Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed his confidence that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will secure the necessary votes to win election as the next House Speaker. McCarthy shared his optimistic view during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“I feel very good about where Jim Jordan is at. He has been an integral part of our team when we took the majority, helping us get the majority,” McCarthy told host Brian Kilmeade. “The real challenge here is, and I know a lot of people out there are afraid that will Republicans break off and go work with Democrats, the only reason anybody’s even talking about that is because eight Republican members worked with every single Democrat to remove me from speaker and put us into this tailspin and all based upon keeping government open.”
Jordan secured the Republican nomination for speaker on Friday, 124-81, but 55 House Republicans indicated that they wouldn’t support Jordan in a full House vote. Jordan can only lose four votes and still win the speakership.
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A floor vote is expected on Tuesday, and I wish I could be as confident about the outcome as McCarthy is. For starters, it’s not clear what, if anything, has changed since Friday. I can’t even argue that McCarthy might have inside knowledge on which to base his optimistic prediction because, frankly, his recent record on predicting the outcome of a vote hasn’t been very good. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) first pushed to oust McCarthy, the then-speaker shrugged off Gaetz’s intentions, predicting he’d ultimately keep his job.
“Yes, I’ll survive,” McCarthy told ABC’s “Face The Nation,” before accusing Gaetz of being more interested in getting TV interviews than doing something. “He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid only because he wants to take this motion. So be it, bring it on. Let’s get over with it. And let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us into shutdown, and I made sure government didn’t shut down. Then let’s have that fight.”
Well, that didn’t work out as planned, now, did it? So, I’m sorry to say that as of right now, there’s little reason to believe that the 55 House Republicans who said they’d refuse to support Jordan are now behind him. Unfortunately, something tells me that we still won’t have a speaker after tomorrow.
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