Like many big families and the cast of “Seinfeld,” House Republicans are airing their grievances this holiday season.
Simmering frustrations over the slow-burning conservative campaign to derail Kevin McCarthy‘s speakership bid boiled over during a closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Mike Kelly(R-Pa.) and other allies of the minority leader standing up to advocate on his behalf, according to three people in the room.
The pro-McCarthy camp is privately at odds over how potent a threat they will face on Jan. 3, when the full House meets to elect a speaker — and when dissenters are vowing to deny the California Republican the votes he’ll need.
That’s in part because McCarthy dissenters have adopted a slow-drip strategy, gradually dropping signals of new opposition throughout the GOP leader’s monthlong courtship of his critics. Some McCarthy backers see the tactics of his conservative skeptics as little more than hot air, predicting that all complaints will fade after a show of force on Jan. 3. But behind closed doors, other allies are starting to doubt that McCarthy can survive the gauntlet needed to win the gavel.
It all adds up to a very un-merry GOP conference wracked by anger and worry about a 2024 backlash against their internal squabbles.
“This conference cannot handcuff itself to a burning building before we gavel in the 118th Congress,” said Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), the head of the more moderate Republican Governance Group.
“We had a conference vote where [McCarthy] won by 85 percent,” said first-term Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), a conservative who supports the minority leader. “I’d like to see the members who won by 85 percent in their district — do they think they should have another vote?”
McCarthy allies are debating which of the five Republicans who’ve so far threatened to oppose him may be persuadable, while working to uncover the names of any alternative speaker candidate or candidates whom committed “no” votes like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Bob Good (R-Va.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) may promote as a viable choice.
In another sign of growing tensions between the camps, Good stood during Tuesday’s meeting to counter the lawmakers speaking in the Californian’s favor, arguing that they received more time to talk than the one-minute time limit to speak that’s set by internal party rules. One Republican familiar said Greene had two members yield their time to her.
“If you’re going to have a time limit, abide by it,” Norman said on his way out of the Tuesday meeting, remarking in an interview that his blood pressure was up.