House Democrats on Tuesday said they do not plan to save Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) when a vote on ousting him from the top spot hits the floor later in the day.
Emerging from a more than two-hour meeting in the Capitol, House Democrats said they will vote to oust McCarthy from the Speakership.
“We are following our leader and we are not saving Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters.
Asked if a decision was made as a caucus not to support McCarthy, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) responded, “yes.”
This news follows McCarthy’s statement that he won’t give Dems anything to save his Speakership.
An under-appreciated point here is that with McCarthy gone, the math for somebody else to become Speaker is that much harder, and the odds of that person needing to rely on Democratic votes - and to make major, major concessions to get them - commensurately higher; in other words, just because McCarthy wouldn’t make a deal with Democrats to remain Speaker, it doesn’t mean that somebody else won’t eventually make one to become Speaker.
But any deal with a Republican can’t be trusted. It’s better to hold out and vote to remove McCarthy and not confirm another Republican. Literally all of them will break their word.
Democrats just need to make Republicans look completely inept and block everything but the budget. Republicans are not going to pass anything good anyway.
A deal to get Democrats to vote for a Republican would have to include shared committee leadership.
Well that’s why they demand the Republicans hold up their end first - the would-be Speaker and a couple of his/her allies sign a discharge petition to implement whatever it is they agreed to, and only after that passes do the Democrats support them.
Part of me is holding out for some kind of unity coalition government but that will never happen in US politics.
Is it basically a “hung parliament” situation where nobody has a majority? Democrats vs “republicans” vs maga.
Yep, exactly.