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.
There’s something about all this that stinks of when fascism in the past has used predictably partisan behavior to seize power.
The way the text here it phrased, it sounds like McCarthy wronged the Democrats by giving them nothing, and they’re getting him back by letting him go. But the article makes it clear that they asked for nothing and he expects nothing from them, and respects that.
No need to imply animosity and back biting between McCarthy and the Dems that isn’t there.
It’s more like “you do your thing, we’ll do our thing, and that’s OK, no matter how it turns out.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he would not give Democrats anything in exchange for their votes to help save his Speakership, after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) moved to force a vote on ousting him.
“They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything,” McCarthy said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“Hakeem runs his conference,” McCarthy said of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “He’s going to have a conference, and everybody’s going to talk about it, and I’m not going to put Hakeem in any position, and I respect whatever decision anybody makes.”
It’s not that McCarthy hasn’t asked anything of Dems, it’s that he has worked hard not to include them, like all Republican speakers since Denny Hastert.
This is viewed as normal, but it hasn’t always been that way and perhaps shouldn’t be that way. There’s a universe where a Republican speaker facing a revolt from the right can gain Democratic allies by cooperating with them in some fashion or other.
It’s way past time. Democrats need to behave like there’s a civil war on and the GOP started it.
Absolutely wild that they wouldn’t oust Gaetz for being a criminal who has broken all of their ethics rules as well but might actually oust him over this. Also I thought McCarthy was going to step down if even one person wanted him to - why would there be a vote held? The US desperately deserves more votes of no confidence type events.
They should just elect a Democratic speaker. Republicans only work as contrarians anyway, and they should realize that having Pelosi to hate on and not having to actually have consistent policy positions within their party because they aren’t in leadership was a gift to their style of politics.
