The Republican Party's struggles with internal divisions and infighting have been well-documented, but the story of Kevin McCarthy's rise and fall as House Speaker offers a unique perspective on the challenges of leading a fractious party. In his book, "Glory, Grief, and the Gavel: An Inside Guide to Running for Speaker of the House," John Leganski, a former aide to McCarthy, recounts the speaker's slow rise and rapid fall, as well as the decade of GOP infighting that preceded it.
McCarthy's first shot at the speakership came in 2015, after John Boehner's departure, but his candidacy was derailed by lingering mistrust on the Republican right and his own inartful comments about the Benghazi hearings. The experience gave a taste of the Republican Party's frustration with its leadership that would explode in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Trump's first presidency lowered the stakes of internal House GOP politics, but McCarthy was an effective partner for Trump, having worked closely with another outsider GOP executive, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
McCarthy's second bid for the speakership in 2023 was marked by a difficult election night, with the midterms turning out to be much closer than expected. The Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade had an impact on the election, and McCarthy would need near-unanimity in his conference to get elected speaker. This gave the Freedom Caucus substantial leverage, and its members knew it. As Matt Rosendale of Montana said, "I was praying each evening for a small majority because I recognized that that small majority was the only way that we were going to advance a conservative agenda."
McCarthy started with a base of about 200 members, but the remaining 10 percent had to be persuaded. The most substantive members of the Freedom Caucus, led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, wanted McCarthy to commit to significant changes to "decentralize" power in the House. Others wanted to extract influential posts in the House hierarchy. But the unofficial leader of the resistance to McCarthy, Florida's Matt Gaetz, seemed to simply revel in the spectacle and the publicity it brought him.
Slowly but surely, McCarthy's operation was able to break the 20 holdouts. He convinced the caucus there was no alternative, and the specter of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries becoming speaker in the face of GOP divisions spooked the base. McCarthy's team negotiated vigorously to bring the "maybe Kevins" around, including, fatefully, by agreeing to a rule change allowing any single member to introduce a "motion to vacate" and recall the speaker.
McCarthy got 203 votes on the first ballot but 216 on the 15th, five days later, enough for a majority with a handful of holdouts voting "present." However, his speakership lasted just 270 days, making his the shortest tenure as the U.S. government's third-ranking official since the 1870s. Gaetz's grudge against McCarthy hadn't faded, and he saw a chance to trigger a motion to vacate after legislation to avert a government shutdown split the conference in September.
Leganski suggests that Gaetz's real motivation was "halting an ongoing bipartisan House Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged sexual conduct with a minor." The day before the vote to oust McCarthy, Gaetz submitted his legal response to the investigators. Still, seven Republicans joined with Gaetz, enough to remove McCarthy. This prompted the scramble leading to the speakership of Mike Johnson, a dark horse who Leganski suspects was more interested in the job than he let on.
Leganski hopes that this sort of bipartisanship will become the norm for the sake of the institution, because "holding any leader to the standard that they must have 100 percent support from their party at all times" is untenable. The House GOP raised the threshold to trigger a motion to vacate in 2025. Alternatively, Leganski wonders if the House should "vest the lion's share of the power" with the majority leader, making the speakership a ceremonial position based on seniority.
These ideas are worth considering, given the challenges of leading a fractious House GOP conference under divided government. The House speakership is the first office identified in the Constitution, but today American politics is dominated by the presidency. That means a Republican speaker has to survive simultaneous negotiations with a Democratic president and the House Freedom Caucus, an act that's almost impossible to sustain for long with narrow margins.
Perhaps a figure will emerge who can discipline and control the GOP House conference under those conditions. But he or she would presumably need to be a legislative veteran, and this Republican Party seems increasingly to look for leadership and authority outside of Washington. The story of Kevin McCarthy's tumultuous tenure as House Speaker serves as a reminder of the challenges of leading a fractious party and the need for effective leadership in the face of internal divisions and external pressures.