Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s embattled, nine-month reign as speaker of the House came to an end on Tuesday, dealt a final crushing blow by his provocative rebels on the right.
Entering uncharted territory, the House voted 216-210 to oust McCarthy from the speakership — the first person in U.S. history to be forcefully removed from the top House leadership role — leaving speakership "vacant."
As soon as McCarthy was removed, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. was named speaker pro temp. He was on the top of a list McCarthy submitted under emergency protocols for his acting replacement.
After taking charge in January, McCarthy was brought down by 11 rebellious Republicans who wielded their leverage as a small-but-mighty faction over the GOP’s paper-thin, four-seat majority control of the House. Eight of them joined Democrats in voting to vacate McCarthy from the speakership.
Now the chamber will be faced with electing a new speaker. The problem, as Republicans have warned all week, is there's no viable candidate who can get the 218 votes needed in the House to be elected speaker.
The first decision McCarthy needs to make is whether he is willing to step aside.
That will influence House Republicans' next course of action. The GOP conference must meet in order to nominate a new candidate to become the next speaker, which takes only a simple-majority vote of the 221 Republicans.
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If McCarthy refuses to step aside, he is likely to retain enough support among Republicans to win his party's nomination as speaker again. But if he voluntarily admits defeat, it will open a free-for-all race to replace him.
Among likely candidates are McCarthy's top two deputies, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Mo.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who led the rebellion against McCarthy that removed him, told reporters Monday that he would support Scalise. The Louisiana Republican is currently going through treatment for blood cancer, but Gaetz said that shouldn't disqualify him.
But on Tuesday, when mainstream House Republicans confronted Gaetz and his fellow rebels during a GOP Conference meeting to ask who they support to be the next speaker, they offered no alternative.
"Gaetz did stand up to try to answer that and he said, 'There's no answer,'" Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif. said.
No one mentioned potential McCarthy replacements during the floor debate on the motion to oust him.
For over an hour, McCarthy allies went back and forth trading arguments with Gaetz and a few of the other McCarthy detractors who dared to speak, including Reps. Bob Good, R-Va., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., likened the effort to oust McCarthy as a few Republicans "running with scissors," drawing laughter from the pro-McCarthy crowd.
One of McCarthy's closest allies, Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., used part of his time to take Gaetz to task for fundraising off his motion to vacate. Other Republicans chanted "shame" in agreement.
When Gaetz rose to speak again after Graves' comment he spoke of McCarthy “bending the knee to the lobbyists and special interests.” The speaker's allies booed him, as one shouted, "You're no martyr."
The primary complaints from the anti-McCarthy faction was that he habitually made promises to conservatives about cutting spending, but didn't deliver.
The speaker cut a deal with President Joe Biden on the debt limit that set spending caps higher than the level McCarthy agreed to in his concessions to conservatives in the January speaker's race — "the original sin" as Gaetz put it.
Anti-McCarthy Republicans complain McCarthy then did not lead the House in passing its 12 annual appropriations bills before the Sept. 30 deadline — even though some of the same Republicans blocked the House from bringing spending bills to the floor.
In addition to Gaetz, Good and Biggs, the Republicans who voted against McCarthy were Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
GOP Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio, Cory Mills of Florida and Victoria Spartz had voted against McCarthy on an earlier procedural vote but did not ultimately vote to remove him.
McCarthy, seated in the second row of the chamber during the debate, listened, stoic. He often kept his head down, not looking at who was speaking, occasionally rubbing his fingers along the ridges of his chair.
McCarthy's misfortunate is partly of his own making as he cut a deal with ultraconservatives in January that, among other concessions, gave any single member the ability to force a vote on his removal. Democrats had changed the House's motion to vacate rules in 2019 to make it so only a majority of a party caucus could remove the speaker, but McCarthy agreed to change the rules back to give any one member that power.
Roughly a dozen Republicans spoke in McCarthy's favor, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of ultraconservatives that includes most of McCarthy's opponents. Jordan ran against McCarthy when he first ran for the top House Republican leadership post when the party was in the minority, but has since turned from his biggest foe to a much needed ally.
"I think the speaker has kept his word," Jordan said.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., another occasional McCarthy critic, said he was party to the January conversations in which McCarthy made promises to conservatives in order to be elected speaker. He believes McCarthy has done what he said he would.
"There was never a promise for an outcome. There was never a promise that you could force Joe Biden to sign something," Massie said. "There was only a promise that we would try, and try we have."
Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.