Rep. Mike Garcia: 'Day One of Being in the Majority Feels an Awful Lot Like Being in the Minority'

Republican stalwart Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) pulled no punches Tuesday on Newsmax as he weighed in on the tumultuous House Speaker fight. “I voted in support of Kevin McCarthy,” said Garcia. “I think he’s earned it. I think he’s been working his tail off the last several years to get us here.” While that may be so, in the wake of triple failed votes, Garcia lamented that “Day One of being in the majority feels an awful lot like being in the minority. It’s very frustrating.” Frustrating is an understatement. Is this the type of GOP leadership Americans voted for in November?

One wonders if, with at least nineteen House members still holding out, the GOP can expect anything positive to come from these failed votes. “We frankly, just have to make it rain longer than these nineteen folks can tread water,” Garcia said. While it would be preferable if McCarthy would, you know, lead them to his side, should we really have to resort to hoping a candidate can outlast the holdouts? Shouldn’t a candidate be strong enough to ultimately win on leadership alone? At the end of all this infighting, Garcia says Americans want a resolution, not a “quagmire,” and he expects the nineteen holdouts “to do what’s right for the country” not what’s right for them personally. “And more importantly,” said Garcia, the GOP base wants “to see us conduct the oversight in the legislation that we’ve promised this beautiful nation we would conduct.”

Garcia revealed that since Nov. 8, 2022, GOP House members held fourteen meetings with the holdouts. “Kevin McCarthy has made twenty-two concessions on the rules package — things that frankly I wouldn’t have signed up to myself,” said Garcia. McCarthy conceded a motion to vacate the speakership with a simple five-member vote, which Garcia described as “effectively like dumping fuel on yourself and then handing out 435 matches.” Twenty-two concessions with his own party. At what point does concession become surrender?

Twenty-two concessions seem way more than adequate to reach any agreement, so why won’t the nineteen now vote for McCarthy for Speaker of the House? Garcia believes that, like ousted Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s behavior regarding former President Trump, for the nineteen it’s “a personal thing” not related to policies or the GOP agenda. “They’re doing this to get their own personal pound of flesh,” Garcia stated. “This is a very dangerous game. They’re playing Chicken and Russian Roulette right now with the security of our own nation.”

Very dangerous, indeed.

WATCH Rep. Garcia’s interview below: