Thanks for joining us on 9 news.
Plus, I'm Chris Bianki and the next speaker
of the 118th Congress, Kevin McCarthy.
It took 1515 tries,
but California Republican Kevin
McCarthy is indeed the new speaker of
the House of Representatives after a,
to say the least, contentious vote
that consumed the global and US
political world just last week.
But McCarthy is believed to have
conceded quite a bit of power
and acquiesced to the far right
wing of his party in order to
gain the speaker's gavel.
For more about this,
we spoke with Seth Masket,
the director of the Center on American.
Politics at the University of Denver.
Seth, thanks so much for
joining us here on News Plus.
Thanks for having me on.
So, Seth, first of all,
before we kind of get into some
of the nitty gritty on this,
where would last week's spectacle
rank among the crazier political
happenings in your memory bank?
It's pretty high up there.
I mean, it's, you know,
is it the craziest thing that's happened?
No. But what was unusual about
it was just how public it was.
You know, if we think back four years
to when Nancy Pelosi was coming into
the speakership and in early 2019,
there was actually some resistance
to that within her own party.
There were a number of members who were
not very enthusiastic supporters of hers.
She also had a very small
majority to deal with.
However, she was basically able to deal
with that before the first day of Congress,
and it was all behind closed doors.
There were a series of negotiations.
She made some promises, she made some,
she acquiesced to a few things.
And ultimately,
when it came time to actually open
the Congress and have the vote,
it was a very easy confirmation
vote for her and she became speaker.
What we saw last week was a version of that,
but very public and far more humiliating,
right? I mean, normally.
You know, a majority party tries
to avoid spectacles like that.
They try to avoid public embarrassment.
You know, they try to avoid, you know,
not counting the votes all that well.
And you know,
this was just out there for everyone to see.
I guess the other component of
what you're saying there as well,
in addition to the kind of
public spectacle that we saw,
Speaker McCarthy reportedly also
had to concede quite a bit of power.
And again, there is a degree of
speculation to what I'm about to say.
We don't know the exact terms of
what's been hashed out as of this,
but there's been reports that he has
conceded that any single congressman
woman could call a snap vote on the
speaker's position along with other
some major rules concessions as well
based off of what you've seen Seth 2.
Questions one,
how unusual is it for a speaker
of the house to concede this
much power has been reported?
And two,
what does it effectively mean
for his future tenure as speaker?
It is somewhat unusual for you
know to have to concede this much.
Basically it was unusual to have you
know this fractious party coming into
power where you know you had a a set
of people that could deprive him of
a of a speaker vote at any moment.
And you know they they really they
were making demands and he was giving
them basically as much as he could.
So again we don't know all the details.
My understanding of the, you know the.
Session that simply won. You know,
anyone Member can essentially call for a,
you know, a vote on his speakership.
That's actually been the norm for
a lot of the House's history.
It was raised to a sort of a 5 Volt vote
threshold during Nancy Pelosi speakership,
but it's actually not that unusual.
It would be unusual if Members were
actually calling for you know,
the end of their own speakers term.
We might see that this year.
I think that's, that's a.
That's a far bigger risk for for
McCarthy just because he has, you know,
so many fractious members of his
own party who were so disgruntled.
You know, he could face challenges to
his own speakership at any given point.
So that's pretty serious.
But my impression is a lot of the the
rules concessions, regardless of those,
he was always going to be in
a fairly weak position.
That is,
he has a very small majority,
unlike the Democrats who also.
At a very small majority in the
last session the Republican Party
is gets a lot more fractured.
You know,
you have a a group of the House
Freedom Caucus and some others who
are prepared to bolt from their party
on votes just on on a on a wide range
of issues and just don't seem to
trust their speaker all that much.
So that was already going to make
for a tough speakership for him
in which he's you know,
really trying to keep everyone
happy and you know,
can't afford to to have any
enemies within his own party.
On top of that, you know,
coming on the heels of the Speakership of
Pelosi, she was unusually good at this.
That is, you know,
she was a pretty good vote counter.
And, you know,
she always knew where her caucus
was in any moment.
And it's not clear that McCarthy
has that same skill set.
That's something that we saw,
you know,
on that 14th speaker vote last week,
you know,
where he seemed to think he was
cruising for election at that point,
only it turned out either he'd
miscounted or someone in his caucus.
Lied to him,
you know,
neither of which speak particularly
well for his situation.
And then it led to that I guess that
disagreement on the House floor that
public wanted, I believe Mike Rogers,
the congressman from Alabama who appeared
to confront him and then that led to the
confirming vote late on Friday night.
I guess one question and again this is,
there is a large degree of
speculation here and assuming but.
The question that keeps popping into my
mind is that why would Kevin McCarthy
seemingly want this job so badly if he's?
So powerless and suffered kind of
several days of humiliation last week.
And to what you're saying I mean,
is it, is it simply powersouth? What?
Why do you think he wants this so badly?
I mean at some sense, you know,
he's been aiming for leadership
pretty much his whole career in the
Congress and it is that, you know,
it is the big brass ring and you can
be very influential in that role.
You know, even, you know,
even a very hampered speaker is still
the speaker of the House and can still
do a lot to to shape the institution.
You know, for a lot of it,
I'm not sure why anyone would want the job.
I mean, he saw in his own party,
uh, you know, John Boehner, who was,
I think, had a lot of skills for the job.
It still ate him.
You know, his own caucus was very
hard to manage and ultimately sort of,
you know, ended his term.
It, it didn't do a Paul Ryan any favors.
You know, part of it is that like it is a,
you know, being in charge of a very,
you know,
narrow majority that is so fractured.
Is it's hard to find someone who
even wants to do the job right.
I mean you know one of the things,
the best thing is defending him is
that you know it's not clear who
his opponents would come up with
next who could also get a majority
or you know of the house.
So it is it's hard to find
someone who even wants to do it,
who has the skill set to count the votes
and manage the floor and do everything else.
It's still a you know if you're in the
house that long I think it's still
a pretty good perk even if it's.
Even if it's gonna be a lot of work for him.
Fair enough. And again, that,
that, that, that is speculative.
So maybe a bit more looking forward,
what do you think the next two weeks,
the next two weeks,
next two years of House rule under
the Republicans will look like
based off of what we saw last week?
Do we have any kind of clear glimpse off
of that or is it still to be determined?
I mean, one of the things that
last week tells us is that, yeah,
the next few years are going to be pretty
tough for Speaker McCarthy. That is.
He clearly has this group of, you know,
around 19 or 20 Republicans who don't
seem to trust him and are clearly
ready to bolt on a lot of things that
the House normally just needs to pass.
You know, there is a budget
that will come up in the fall.
There is, you know, the.
The raising of the house, or excuse me,
the raising of the federal borrowing limit,
that will probably come up sooner than
that probably sometime this summer.
These are pretty standard things that,
you know, Congress just simply needs to do.
But they can be held up by, you know,
someone who wants to deprive
the House of a majority.
And I, I think we've seen a lot of
the same characters who will do that,
who simply want to rein in
federal spending or, you know,
don't want to see the federal
government spending things that it's
spending on and are willing to.
You know,
draw a lot of attention to themselves and,
you know,
maybe cause some real damage
on their way to doing that.
So there'll be a lot of that on,
on a lot of votes to come.
We could be seeing some of that
on the rules package that is
coming before the House right now.
And poorly. I'm Tony Gonzalez.
At least one Republican is
against that rules package.
And again, we'll get more clarity in
this in the coming days and weeks.
I guess, Seth, is there any way
that you see things getting
perhaps a little more moderate,
maybe where last week was more of a blip?
Can maybe perhaps Republican moderates,
Don Bacon, Mike Lawler do
something in the counter,
the kind of more extreme wing of the party?
Um, I mean one of the things that.
It's possibly better.
News is that, you know,
even if this House were very productive,
they still are dealing with a
democratic controlled Senate.
They're still dealing with a
democratic controlled White House.
You know, very little that
they're likely to agree on was
likely to become law anyway.
So it will be difficult for
them to work with, you know,
work with the other party on the things
that they need to work with them on.
But they will probably pivot to, you know,
other congressional tasks that they are
simply more comfortable agreeing on.
As a party caucus,
that could be things like oversight
of the executive branch of conducting
lots of hearings and investigations.
They have been itching to do
that for a long time.
It wouldn't shock me if this ended
up becoming like an impeachment
inquiry into President Biden.
Regardless of what the reason is,
it is something that you know a vast
chunk of of the new House majority
agrees on and might be less divisive
than actually trying to legislate.
Will there be anything that a Republican
LED House could agree on with a
democratic LED Senate and President?
Or do you expect just a ton of gridlock?
You could see some agreement on,
you know, possibly on foreign policy
where there aren't as many international
disagreements across party lines.
We could see you know one of the
things that was sort of surprising in
you know the the last few years of
President Trump's term is that you
know when the the pandemic started
up and there was a massive economic
shutdown both parties actually were
able to work pretty well together
across party lines and what was an
emergency situation they channeled
a lot of funding toward you know
both health remediation and.
Toward economic assistance for people.
And, you know,
just simply dealing with an emergency,
they were actually fairly productive.
We don't know if we're going to see those
sorts of emergencies in the next year or two,
but you know,
on some situations,
you know,
even parties this polarized are
capable of working together.
This is reasonably encouraging,
maybe the way I'd want to end things,
but Seth, anything vital to add about this?
Why? Varying topic of Kevin McCarthy's
new term here is speaker of the House.
Not that I can think of.
Well, I like it because that way
we close things out on perhaps
a slightly optimistic tone.
But Seth Masket, the director of
the Center on American Politics,
the University of Denver, and a political
science professor at DU as well.
Thanks so much for joining us on news.
We appreciate it.
Thanks for having me on.