House GOP Ponders McCarthy’s Fate In Speaker Battle

Playbook reports:

House Republicans are starting to ask themselves two “what-if” questions surrounding Kevin McCarthy’s fate: 1) If the California Republican gets the gavel, how long will he be speaker? And, if he doesn’t, 2) how does he serve out his remaining days in Congress?

On the first question: There’s a consensus among many House Republicans, one that few would dare utter publicly, that if McCarthy starts the 118th Congress as speaker, he’s not likely to end it that way.

If he’s able to lock down the 218 votes he needs to be speaker, the thinking goes, he likely will have given away the store to conservatives — including the “Never Kevin” crowd’s demand to make it easier to call a vote to oust the speaker.

Read the full article. The vote is Tuesday.

Interesting thought: Playbook raises the possibility that the House will have one former speaker (Pelosi) and two former majority leaders (Hoyer and McCarthy) roaming around as back-benchers next Congress. https://t.co/R3kHRkYcsd

— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) December 29, 2022