McCarthy Speakership in Jeopardy Due to Hardline Republicans Who Say They Won’t Vote for Him

Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is facing division within the Republican party over his possible U.S. House speakership. The Republicans have control of the House, but just barely. Some House Republicans have announced publicly they will not vote for McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

Generally, 218 votes is the magic number for anyone seeking to be Speaker of the House, however, all that is needed is a majority of those voting. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was voted in as Speaker with only 216 in 2021.

America First U.S. House Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) spoke with John Fredricks about McCarthy’s bid for Speaker sharing, “I believe we have at least a dozen or so… that will do what needs to be done on the House floor to ensure that we get an improvement in the Speaker situation,” when asked how many “hard no” votes there were.

Good, who is a hard no, says there are a dozen or so hard nos who will vote against McCarthy for speaker. https://t.co/Bth1veeRPA

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 21, 2022

So far, at least publicly there are five House Republicans sharing that they will vote no on McCarthy for speaker.

On Monday, Ralph Norman (R-SC) announced he wasn’t willing to vote for McCarthy for Speaker.

Just the News reported:

“I’m not going to support Kevin McCarthy,” Norman said during an interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “Washington is broken. There’s a cancer in this country and it can’t be fixed with aspirin. It’s called overspending. When you’re bankrupt, you can’t function as a country.”

Norman said one of his main points of contention with McCarthy is over the time it will take majority Republicans to bring runaway federal spending under control. “I had asked Mr. McCarthy during one of our meetings to agree to the seven year budget that the Republican Study Committee had put out to pay off the deficit and to get this country back,” Rep. Norman explained. “He said no. I’m simply not going along with another 20 year budget, which is what he wanted to propose.”

NEW: HFC Rep. Ralph Norman tells me he is a hard no against voting for Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

He won’t vote present. He won’t miss the vote. And he tells me “it is too late right now” if the GOP leader tried to win him over.
https://t.co/AesuwMjSgG

— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) November 22, 2022

U.S. House Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT) have also shared they will not vote for McCarthy for Speaker. Last week McCarthy won the GOP Nomination for speaker but had 31 votes against him.

This leaves a slim possibility open for Democrats to get their choice for Speaker in, or some moderate possibility, but we see this as very unlikely. U.S. House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced for that very reason that she would stand with McCarthy for Speaker of the House.

MTG Against Challenge to Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, Equates Never Kevin to Never Trump

Biggs had unsuccessfully challenged McCarthy for the GOP nomination for Speaker. With all the votes against him, McCarthy may need to make concessions in order to secure his spot as Speaker.

With Republicans looking to someone else to unify them before the vote in January, we will see how this develops.