House speaker vote: McCarthy thanks Trump for final votes as fight nearly breaks out on floor

Brendan Buck argues in The New York Times that the goal of GOP rebels in the House may not be to unseat Kevin McCarthy as GOP leader and deny him the speakership.

The goal instead may be to publicly weaken him politically, maximising the power that conservatives and Trump acolytes will have in the House for the next two years.

Read more from this former Paul Ryan aide in the Times:

Kevin McCarthy tweeted last week that he would allow the GOP to pursue an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 once the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives.

Many members of his party have spread false information or even outright conspiracy theories about the virus in the three years since it arrived on US shores.

GOP leader Kevin McCarthy moved his things into the suite utilised by the Speaker of the House as he presumes that he will be elected to the position on Tuesday.

But he has yet to secure the necessary 218 votes to win the role — and a faction of conservatives are vowing to vote against him.

Congressman Don Bacon has a message for the conservatives hoping to block Kevin McCarthy from the speakership role: Get in line, or suffer the consequences.

In a new op-ed in the Daily Caller, he warns that he and others will work with Democrats to elect an “agreeable” Republican if a faction of pro-Trump conservatives block Mr McCarthy from winning the speaker’s gavel.

Conservatives are pushing a rule change with the advent of the new Congress which would gut the House Ethics Committee just before it has the opportunity to investigate one of their own for apparently fictionalising his entire resume.

Norm Eisen, a former US diplomat and expert on both constitutional law and a co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), called it the “Santos protection package”, and suggested that Republicans were hoping to shield themselves from future ethics investigations by rendering the office harmless.

Kevin McCarthy projected optimism on Monday when asked by reporters if he had the 218 votes necessary to secure the House speakership role.

Kevin McCarthy is set to face his greatest political test tomorrow.

The election of the House speaker takes place before the chamber has settled on the rules for the next Congress, the 118th. This means that the vote will occur without regular procedures in place.

Read more about this procedure — and the political history behind it — in The Independent:

ICYMI: Nine House Republicans sent a letter criticising House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker despite his overtures.

Republican Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Chip Roy of Texas and seven others wrote that Mr McCarthy’s responses to their demands were “insufficient.”

Read more:

ICYMI: An op-ed in The New York Times from Brendan Buck, a veteran GOP operative on Capitol Hill who worked for ex-Speaker Paul Ryan, is making the rounds today.

Mr Buck and Mr Ryan’s wing of the GOP in general is thought to be disgusted with how Mr McCarthy has sought to placate conservatives and Trump acolytes as GOP minority leader; Mr Ryan publicly supported the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

Read more in the Times:

ICYMI: Critics of GOP leader Kevin McCarthy are advising against the public spectacle that would inevitably follow a battle on the House floor for control of the speaker’s gavel as it becomes clearer and clearer that he has not yet secured the votes to lead the chamber come Tueday.

Robert Costa reported the state of the race in a Twitter thread Monday morning. The views of Mr McCarthy’s critics are important given that he will be attempting to win them over should voting go to a second round in tomorrow’s election for speaker.