The White House is carefully monitoring the campaign to replace House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) but is thus far staying out of the brewing fight within the Republican caucus.
Following the passage of a continuing resolution that funds the government for the next 45 days, which McCarthy worked with Democrats on to get across the finish line, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced a motion to vacate the speakership Monday night that could reach the floor later this week.
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Gaetz and other Freedom Caucus members stand in staunch opposition to sending Ukraine a “blank check” to fund its efforts to repel Russian invaders, while McCarthy has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Biden administration‘s Ukraine policy.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a bevy of questions regarding Gaetz’s threat during Monday’s press briefing, but she repeatedly claimed that the president was not taking a side in the feud.
“He does not have a vote on this matter. It is something for House Republicans to decide,” she stated. “That is something we do not get involved in when it comes to the leadership conversation. That is something for House Democrats, House Republicans in this particular instance, to decide.”
On Monday, Gaetz cited an alleged back-channel deal between McCarthy and Biden to bring new aid to Ukraine to the floor for a vote. The continuing resolution, and previous iterations brought forth by Republicans, all excluded additional funding for Ukraine despite specific requests from the White House. The president had suggested to reporters Sunday that he and McCarthy had cut a deal on Ukraine before he signed the stopgap funding resolution.
However, Jean-Pierre danced around the alleged deal Monday and declined to clarify Biden’s somewhat confusing remarks from Sunday and even declined to say whether or not what the president had said was “true.”
“We’re saying that there’s bipartisan support. There has been, and we appreciate, the bipartisan support that we’ve seen for Ukraine from the beginning, and we believe that’s going to continue,” she said in one response. “And so that is what we see. And that’s how we see this moving forward.”
Though the White House likely won’t weigh in on McCarthy’s tenuous hold over the House caucus, national Democrats view the situation as a “boon” heading into an election year.
“What’s on display right now is just the quintessential shit show that is the House Republican caucus. Every day they show to the American people why they can’t govern, and it’s been pretty consistent for 10 months,” one senior Democratic official told the Washington Examiner.
“I think it helps us. It helps us make the argument we are making about the Republican Party right now, which is that they are beholden to Donald Trump and that they are much more concerned with the issues that are on Fox News on any given day than governing,” that official continued. “That is a big part of the argument that we are making against the Republican Party writ large, and then we just have so much evidence that they give us every single day to further advance our argument. So yeah, it helps us to remind the American people of the issues in the Republican Party and how extreme they are.”
And, perhaps surprisingly, a senior Republican congressional aide agreed with that sentiment.
“We’ve got members more concerned with booking themselves on Fox or Newsmax than working as a group to actually bring down spending, and the American public is going to be the one paying the cost,” that aide told the Washington Examiner. “It gives Democrats that much more ammo, not only in the presidential election but here on the Hill too. What are those people going to say when we get stuck with four more years of Biden and a new Democrat majority in the House? It’s embarrassing, to be honest.”
Through the weekend, national Democrats danced around Gaetz’s long-held threat against McCarthy.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) punted when pressed on the idea before the passage of the 45-day continuing resolution.
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“We haven’t given any thought to how to handle a hypothetical motion to vacate,” he told reporters. “We are entirely focused on making sure that we avoid this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown.”
A motion to vacate would require a majority floor vote, 218 “ayes,” to pass. Given that the anti-McCarthy faction, at best, counts 20 members, Gaetz and company would need a bulk of Democrats to oust the speaker.
