October 03, 2023 02:35 PM UTC

Kevin McCarthy Removed as Speaker of the House

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #4: The destruction wrought by Matt Gaetz today is just the Colorado Republican Party’s style:

Smugness over cash flow is how Dave Williams runs his shop too.

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UPDATE #3: Here’s the moment for posterity — the first time in history that a Speaker of the House has been removed by a vote of his/her colleagues:

Vote to Remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House Succeeds: 216-210

“The office of Speaker of the House is hereby declared vacant” pic.twitter.com/abEGbZdCxQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 3, 2023

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UPDATE #2: Eight Republicans including Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck seal now-ex Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s fate, ending the shortest speakership since some guy in the 1870s died of tuberculosis.

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UPDATE: The vote on the motion to vacate the Speaker’s position is underway, and already producing some surprises: Rep. Ken Buck votes to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while Rep. Lauren Boebert votes “no for now,” meaning no with…extra attitude or something.

Final result coming, stay tuned.

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As Politico reports, Tuesday October 3, 2023 will most likely go down in history as GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s day of reckoning, with the leopards McCarthy always knew–or should have known–would turn someday and eat his allegorical face circling for the feast:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy told his GOP conference he plans to bring up a vote that could oust him from the speakership Tuesday afternoon, a person in the closed-door meeting told POLITICO.

Four GOP members have publicly committed to voting to boot McCarthy, while a handful of others say they are leaning that way. Given the House GOP’s slim margins, McCarthy can only afford to lose five Republicans if all Democrats vote against him.

As of now, it does appear that McCarthy has five Republicans, and possibly quite a few more, ready to vote him out: and that’s without the help of Colorado’s conservative Reps. Lauren Boebert and Ken Buck, who are still as of this writing playing coy with how they intend to vote:

Good morning!

A little MTV WHIP COUNT, as a treat ☀️ pic.twitter.com/j4LxautIh5

— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) October 3, 2023

However Buck and Boebert decide to vote, as long as those five “decided” members hold, only intervention by House Democrats can save McCarthy. And despite McCarthy blinking this weekend, bypassing Republicans to keep the government open with Democratic support, it doesn’t appear that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has any interest in saving McCarthy from the retaliation guaranteed by that decision:

🚨 BREAKING NEWS — @RepJeffries “definitively” called for a vote against any procedural motion to delay the motion to vacate

AND he said Democrats should vote to oust McCarthy.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 3, 2023

McCarthy’s unsuccessful attempts to appease his right flank by allowing the half-baked impeachment inquiry to backfire spectacularly proceed, and paying lip service to their nonstarter appropriations bills instead of making a deal weeks earlier to prevent a shutdown, leave him with no real Democratic allies–and Democrats generally don’t trust McCarthy any more than the Freedom Caucus does at this point:

DEMS FEELING RIGHT NOW. in case you aren’t clear on sentiments re: McCarthy, Rep. Spanberger just called him, “Likely the most unprincipled person who has ever been Speaker of the House”.

— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) October 3, 2023

And with that, the stage is set for a dramatic vote this afternoon that will either save McCarthy’s speakership or ignominiously end it. The smart money as of this morning is on the latter, after which we’ll have to see which poor sap survives the gauntlet to “win” the job of herding the most fractious herd of far-right congresscritters in modern American history.

No one will miss McCarthy when he’s gone, but you may well like his successor even less.