In a historic 216-210 vote, the United States House of Representatives voted to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his post as speaker of the House.
Spearheaded by conservative firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., eight Republican members joined with a unanimous Democrat caucus in vacating the chair of the speaker — the first time such a motion has succeeded in the history of the United States.
In a break from party orthodoxy, Tim Burchett, Knoxville’s very own congressman, was one of the eight Republicans who voted in favor of the resolution.
The speaker of the House’s removal marks a turning point in Republican politics. Conservatives in Knoxville and across America have been demanding change in Republican leadership in Washington for over a decade. The event that occurred on Wednesday, Oct. 3 finally brought home a victory.
In an internal poll, 85% of right-wing UT students in College Republicans approved of former speaker McCarthy’s removal. With a majority of conservatives in America supporting his removal as well, it is clear that McCarthy did not draw support from the Republican base.
McCarthy had numerous underlying problems and outright failures as a politician and speaker of the House that ultimately culminated in his firing. The most prominent overarching issue that kept the right flank of House Republicans skeptical was his inextricable ties with the Republican establishment and donor class.
Entrenched in House GOP leadership since 2009, McCarthy has always been in cahoots with lobbyists and special interest groups. The congressman’s political action committees and super PACs raise hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle. This money is distributed to his and hundreds of other congressional races across America, outpacing any other Republican fundraising by far.
Since the bulk of McCarthy’s donations came from wealthy individuals and corporations tied to big business, as well as lobbies in foreign countries, he was essentially controlled by them and forced to answer to their demands. This control often results in lip service to authentic conservative values while neglecting to act substantively.
For instance, the congressman has been a staunch supporter of billions in aid to Ukraine ever since the war broke out, secretly supports big tech — only publicly railing against conservative censorship “due to pressure from his fellow members” — is more left-wing than 97% of House Republicans and is a member of The World Economic Forum, one of the most powerful international lobbying organizations.
Historically, under Speaker John Boehner and Speaker Paul Ryan in the 2010s, periods in which McCarthy was still heavily involved in decision-making at the top, this has been the case as well. Even when their party controlled all three branches of government, House Republican leadership failed to provide meaningful conservative victories like building a border wall, repealing ObamaCare and cutting funding to Planned Parenthood.
Instead, their biggest and perhaps only memorable accomplishment was passing the largest corporate tax cut in history in 2017, a gold mine for their donors. Coupled with their unpopular efforts among the right-wing base to provide amnesty for illegal immigrants, another nod to their corporate backers’ wishes for cheap labor, it was this general reputation of “all talk, no action” politics that Representative McCarthy was up against in January’s speaker election.
Given this poor history of Republican leadership and McCarthy’s personal record, it was understandable why some Republican House members were questioning whether he could be trusted: Would he deliver on the promises he made to the American public, or is he just another puppet for his donors? Only after a lengthy list of concessions and guarantees made to these ultra-conservative holdouts did congressmen and women reluctantly allow McCarthy to become speaker.
Many Republican voters across the United States were also hesitant towards McCarthy becoming the most powerful individual in the House of Representatives but were willing to give him a chance. Unfortunately, after nine months, the fears of right-wing America and the most conservative members of Congress rung true.
As speaker, McCarthy broke several of his agreements cut with the original Republican holdouts, severely lacked leadership and “negotiated” terrible deals with congressional Democrats.
The congressman backtracked on his promises to release Jan. 6 Capitol security footage to the public, to bring up a term limits bill for a vote and to not allow a bill to pass with the support of more Democrats than Republicans. But at the forefront of concerns was his lack of effort in reigning in reckless government spending — failing to return to the “regular order” of passing an annual budget consisting of 12 single-subject spending bills, one of the commitments he made to the holdouts.
Instead, McCarthy opted for continuing resolutions, which are short-term spending bills designed to fund government agencies for a limited time only and almost always lead into a year-end omnibus bill. An omnibus bill is a colossal spending package that crams the twelve aforementioned spending subjects and then some together into a singular bill thousands of pages long.
They are usually littered with excessive funding for far-left social programs, foreign wars and other controversial provisions that fellow conservatives find onerous. With looming deadlines and members of Congress wanting to travel home for the Christmas season, however, omnibus bills, usually brought up on short notice, are passed without most of our elected representatives knowing what is in them.
This model of fiscal governing results in trillions of dollars in annual deficits and has plagued the country’s debt crisis — now $33 trillion — for the past 30 years. In response to claims from both Republicans and Democrats that continuing resolutions are necessary temporary measures in order to buy time to ensure a proper budgeting process, our East Tennessee congressman Burchett correctly assessed “It’s like telling a crack addict, ‘I’m going to give you crack cocaine to get you off of crack,’ and it never works.”
Former speaker McCarthy not only broke his word on the budgeting process, he also blundered any negotiating leverage on the most recent continuing resolution. As the deadline to fund the government by Sept. 30 approached, it was believed by the media and both parties that a shutdown would be inevitable, with negotiations at a standstill between the Democrat-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House.
However, out of nowhere, just hours before the potential shutdown, McCarthy brought to the floor a 45-day continuing resolution that gave Democrats everything they wanted, which is why all but one voted for it, and gave Republicans virtually nothing.
Instead of forcing Senate Democrats’ hand by including cuts in wasteful spending and strong border security measures — like E-verify and border wall funding — in a time where the migrant crisis has become increasingly unpopular even among prominent Democrat leaders, he and his conference caved to the left’s pressure and came up empty-handed.
McCarthy needed to be willing to shut down the government for however long it may have been necessary to extract meaningful concessions, but his capitulation to Democrats had become a theme. In June of this year, he also folded at the last minute to suspend the debt ceiling – the limit the federal government is allowed to borrow – until January 2025, after weeks of intense negotiation.
“All over America, Republicans think that when you negotiated that debt limit deal, (Democrats) took your lunch money,” Gaetz asserted in his argument to vacate the speakership on the House floor on Oct. 2.
McCarthy’s removal from the speakership was not so much an indictment on him specifically but an indictment on how the Republican Party has been run for a long time: insufficiently conservative, weak, and ensnared by special interests and money. Excluding Donald Trump, they are constantly plagued by a losing mindset – always on the defensive and squandering leverage whenever they possess it.
Dubbed one of “the worst negotiators I’ve ever seen” by former president Trump, the head of the snake, McCarthy, needed to be cut off. The brave eight conservatives who ousted him from the speakership — Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Ken Buck, R-Colo., Matt Rosendale R-Mont., Nancy Mace R-N.C., Bob Good, R-Va., Burchett, R-Tenn., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Eli Crane, R-Ariz. — unequivocally made the correct decision. Liberals didn’t trust him, conservatives didn’t trust him and the youth at the University of Tennessee didn’t trust him.
No longer should Republicans accept leadership from establishment hacks who are “in line” for the job but rather people who are strong, effective, do not work at the behest of their lobbyists and donors, and are authentically committed to restoring America to greatness.
While House conservatives must continue to have a high bar for their next speaker, this historic decision is a necessary and encouraging step for the future of the GOP if it wants to survive.
Elijah Boatwright is a Sophomore at UT this year studying Political Science and Economics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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