OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A former GOP rival of newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is making a prediction as to how successful he believes the California Republican will become after agreeing to several rule changes demanded by conservative Freedom Caucus members in exchange for their support.
It took a historic number of votes — 15 ballots — before McCarthy finally secured enough to become speaker. And he had to agree to a substantial number of conditions in order to overcome the objections of those conservatives. But once he did, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), who ran against McCarthy for the GOP leadership position in 2015, believes the new speaker “will do great.”
“Kevin will do great with these rules changes,” Webster told Newsmax’s John Gizzi. “He’s agreed to all the things I ran on in the speaker’s race in ’15.”
Gizzi added:
Webster recalled how he ran against then-Majority Leader McCarthy following the surprise resignation of then-Speaker John Boehner in the fall of 2015 (having received 12 votes against Boehner for speaker in January, leading to Webster’s removal from the powerful Rules Committee).
Chief among the planks in the Floridian’s platform was what he called “flipping the process.”
“I’d make it principle-based, where ideas are good because of what they say rather than because they are pushed by a committee chairman or a member’s seniority or the party of the sponsors. Rank-and-file members would be successful,” Webster said.
Noting McCarthy’s agreement to make it easier for members to propose a “motion to vacate,” setting the stage for the immediate election of a new Speaker, the Florida Republican observed: “It’s fantastic. Speakers will come and speakers will go, but this will always be there to keep them following the will of the members. If your motivation is power, I suppose you won’t like it. If your motivation is governance, you will.”
Webster was also happy that McCarthy agreed to limit legislation to a singular issue.
“In my presentation before the [Republican] Conference [in the 2015 race], I called for a ‘germaneness rule’ — namely, that any amendments to a bill stick to the subject of the bill and nothing else,” he noted.
He also said that he wasn’t worried about the optics of the drawn-out process to elect a new speaker.
“That’s what happened to me in 1996, when Republicans won the House in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction,” he explained. “And I made agreements with other Republicans and got elected speaker by [a vote of] 61-59 over [Democrat] Buzz Ritchie.
“Our low approval ratings were flipped right-side up. And just as [the GOP-controlled House] is now dealing with a Democratic president, our Republican legislature then was dealing with a Democratic governor [the late Lawton Chiles] and we beat him every time and overrode every veto,” Webster told Gizzi. “And I made friends with a number of my Democratic colleagues who were opposing me on every vote, such as [present Florida Democratic Reps.] Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel.”
Other Republicans also noted that they were not concerned about the delay in picking a speaker.
“This is a really good rules package, and it’s good that we negotiated this for our system of government, and it’s great for the American people,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.). “If we’re going to have self-government, we’ve got to show this” to the public.”
She also said she did not agree with Gaetz’s continuing to hold out support for McCarthy.
“I disagree with his position” of refusing to support McCarthy. “But that’s OK. We’re still going to be friends tomorrow after this is all said and done,” she said.
“There’s a point in time where you’ve got to give up on your position — after getting everything you want. … At that point, you’re not really negotiating. You’re more of a hostage-taker,” she noted further.
McCarthy finally managed to become Speaker for the newly elected Republican House majority following some late-night drama involving Matt Gaetz after the GOP lawmaker from Florida voted “present,” initially denying McCarthy’s victory by a single vote.
“It took a loss by a razor-thin margin in a late-night Round 14, a heated exchange with one of his sternest opponents, and a near-adjournment of the House till Monday to break a logjam unseen since before the Civil War,” the Associated Press reported after the 15th round of balloting.
