A group of 45 House Republicans are demanding “fundamental changes” to GOP rules in the lower chamber that allowed a small faction of lawmakers to strip Rep. Kevin McCarthy of his speakership.
The Republican lawmakers blasted this week’s unprecedented vote to oust McCarthy (R-Calif.) as an “injustice,” adding that they are “ashamed and embarrassed” by the eight members of their party who voted with Democrats to remove the former speaker.
“We refuse to allow the eight members who abandoned and undermined our Conference to dictate every outcome in policy and personnel for the remainder of this Congress, including the upcoming selection of the Speaker of the House,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to colleagues.
“We cannot allow our majority to be dictated to by the alliance between the chaos caucus and the minority party that will do nothing more than guarantee the failure of our next Speaker,” they added.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) are among the Republican members that signed onto the letter, which echoes McCarthy’s grievance that ”less than 4 percent” of the GOP conference was able to join Democrats to “override the will of the remaining 96 percent of House Republicans.”
The lawmakers said that they “remain committed to the conservative and transparent objectives” of the former House speaker and call for unspecified changes to the House GOP rules.
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“The injustice we all witnessed cannot go unaddressed — lest we bear responsibility for the consequences that follow,” the letter says. “Our Conference must address fundamental changes to the structure of our majority to ensure success for the American people.”
Currently, the House permits a single member to force a floor vote on a motion to vacate the chair, a parliamentary mechanism Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) deployed successfully against McCarthy on Tuesday.
McCarthy himself agreed to lower the threshold for a floor vote on a motion to vacate during his successful negotiations with far-right Republican members, which helped win him the gavel in January.
Historically, the threshold to force a floor vote sat at one, but former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) elevated it to a majority of either party during her tenure after some Republicans threatened to deploy it against former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in 2015.
“I don’t think that rule is good for the institution but apparently I’m the only one,” McCarthy said in his exit speech Tuesday after becoming the first House speaker ever removed from the post.
