October 3, 2023: The Ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy

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.

January 7, 2023: The 15th Ballot for Speaker Kevin McCarthy

January 7, 2023: Kevin McCarthy, a Republican representing the 20th District of California, including his hometown of Bakersfield, is elected the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives -- on the 15th ballot.

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.

Electing the Speaker, and swearing in the members of the House for a new term, usually happens on January 3 of odd-numbered years, although the outgoing Congress may pass a law setting up a different date, for various reasons. This time, the 1st ballot was, indeed, held on January 3.

But it usually only takes 1 ballot to do it: The members of the majority party choose their nominee, and he gets more votes than the person that the members of the minority party choose as their nominee, and that's it. This time, the majority party couldn't agree.

McCarthy, born in Bakersfield in 1965, was first elected to Congress in 2006, and joined the Republicans' House Leadership after the 2010 elections, so he was on the rise quickly. He became House Majority Whip, the Number 3 ranking in the majority party. He became House Majority Leader, the Number 2 man, in mid-2014, when Eric Cantor of Virginia lost his primary for re-election and resigned early. When the Democrats regained control of the House in 2018, he became House Minority Leader, following the retirement of former Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

He was determined to bring his Party back into the majority, as he despised the Democrats' House Leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. On August 1, 2021, he was the keynote speaker of the 44th annual Statesmen's Dinner hosted by the Tennessee Republican Party in Nashville. With Pelosi leading the House, Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York as Senate Majority Leader, and Democrat Joe Biden as President, McCarthy called America a "country in crisis" during his speech, and said, "I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel... It’ll be hard not to hit her with it."

He was cheered by the 1,400 people in attendance. But Hakeem Jeffries of New York, then the Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus (their Number 3), wrote on Twitter, "Violence against women is no laughing matter. Apologize." McCarthy did not apologize. His statement looked worse when, 8 days before the next Congressional election, an assailant broke into Pelosi's San Francisco home, shouting "Where's Nancy?" and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.

McCarthy made bold predictions about a "red wave" that would sweep the Republicans into control of both houses of Congress, guided by revulsion against the Democrats on the issues of crime and inflation.

What he did not anticipate was that, guided by revulsions against the Republicans for standing by disgraced former President Donald Trump, anger at the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights, and generally being okay with the way that Biden, Pelosi and Schumer were running the country, the red wave turned into a trickle. The Republicans barely took control of the House, with only a 5-vote majority; and the Democrats actually gained 1 seat in the Senate.

And to rub it in further, Pelosi announced her retirement as Speaker, although she would remain in the House. So the Democrats elected an all-younger leadership, and it would be Jeffries, as the new House Minority Leader, who would be handing the gavel over to whoever the Republicans chose as Speaker.

Except that there was no guarantee that it would be McCarthy. There were 19 Republicans in the House, all of them deniers of the 2020 Presidential election result, who had said they would never vote for him for Speaker under any circumstances. Not that they would cross over and vote for 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 Biden and other Democrats, and so on.

And so, on January 3, 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.

The next day, the New York Daily News, citing McCarthy and the newly-elected George Santos, who told some absolutely ridiculous lies to win a district on New York's Long Island, had a front page that summed up the situation.

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."

But on that day, January 4, McCarthy moved into the Speaker's office, prematurely, ahead of time, without authority. He followed George W. Bush's path after the 2000 election: Act like it's settled, and you've already won, and people will think you did. They didn't think so, and the word "squatting" came to mind.

By the end of the day, there had been 6 ballots for Speaker, and McCarthy still hadn't won. Trump released a statement telling those Republican holdouts, who had grown to 21, that they were embarrassing themselves, and that they should stop it, and vote for McCarthy. But Trump no longer had control over the Frankenstein monster he'd built.

I saw someone write on Facebook, "At this pace, Kevin McCarthy is gonna have the first pick in this year's NFL draft." When he became 0-for-9 on January 5, I was reminded of the title character's unexcused absences in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

There was a 10th ballot on January 5. He lost that, too. It was now the longest balloting process for the Speaker since 1855 -- before the American Civil War. I began to think of a song by Led Zeppelin: "How Many More Times?" On January 6 -- 2 years to the day after the insurrection that failed to prevent the certification of Biden's election as President -- he fell to 0-for-12. I thought of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and thought, At what point does he just say there are five lights?

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.

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.

As of this writing -- the date on the post reads "January 7, 2022," but I'm backdating all entries after calendar year 2022 to that year, so all entries for a day of the year are together -- the general public still does not know what McCarthy offered Gaetz to get him, and the others he was leading, to change their votes to "Present," but he got it. McCarthy had finally been elected the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

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 Florida estate.)

And then, before handing over the gavel, Jeffries, as the House rules allowed him to do, made a statement. And it was a fantastic speech, revving the Democrats up, making him look like exactly what they'd hoped he'd be: The man who should be the Speaker of the House. He handed the gavel over to McCarthy, whose speech was quiet and conciliatory, befitting someone who was in no position to "spike the football."

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"?

UPDATE: On October 3, angry at McCarthy's negotiations to keep the federal government funded, Gaetz filed a motion to vacate the Speaker's office, and it passed. 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 McCarthy Speakership a late-term abortion.

It took 22 days for the Republicans to agree on a new Speaker, finally electing Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

*

January 7, 2023 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. Two games were played in the NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Las Vegas Raiders, 31-13 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. And the Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Tennessee Titans, 20-16 at TIAA Bank Stadium in Jacksonville.

There were 5 games played in the NBA:

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz, 126-118 at the United Center in Chicago. Zach LaVine scored 36 points.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 127-117 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Luka Dončić scored 34.

* The Boston Celtics beat the San Antonio Spurs, 121-116 at the AT&T Center (now the Frost Bank Center)  in San Antonio. Jason Tatum scored 34.

* The Orlando Magic beat the Golden State Warriors, 115-101 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Sacramento Kings, 136-134 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. LeBron James led all scorers on the day with 37.

And there were 8 games in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat the New York Rangers, 4-3 at the Prudential Center. Damon Severson scored the winning goal, 2:13 into overtime.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-4 at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

* The Seattle Kraken beat the Ottawa Senators, 8-4 at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-1 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-3 in a shootout at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus.

* The Colorado Avalanche beat the Edmonton Oilers, 3-2 at Rogers Place in Edmonton. Cale Makar scored the winning goal with 2:51 left in overtime.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Vegas Golden Knights, 5-1 at the T-Mobile Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.

* And the Boston Bruins beat the San Jose Sharks, 4-2 at the SAP Center in San Jose.