Republicans are still reeling after Kevin McCarthy made history last night as the first ever speaker to be ousted by a vote of the House, following a right-wing revolt.
The congressman lost a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, with the final tally to remove him as leader of the Republican majority in the lower chamber of Congress coming in at 216-210.
The coming days and weeks will bring much uncertainty. While North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry will step in as interim speaker, the chamber will need to select a permanent replacement. And there is no obvious successor to oversee the House Republican majority. Adding to the pressure, Congress now has just over 40 days remaining to agree on a separate deal to avoid another potential government shutdown.
“The House GOP now resembles a failed state,” writes John Harris, POLITICO’s founding editor. “The party elects leaders with no capacity to lead members who have no interest in being led.”
While most Republicans vocally opposed McCarthy’s eviction, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz and seven other GOP members voted with House Democrats to eject him.
“Kevin McCarthy is a creature of the swamp. He has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the fever now,” Gaetz told reporters after the vote.
The Trump ally filed a rarely used procedural tool known as a motion to vacate to eject McCarthy. He accused the now toppled speaker of making a secret deal with the White House to continue funding for Ukraine, amid negotiations to avert a partial government shutdown at the weekend.
McCarthy denies this. “It had nothing to do with spending,” he told a news conference. “You know it was personal.”
There is almost certainly some truth in this. The GOP dissenters who staged the revolt reasoned that they were worried about controlling spending, as indeed some genuinely are. But, as Harris argues, in the case of ringleader Gaetz, “it is clear the dispute is primarily about personal animus, not ideology.”
Yet even if spending accusations were partly a guise, the ousting draws attention to the big uncertainty of what direction the House is heading in when it comes to ongoing aid for Ukraine.
The number of GOP lawmakers opposed to continuing to so generously fund Ukraine’s war efforts has grown. Last Wednesday, an amendment to the defense funding bill sponsored by troublemaker Gaetz to stop military assistance to Ukraine attracted 93 Republican votes — a jump from 70 Republicans who had backed a similar measure just three months prior.
At present, there is still a big notional majority for continuing to fund Ukraine: the Democrat caucus is fully supportive and half the Republican caucus is. But the biggest uncertainty of all is what will happen if Trump returns to the White House.
The former president hasn’t made his views on aiding Ukraine explicit but he is likely to be much more sceptical – and he has already made jibes at President Biden for putting “Ukraine first” and “America last.”
Trump has also made the bold declaration that he would end the war in just 24 hours if re-elected by forcing President Zelensky and Putin to agree to a settlement. Such an agreement would almost certainly mean Moscow getting to keep a chunk of Ukraine, thus illustrating Trump’s indifference to the fate of Ukrainian territorial integrity.
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