On a normal day, the House of Representatives is chaotic, loud and full of members jockeying for power.
But on Oct. 3 last year, the people’s House outdid itself.
For the first time in history, members voted to remove the House speaker. It prompted a month of finger-pointing and feuding within the Republican conference. Three floor votes to replace an ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed — embarrassingly — during a pivotal moment on the international stage.
“They took an entire branch of government offline for three weeks, when we had two wars raging overseas,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a Republican who opposed the ouster. “It was a very dark day in American history.”
In interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans ahead of the anniversary of McCarthy’s removal, lawmakers said they are still emotionally recovering. They blamed those frenetic, frustrating weeks for thwarting GOP priorities and ratcheting up tensions among members. But they also agreed, regardless of where they stood during the fight, that the rebellion didn’t meaningfully change much of anything about how the House operates as an institution, like McCarthy’s detractors — upset that he had struck a deal with Democrats to fund the government — had hoped.
“It caused a lot of hard feelings, and we wasted several weeks,” Rep. James Comer of Kentucky told NOTUS.
The House looks a lot like it did before Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and seven other Republicans, alongside House Democrats, voted to remove McCarthy, although Republicans have fewer members than they did then. (McCarthy quit, as did several other GOP lawmakers, and George Santos was expelled.) McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson, has advanced several short-term government funding bills with overwhelming support from Democrats, keeping spending levels largely the same. His negotiating style hasn’t represented much of a shift from the McCarthy era either. To the frustration of his right flank, Johnson hasn’t won any significant policy concessions from Democrats.
And he’s teed up another funding deadline shortly before Christmas — when members expect to have a classic end-of-the-session omnibus spending bill shoved down their throats. (Johnson promises he won’t do that. Members are skeptical.)
“There are many tragedies of the McCarthy ouster,” South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson said. “But I think the eight renegades who ousted him have to acknowledge that they didn’t fundamentally change anything about the House.”
Take it from one of those eight Republicans. When asked if Johnson has done a decent job, Virginia Rep. Bob Good’s response was blunt: “No.”
“Speaker Johnson’s positions have changed on many things since he became speaker,” Good told NOTUS. “He used to be against funding for Ukraine. He said we would use that as leverage to obtain border security. Not only did we not use it as leverage for border security, he’s supported more funding for Ukraine. He used to support a warrant requirement for FISA, and he changed his position on that. He said we wouldn’t go on our August district work period if we hadn’t passed our spending bills. He changed on that.”
Why? Is it just because the speaker now represents the whole conference and has to be more pragmatic?
No — Good’s answer might as well have come from a Tolkien novel.
“The speakership reveals who the person is,” he said.
A spokesperson for Johnson did not respond to an interview request for this story nor a request for comment on Good’s remarks.
Despite his disappointment, Good still sees an upside to the floor rebellion. The main benefit, he argued in hindsight, was striking fear into the hearts of GOP leaders. Now, the speakership has to be earned. And leaders know it can be taken away.
Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona made the same argument. It was important to set a precedent, he said, “that if you’re not doing what the American people are demanding that we do up here, you can be removed.”
Crane remembered being taken off guard when the gavel slammed down and McCarthy was officially booted from the speakership.
“We were surprised that it was actually successful,” he told NOTUS. “Many of us believed, that participated in it, that the Democrats were going to save Kevin McCarthy.”
But Democrats were angry at McCarthy for their own reasons, including his embrace of Donald Trump after Jan. 6 and his elevation of far-right Republicans to positions of influence.
With McCarthy’s removal, the GOP conference descended into madness. They spent weeks in charged meetings, considering which of their top leaders could take his place — and then rejecting one after another amid painful, internecine fights.
Some frustrated members got close to giving up on the two-party system for the rest of the Congress.
“I try to block that whole period out,” Fitzpatrick told NOTUS. “If Mike didn’t have the votes, I think you would have been looking at some kind of coalition government. We would have just come up with a former member.”
Others are clearly still angry.
“In the history of politics, it was the single stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” New York Rep. Mike Lawler said.
“It was one of the worst things that had ever happened in congressional history,” Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, a McCarthy ally, echoed. “Those eight people who voted to remove Speaker McCarthy put themselves before the country, and we’re still dealing with the ramifications because of that.”
“They’re horrible humans,” he told NOTUS.
Rep. Tim Burchett, one of those humans, sees it differently.
“It’s just politics,” he said. “This is supposed to be rough-and-tumble.”
There are deeper motivations at play too. Rep. David Schweikert, who has criticized Gaetz for fundraising during the speakership fight, said at the time that members like him were incentivized to pick battles and grind the work of Congress to a halt. Moments like that one are an easy way to bring in an influx of small-dollar donations. I’m the one true firebrand in the House, fighting the establishment.
“Populism versus conservatism,” Schweikert summarized in an interview last week. “People’s feelings and passions over their intellects.”
Rep. Jack Bergman, who briefly ran to replace McCarthy last October, made a similar point.
“You have people who maybe have a priority other than having Congress be successful,” he told NOTUS.
Still, he feels optimistic it won’t happen again anytime soon. Well, at least not a successful attempt. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a close McCarthy ally, tried to oust Johnson earlier this year and failed decisively.
—
Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.
John T. Seward, a reporter at NOTUS and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.