motion to vacate the Speaker's chair. This time, however, Johnson, perhaps smarter than McCarthy, found enough common ground with Jeffries that Jeffries was willing to "save him." After all, it's not like Jeffries himself was going to become Speaker -- not without another full Congressional election, anyway.
*
October 3, 2023 was a Tuesday. Football was in midweek. The NBA and NHL seasons hadn't started yet. But the Major League Baseball Playoffs got underway, with all 4 Wild Card Series starting:
* In the American League, the Minnesota Twins beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 3-1 at Target Field in Minneapolis. This was the 1st postseason game won by the Twins in 19 years. The next day, they won again, taking the best-2-out-of-3 series, their 1st postseason series win in 21 years.
* The Texas Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 4-0 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Attendance: 19,704. It was the lowest attendance for an MLB postseason game in 104 years, since Game 7 of the 1919 World Series.
Rays fans didn't show up in their stupid little stadium, but they did show up online, claiming that it was in the middle of a workday. Well, so was the Twins' game, and they were in cold Minnesota, and their attendance was 38,450, a full house and double the Rays' attendance. The next day, the Rangers completed the sweep, and the Rays got 20,198 fans.
* In the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Miami Marlins, 4-1 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadlephia.
* And the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-3 at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
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