House Republicans spar over Speaker decision as McCarthy fights to secure votes

Read the Full Transcript

• Geoff Bennett:

  Tomorrow marks the start of a new Congress, but the story at the Capitol is a familiar one, chaos, this time inside the incoming Republican House majority, as Leader Kevin McCarthy vies to become speaker of the House.

  Following it all as our Capitol Hill correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, and White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López.

  So let's jump right in, Lisa, because the start of the new Congress is less than 24 hours away. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, doesn't have the votes to become House speaker. Why not? Who's standing in his way?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Let's start with some simple math here. It's not good math for Kevin McCarthy.

  First of all, to absolutely come — well, first of all, House Republicans come into this session of Congress with 222 members. But to absolutely clinch the speakership, you need a majority of the House. That's 218. That's easy math. So, Kevin McCarthy can spare all of his Republicans except for four.

  Here's the problem. Not yet on board with Mr. McCarthy, 14 or more members of his own party say that they're not there yet. Now, some of these groups say they're a hard no. There's others who came out with a letter yesterday after Mr. McCarthy proposed a sweeping amount of changes that they said they wanted. They said they're still not there yet.

  Here's an excerpt from that letter of this group that I call not-yet-Kevin. They say: "There continue to be missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our entreaties."

  What does that mean? They don't trust him. They don't believe he's made firm enough commitments. Talking with some of these members today, talking with those around them, the mood from those folks are, let's just go ahead and do it. In fact, one of them said, why not open this Pandora's box? This is legislating. It's OK if there's a little chaos.

  The rest of the Republican Party may not agree with that.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, let's talk more about that dynamic, because, as you point out, Leader McCarthy has given his skeptics nearly everything they want, and yet that doesn't appear to be enough to get them to yes.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  That's correct.

  One of the problems here is that, while there are not right now the votes for Kevin McCarthy, there also are not necessarily the votes for anyone else, because some of Mr. McCarthy's allies have said: We aren't going to support anyone else.

  Here's a letter from some of his allies, people that call themselves only-Kevin. What they wrote is: "We are not only supporting Kevin McCarthy for speaker, but we are not open to any so-called shadow consensus candidate."

  In addition, those members, some of them say they don't like the rules changes that those other conservatives want, which would mean individuals have more power to affect, but also disrupt the Republican agenda. So there's a real difficult here on both sides.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Is there a viable alternative to Kevin McCarthy if this vote goes to multiple ballots, the first time in some 100 years that would happen? Is there someone waiting in the wings, a Republican who could emerge as House speaker?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Currently, no one announced but we're watching some people, Steve Scalise, the number two Republican in the House.

  There is, of course, sort of an Aaron Sorkin type of dream of some moderates of Fred Upton, a retired now a member of the House. You don't have to be a member to be speaker. However, I really think that that is just a fantasy. I don't see him being able to get those votes.

  In fact, some of the members who said they were never-Kevin today have been speaking out.

  Here's Bob Good from Virginia. They say they have some kind of candidate ready to go.

• Rep. Bob Good (R-VA):

  Then I think you will see, on the second ballot, an increasing number of members vote for a true candidate who can represent the conservative center of the conference, can motivate the base, inspire Republicans across the country, get — country — get to 218 votes.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Who is this candidate? I don't know.

  The honest truth is, the line between political reality and fantasy right now is very murky. And we just don't know. We know tomorrow will be a long day.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Laura, what's the White House view of things?

  I spoke with a senior administration official who said that the president will use this moment to draw a contrast. He's going to go across the country to help investments in infrastructure, while the Republicans are back here in Washington trying to sort all of this out.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Well, he's starting that — those tours this week.

  President Biden is going to go to Covington, Kentucky, and he's going to appear alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which is a pretty big deal. Biden is already striking that contrast with McConnell to show that, one — the White House tells me the main messages are, one, that he cares about bipartisanship, and that he's going to continue to care about that and demonstrating his track record of that, for the foreseeable future, for the second half of his term.

  The second message that they're trying to send with that is that this year is going to be heavily focused on implementation, on the implementation of that infrastructure — bipartisan infrastructure bill, of the Inflation Reduction Act, and also of the semiconductors bill that they saw passed.

  So, all of that, he's joined on the road this week as well with Vice President Kamala Harris, and as well as…

• Geoff Bennett:

  Leader McConnell, right?

• Laura Barrón-López:

  Leader McConnell, right.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  But they're going — they're spreading out across the country, so — as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. They're going to other parts of the country.

  I think it's also important to say that that McConnell is clearly striking to contrast himself here.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  He doesn't do anything unintentionally. And he has made very clear that he does not like the chaos that Republicans have been involved in and that is potentially happening on the House GOP side.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Is a divided Republican Party in the House, how useful is that to the White House, especially as we head into an election year next year? I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but in 2024.

• Laura Barrón-López:

  The White House is looking forward to — all the sources that I talk to inside the White House, White House officials I talk to you, is looking forward to the ability to, as you say, Geoff, strike that contrast, to show that now Republicans are in charge of one of the chambers in Congress.

  And are they going to actually work with the president and the Senate to accomplish anything? One thing that they keep bringing up is that — this statistic that the past two Democratic presidents that won reelection had a House GOP to contend with in their first term, whereas the president that didn't, Jimmy Carter, lost reelection.

  So, they're looking forward to being more aggressive with this House GOP at every turn. We have already seen some of that since the midterms, as they have tried to push back on Trump's comments about the insurrection, as well as a number of House GOPers' comments about the insurrection.

• Geoff Bennett:

  In the 30 seconds we have left, what are you going to be watching for tomorrow?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Oh, gosh.

  I will be watching for the people standing up and announcing their votes. And I will be keeping tally on pen and paper. So…

• Geoff Bennett:

  I'm sure you will.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Geoff Bennett:

  Lisa Desjardins, Laura Barrón-López, thank you both.

Improved audio player available on our mobile page