WASHINGTON — Senators in both parties are warning their leaderless colleagues in the House that electing a more right-leaning speaker wouldn’t be enough to muscle conservative legislation through a Senate and a White House run by liberal Democrats.
The reality check from across the Capitol could weigh on GOP lawmakers as they grapple with who should replace Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as speaker. A band of far-right rebels led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., removed him from the position Tuesday, freezing the chamber. The eight Republicans who voted to boot McCarthy complained that he relied on Democrats to keep the government open and failed to advance their conservative policy priorities.
But any new Republican speaker will inherit the divided government that befell the last one, as fears grow about how to prevent a shutdown on Nov. 17, approve new aid to Ukraine and advance other must-pass bills to keep agencies functioning.
McCarthy spent his nine months as speaker dancing on a knife edge of functionality and paralysis, constantly struggling to balance the demands of his aggressive right flank and the necessity of dealing with a Senate and a White House run by Democrats.
“So you get more conservative and that attracts more liberals to work with you on consensus policy?” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said of the House in jest. “I haven’t read that book.”
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said the eight rebels who ousted McCarthy, as well as others in the House GOP, should remember who controls the rest of the government.
“To keep the government funded or to do anything consequential around here, they’re going to have to get Democrats. So that’s the dilemma they have. And as they select a speaker, I think they’re going to have to think through that,” Thune said.
“I don’t know how these eight people are going to play into the speaker’s race or what impact they might have,” he said. “But at the end of the day, whoever is leading the House on the Republican side is going to have to figure out how to do basic things.”
'Who comes up with stuff like that?'
Democrats — including red-state senators facing re-election — have similar warnings about what the House is doing.
“They need to elect somebody that’ll work with both parties,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. If “the lesson here is you move further to the right to get things done, that makes no sense. … Who comes up with stuff like that? I don’t understand the logic of any of that. All I know is people hate Washington when it does stupid things like that.”
Referring to McCarthy’s short-term bill to prevent a government shutdown, Brown said: “If they do it the way they did last weekend and they’re willing to work with Democrats, then it’ll work. And that’s what I hope happens on a rail bill, what happens on RECOUP [a bill to claw back bank executives’ compensation] and what happens on other issues.”
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said that the chaos in the House makes governing harder but that the Senate would moderate any extreme legislation it were to pass.
“I can’t see how this makes it better,” Tester said. “But who knows? It’s been kind of a s--- show there for nine or 10 months. They might get their poop in a pile and things average out here.”
So far, two candidates have jumped into the fray for speaker: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Neither has the votes to win at this stage as Republicans are beginning to choose sides.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he has only one piece of advice for House Republicans in picking a new speaker: “I hope whoever the next speaker is gets rid of the motion to vacate. I think it makes the speaker’s job impossible, and the American people expect us to have a functioning government.”
In an interview Thursday, Jordan, who has a long history as a right-wing firebrand, was noncommittal on the motion-to-vacate rule and downplayed the prospects of further U.S. aid to Ukraine without a clear sense of the endgame for defeating Russia.
“What’s the objective?” he asked. “What’s the goal?”
'Be sure to take your meds'
Gaetz told NBC News he was “thrilled” that Scalise and Jordan were the two options at the moment.
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"I am certain that under the stewardship of either Mr. Scalise or Mr. Jordan, the House of Representatives will be in far better stead than we were with Mr. McCarthy," he said.
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Asked what they could do that McCarthy couldn’t, Gaetz said they’d pass the Republican appropriations bills that include a host of spending cuts and conservative policy provisions.
But those bills have no chance of passing the Senate, which could revive the same anxiety that led to McCarthy’s ouster. There is little recognition of that political reality among a narrow but influential group of House hard-liners.
In an interview Thursday, Jordan struggled to explain how he would have been able to avoid a shutdown without relying on Democrats had he been in McCarthy's spot last week. His argument rested on the belief that with McCarthy, the dislike among some conservative members toward him was personal — and that he wouldn't have that problem.
"Yeah, but you’re assuming that I can’t bring the Republicans together. I think that’s why I’m running. Someone’s got to be able to bring a Republican team together," he said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said: “Let me say this to the next speaker of the House, whomever that may be. Think carefully about what happened to your predecessors before trying to coddle the hard right. Each of your predecessors got burnt each time. I urge the next speaker not to make the same mistake, not just for their own future, but for the country’s. Whomever the house elects as speaker will not be able to ignore the realities of divided government, no matter what the hard right demands.”
Some GOP senators are pleading with them to see political reality.
“I don’t have a lot of advice for my House colleagues, other than this: Follow your heart, but take your brain with you. The American people expect us to govern,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “I’d also advise all of my House colleagues to be sure to take your meds.”
