U.S. House Republican Speaker Battle, With Christopher M. Tuttle

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the House Republican leadership battle.

 

With me to discuss the efforts by House Republicans to select a new speaker of the House and the consequences for U.S. foreign policy is Christopher Tuttle. Chris is a senior fellow and director of the Renewing America Initiative here at the Council. Before his current stint at CFR, Chris served as the policy director of the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations under its chairman, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. Earlier in his career, Chris served as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to Representative Mark Green, a Republican member of the House from Wisconsin.

 

This episode is part of the Council on Foreign Relations' Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy. Chris, thank you for coming back on The President's Inbox.

 

TUTTLE:
Absolutely, Jim, always good to be here.

 

LINDSAY:
Let me begin by acknowledging that the battle over who will be the next speaker of the House is fluid. As we are recording this episode, House Republicans are meeting to have a candidate forum over who they will nominate to be speaker, which is a constitutionally mandated position that is number two in line to succeed the president. With that caveat out of the way, I'd like to begin with how the House finds itself in this position, Chris, of having to select a new speaker, or put more simply, why did Speaker Kevin McCarthy get the boot?

 

TUTTLE:
Kevin McCarthy got the boot because there is a small, and very, very small faction within the party that was dissatisfied with his leadership, was dissatisfied in particular because they didn't think that he was governing in a conservative enough way. And I think it's important to put this in context. You often see Republican hardliners. You'll see hard right. This is not fundamentally an ideological battle. This is not a question of who can be more right wing than anyone else in the Conference. This is a question of attitude and willingness to sort of go to the mat and really go for broke, go to battle. So the moderates, as they are sometimes called, are not necessarily ideologically that moderate. Most of the people in the Republican Conference are well aligned ideologically. So for the purpose of-

 

LINDSAY:
It's a conservative Conference.

 

TUTTLE:
It's a conservative Conference, but almost universally you see pro-life, you know, anti-gun control folks. They're pretty much in lockstep. Most of the House Republicans resemble, say, Liz Cheney. So the question really is one that boils down to whether or not members are moderate in terms of willing to engage in some compromises which are necessary under divided government or whether they're just going to go for broke, shut the government down, breach the debt ceiling, those kinds of things. So it's more of an attitudinal or operational name that you would give that hardline group.

 

LINDSAY:
To what extent is it personal?

 

TUTTLE:
I think much of it became personal with McCarthy. I think that many of the members who eventually deposed him felt not only was he not operating in what they would call a conservative enough way—in other words, not being as hardline in the way that he negotiated, the way that he was willing to-

 

LINDSAY:
They thought he gave away too much in the budget negotiations with the White House.

 

TUTTLE:
They thought he gave away ... precisely. They thought he gave away too much in the budget negotiations with the White House and with the Democrats. But then, when there was a continuing resolution passed to keep the government going, to prevent a shutdown, that was a promise that they felt had been broken. He had promised them regular order. He had promised passing twelve appropriations bills and then going to the Senate, going to Conference and negotiating on those.

 

LINDSAY:
The way it's drawn up on paper-

 

TUTTLE:
The way it's drawn up on paper, and that became-

 

LINDSAY:
Which Congress hasn't abided by for quite some time.

 

TUTTLE:
For quite some time. Not to mention the fact that a lot of times they were the sticking point in getting the appropriations bills passed because they demanded certain things that could not get passed in the House. So it's combination of both, both the personal and sort of the procedural.

 

LINDSAY:
When the vote to oust McCarthy went to the floor, I will note only eight Republicans voted to end his term as speaker, whereas 208 Democrats did. So why aren't we blaming the Democrats for deposing McCarthy as speaker?

 

TUTTLE:
Some Republicans are, but it's really not ... That's something that just is not done, politically speaking. You vote with your team, with your party. And you saw the first really severe cracks appearing in McCarthy's tenure when they started voting against rules, when this small faction started voting against rules and defeating his rules on the floor.

 

LINDSAY:
Explain to people what a rule is, because I think most people don't follow Congress closely enough to know what a rule is.

 

TUTTLE:
Exactly. So before a bill goes to the floor, the Rules Committee meets to establish the process by which a bill will be considered: how many amendments will be considered, if amendments will be considered, that kind of thing. And once that rule is constructed, with obviously the help of leadership—and usually it is how leadership wants the vote to be conducted and the consideration of a bill to be conducted—that is sacrosanct. Once you start voting against rules, party unity goes out the door and you can't really get much of anything done. That's the first serious crack you saw in McCarthy.

 

LINDSAY:
So why didn't the Democrats try to save McCarthy's speakership given that they knew it was highly likely that it would be difficult for the Republicans to find a new speaker? That creates some problems for governing the country. We'll get to that in a moment. And for whatever dislike Democrats might've had of McCarthy, the reality is that he had negotiated an agreement with the White House and, one could argue, was Democrats' best bet to keep government open and to move forward on various appropriations bills.

 

TUTTLE:
I mean, this is political dynamite for the Democrats. And there have been some Republicans who are saying, "Well, it was actually the Democrats who deposed McCarthy and they're to blame for this." I don't think that's going to get much purchase in the political context. For the Democrats, it is much more advantageous to have the Republicans in disarray, politically speaking. And to do so, to keep McCarthy in power, would be a tremendous breach of norms in the House. They would get blowback from folks back home. And it's also important to consider that the speakership is not a single vote. The speakership is being able to maintain a durable coalition. And even if the Democrats had voted to save McCarthy when the motion came up to declare the speakership vacant, that would not be a lasting phenomenon.

 

LINDSAY:
Well, because McCarthy had agreed as a condition for getting Republican votes to become speaker back when Congress opened, he agreed to a motion to vacate that could be brought by a single Republican on any day, correct?

 

TUTTLE:
That's right. Now, this is a longstanding rule that existed in the House and still exists in the House. It was changed under Nancy Pelosi to make the threshold much higher. During the fifteen votes that it took, the fifteen ballots that it took to get McCarthy over the line to be speaker, they wanted to switch it back to a single member, which is tremendously empowering for them. And Kevin McCarthy eventually had to cave.

 

LINDSAY:
I'll note that for decades, this rule, this motion to vacate, had existed only requiring one member. But no members actually did it because for most of the last century or so, speakers were powerful enough and had enough support that any member of their party who did so would face internal political punishment. So that's why the Republican Conference now is in a different position in which this small group of people do not fear the power of the speaker.

 

TUTTLE:
That's right. And I would also point out that you saw this begin to get breached with Mark Meadows offering a motion to vacate against John Boehner. It never actually made it to a vote. But this is-

 

LINDSAY:
But this has been a long time coming. That was almost a decade ago.

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah, as you point out, almost a decade ago. But this was the first real sign that there was this surging force within the Republican party that was out of the leadership's control, and the base voters became increasingly disaffected with the leadership. And we can talk a little bit about how that affected Steve Scalise in the vote that recently occurred.

 

LINDSAY:
We'll get to Steve Scalise in a moment. But right now, I just want to note that the House is operating under a speaker pro tempore, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who is a McCarthy ally. I should point out that the position of speaker pro tempore was established after the 9/11 attacks when lawmakers realized the problems that could arise if the speaker position became vacant because the speaker died or became incapacitated. My suspicion is the drafters of that legislation probably didn't anticipate the position becoming vacant because the majority party couldn't agree on who should lead them, and as a result, Congress. So what are McHenry's powers, Chris, as speaker pro tempore?

 

TUTTLE:
Well, there's fierce debate about this, representing, sort of, the Democratic side, which is in favor of very, very limited powers and only the powers that are required to get the House to a new speaker vote.

 

LINDSAY:
So it's a narrow technocratic view, a very narrow...

 

TUTTLE:
Technocratic position that he has taken. A ministerial role, a caretaker role.

 

LINDSAY:
A caretaker.

 

TUTTLE:
Exactly. So he's the ranking member of the Rules Committee. And he has been circulating some very, what I view as pretty persuasive documents. On the flip side, a lot of the sort of ferment among people who are procedural experts are saying, "Well, actually, this is a continuity of government rule." So the intention was to be able to govern in the case that the speaker is killed or there's a problem. And so, there's language that refers to his powers as he can undertake whatever's necessary and appropriate. McGovern argues that necessary and appropriate-

 

LINDSAY:
McGovern being the Democrat from, I believe, Massachusetts, who's tweeted out that McHenry's powers are narrow.

 

TUTTLE:
That's exactly right. They're very narrow. But there is a lot of conversation among sort of the academics who cover this that say this is actually a continuity of government question, and actually, the powers are much broader than Jim McGovern and the Democrats are saying.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay, so for the interim, Representative McHenry has his hand on the tiller in this position as speaker pro tempore. The question is who the speaker will be. You mentioned Steven Scalise. He's number two in the Republican House hierarchies, holds the position of majority leader. So why didn't he just slide in and become speaker?

 

TUTTLE:
Because he didn't have the votes. There was a sizable contingent that voted for Jim Jordan.

 

LINDSAY:
Jim Jordan, representative from Ohio.

 

TUTTLE:
Jim Jordan, representative from Ohio, chairs the Judiciary Committee, co-founder of the Freedom Caucus, very much a firebrand.

 

LINDSAY:
Speaker of the House John Boehner, back in 2013, called him a legislative terrorist-

 

TUTTLE:
That's right.

 

LINDSAY:
Because of his efforts to shut down the U.S. government.

 

TUTTLE:
That's right. That's right. In the vote in Conference, Scalise came out with 113. Jordan came out with ninety-nine. And even though Jordan said he would support Scalise, didn't really want the job, that was not a manageable situation. So in the end, it only takes five within the Republican Conference to say, "We don't want Steve Scalise as speaker." So he didn't get anywhere close to that.

 

LINDSAY:
He needed to get to 217.

 

TUTTLE:
He needed to get to 217. Normally, it would be 218. There are two vacancies in the House, so you only needed to get to 217. But, it just was not something that was going to happen. Once you realized that there were five hardliners in the Conference who were not going to vote for you for whatever reason, you're stuck. And you saw, as it became sort of socialized that—among social media and that kind of thing—that it may be Scalise, the knives came out.

 

And the most telling tweet I saw from an activist on this, again, hardliner movement was, "Boehner equals Ryan", so John Boehner, the speaker who has become really someone who is a pariah as far as his leadership style, "equals Ryan." Ryan has also become that... "Equals McCarthy equals Scalise." Scalise was viewed as more of an establishment figure and there is this anti-establishment streak that goes through significant portions of the base.

 

LINDSAY:
My sense is that McCarthy also didn't throw his support behind Scalise. There's been a lot of talk that McCarthy felt that Scalise didn't help him stay in the position of speaker.

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah. There have always been rumors of bad blood between the two. This really showed up in public when he came out of the Conference meeting and said, "Steve told us he was going to get to 150. He didn't come anywhere close to that." So yeah, I think that McCarthy's support was tepid at best.

 

LINDSAY:
What is your assessment of why Scalise withdrew in less than twenty-four hours? I will note that Kevin McCarthy, when he sought the speakership originally, went through fifteen votes, had to endure a lot of humiliating commentary on Twitter and other social media vehicles or platforms. But here we have Steve Scalise throwing the towel in pretty quickly.

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah. It's hard to know precisely. He is undergoing treatment for cancer and it's possible that was a factor in his decision-making. But I think once it becomes clear, McCarthy was very unusual being willing to go through fifteen votes. I think it's unusual for someone to want to go through that. And I think Steve Scalise was probably just not willing to. He saw that he wasn't even getting close to the 217 number and that it was a hill that would be impossible to climb. McCarthy actually did reasonably well in the Conference. There were some holdouts before they actually took the vote to the floor, but McCarthy was convinced with the relatively smaller number that he would be able to persuade them and make deals with them.

 

LINDSAY:
Which he did, I think, much to his regret at the end of the day.

 

TUTTLE:
Which he did. Which he did.

 

LINDSAY:
Okay, so Jim Jordan has now re-thrown his hat into the ring, but he has opposition. Just before we started recording this podcast, Representative Austin Scott of Georgia, who happens to be a McCarthy ally, also happens to be a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, said that he's going to stand up and run against Jim Jordan because he doesn't think Jordan is the person who should be speaker. How do you see this unfolding?

 

TUTTLE:
So, how I see it unfolding in the end is, I don't think Austin ... I don't think that he gets very far. I think that he, Austin Scott, is a fairly ... he's not a very well-known member of the Conference. He certainly is conservative, but there are enough people in the Jordan camp where that just can never happen. Similarly, with Jim Jordan, there are enough people in sort of the Scalise camp who have their noses out of joint about how things played out, who are more on the moderate side in terms of not wanting a fire-breather who makes it almost impossible to compromise. I mean, you have eighteen members of the House Republican Conference who sit in districts that were won by Joe Biden. So I think it's very difficult for either of them or for anyone at this point to get the speakership.

 

So that gets us to the alternatives, which we can talk about. But one of the alternatives is there has been a suggestion that the rules are either reinterpreted, clarified, or people vote in favor of Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry to be a caretaker for thirty or forty-five days—but more than a caretaker, somebody who can take up legislation, who can pass appropriations bills in regular order, those kinds of things. And I think that's maybe potentially where we're going to end up. Right now, he is speaker pro tempore designate. He was designated because he was on a list for this continuity of government business.

 

LINDSAY:
He was on McCarthy's list.

 

TUTTLE:
He was on McCarthy's list. McCarthy put him top on the list. So as designate, there's a sense that his powers are more limited, whereas if he were an elected speaker pro tempore, they could make an argument that he could actually have many more powers. And it's up to the House to determine its own rules. And it's very difficult to see—even though the Democrats may kick and scream—very difficult to see a court taking that up, that legislation that was passed under these rules-

 

LINDSAY:
I think almost certainly a court would never take it up.

 

TUTTLE:
It's a purely political question.

 

LINDSAY:
A political question doctrine would be invoked.

 

TUTTLE:
Right. And it's right there in the Constitution, "The House shall determine its own rules," so-

 

LINDSAY:
What about some of the other possibilities I've heard? One is Kevin McCarthy coming back into the race?

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah, I can't see that happening. I can't see him being able to get to 217 at this point.

 

LINDSAY:
He still has a problem with the Republican eight.

 

TUTTLE:
He still has a problem with the Republican eight. And even if some of those feel like they touched the hot stove and learned their lesson, that's still, you know, four members he's got to peel off from there. I think that's pretty challenging, pretty difficult situation.

 

LINDSAY:
What about suggestions that the House Republicans will coalesce around Donald Trump as speaker of the House? I know Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, has been beating this drum since McCarthy was ousted.

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah, I don't see that happening. I think that first of all, the Republican Conference rules say that no one under indictment can serve as speaker. But second, I think that a lot of people realize that having Trump as speaker would be enormously problematic. And they can make the argument to their base. They can go home if they have people who are very Trump-oriented ... They can go home and they can say, "No, he's got one job. That's to become our president once again. That's the most important thing."

 

LINDSAY:
So that's how they're going to frame it.

 

TUTTLE:
That's how I suspect they would frame it. In addition to that rule, which is, you know, not really all that relevant. They could change that too. I think that a lot of them behind closed doors realize that that would be a really problematic choice.

 

LINDSAY:
I'm not sure former President Trump is actually interested in being speaker of the House given all the headaches that would impose.

 

TUTTLE:
Right.

 

LINDSAY:
And given the fact that he does face legal challenges and he also is running for president. But it is interesting to note that there's nothing in the Constitution that stipulates that the speaker of the House must be an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

TUTTLE:
That's right. It might be you or me, Jim.

 

LINDSAY:
I don't think that's likely, Chris. And I'm certainly not interested. 

 

What about the possibility of having a unity speaker? I keep hearing that moderate Republicans, or at least Republicans that don't want to see Jim Jordan or any other firebrand become speaker, are going to make common cause with Democrats to elect somebody who can enjoy the confidence of both Democrats and Republicans.

 

TUTTLE:
So that's an extremely remote possibility. And the reason is because what I said earlier: The speakership is not just a single vote on who's going to be speaker. The speakership involves having a durable coalition. And with the parties at odds on so many issues, and again, the people who are considered moderate within the Republican Conference still have very conservative ideology.

 

LINDSAY:
They're well to the right of Democrats, who are also quite to the left of where the average voter is.

 

TUTTLE:
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But it would be extremely difficult for them to swallow some of the pills they would have to in order to make that a durable governing coalition.

 

LINDSAY:
So let's talk repercussions. What does the absence of a speaker mean for the operation of the House?

 

TUTTLE:
So the absence of the speaker right now means that Patrick McHenry, as acting or designated speaker pro tempore, can't really do much of anything. So that's why, you know, we talked a little bit about potentially a rules change, or clarifying the rules, or electing him. The reality is there's not much that the speaker can do. Now, there's no precedent for this. If Patrick McHenry had come in and said, "I have all these powers," and just started exercising them, that would be precedent setting. Opinions vary about why he didn't do that. I think that probably one of the most important ones was because he wanted to put pressure on the Conference to actually elect someone. And I don't think he necessarily wants the job.

 

And the other reason, I think probably, is because he realized it was precedent-setting and the idea of having an acting speaker pro tempore is not good for the House, not good for the institution.

 

LINDSAY:
But the House has a lot of business it needs to do. We avoided a government shutdown, but we eventually need to pass legislation to keep the government open. The package that McCarthy had brought back and agreed to with the White House was one that House Republicans rejected seemingly by voting McCarthy out. Where are we headed?

 

TUTTLE:
It's difficult to say. I think we likely end up with an elected speaker pro tempore in Patrick McHenry. Now, how he handles things from that point forward is a big question. Does he act to pass all these appropriations bills by regular order, or does he punt? He could potentially pass an omnibus spending bill.

 

LINDSAY:
But that's what the Republican firebrands are deeply opposed to.

 

TUTTLE:
Exactly.

 

LINDSAY:
Though I'm not sure they actually want to be in Washington for all the days that would be required to pass bills through regular order.

 

TUTTLE:
Right. But he could do that. He could act to have the House do that and make the argument that under the deal that Kevin McCarthy struck with the White House, that automatic 1 percent cuts kick in if all the regular appropriations bills are not passed by January 1. So if you pass an omnibus spending bill, which consolidates all those, then you get automatic 1percent cuts and we can get through this rocky moment. Now, there would be a motion to vacate and maybe he would lose his elected speakership pro tempore. But that's something that's in the conversation right now, that it may be the best that they can do.

 

LINDSAY:
What about the impact on American foreign policy? The world is not going on hiatus while the House sorts out its speakership. We've seen the heinous Hamas attack on Israel. You have the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine. Republicans are very concerned about what's happening at the southern border, concern about what is happening in Taiwan. Where do you see all that going given this impasse—can I call it a crisis?—in the Republican Conference in the House?

 

TUTTLE:
So right now, there is a $24 billion supplemental spending bill pending for Ukraine, and we can get to Ukraine and some of the divisions on that later. There is not yet a request for supplemental funding for Israel. The White House has been using existing authorities and funds to be able to help them out. But it's only a matter of time. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee in the House, said that, actually, for now we're okay, but it's only going to be a matter of time before that money needs to go out the door for both Ukraine and for Israel. So, you know, you could see a situation where an acting speaker pro tempore tries to cobble together some sort of appropriation bill that ends up putting in Ukraine, putting in border security funding, Israel, Taiwan—putting that all together to make it very hard to vote against Israel.

 

LINDSAY:
The hope is there're enough goodies that you bring along enough votes to make it move.

 

TUTTLE:
Right. Now, that was floated a couple of days ago. And a lot of Republicans said, "No, that's not a good idea and we don't want to do it that way."

 

LINDSAY:
Why not?

 

TUTTLE:
It's hard to say. I think the people who are opposed to that think that they should have the opportunity to vote separately on Ukraine funding and Israel funding. Some of those are opponents of Ukraine. Some of them are proponents of Ukraine funding, and they think that actually the votes are there ... highly questionable. The votes used to be there. The purest vote last year on this was a $40 billion supplemental spending bill that passed that provided assistance to Ukraine, and you had about a quarter of House Republicans voting against it. Recently, in late September, they took up the Defense Appropriations Bill, and we're at the tipping point.

 

I think when you and I talked about it at the time back last year, I talked about a slow burn occurring within the Republican party. So we're getting to a point where that slow burn has now become a majority of the Republican Conference that are skeptical of assistance to Ukraine. They're not necessarily skeptical of Ukraine assistance or pro-Russia, but think that other priorities should take over, that we have things to tend-

 

LINDSAY:
Well, it's also a question of what that vote would be like if they could do it in secret because it's clear that Republican presidential candidates led by President Trump have really whipped up sentiment in the base against support for Ukraine.

 

TUTTLE:
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. So there are all kinds of moving parts here, and it's unclear as to how any of those are going to come together. But the fuse is getting shorter. Now, you've got a lot in the Republican leadership, sort of the more traditional Republicans, who are very, very hardline on continued support for Ukraine. But again, there are these-

 

LINDSAY:
Senator Mitch McConnell comes immediately to mind. He's a master of parliamentary maneuvers and procedures. And my sense was he tried to get money for Ukraine recently, but couldn't make it happen.

 

TUTTLE:
Couldn't make it happen, exactly.

 

LINDSAY:
It's a testament to how much things have changed-

 

TUTTLE:
Things have really changed.

 

LINDSAY:
Among Republicans in the Senate as well as in the House.

 

TUTTLE:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's reflective of the Republican base. They've grown increasingly skeptical of continued assistance to Ukraine. "Why are we spending all this money on Ukraine when we've got all these issues at home?" When the war first started, Republicans were highly supportive of aid to Ukraine. That's dropped thirty points, and now it's at fifty percent. And among hardcore base voters, it's becoming an article of faith that we need to be spending money at home, not abroad.

 

LINDSAY:
So you're a lifelong Republican, what do you think this battle over the House speakership—in some sense, feud within the Republican Conference—means for the future of the Republican party?

 

TUTTLE:
I think it's a very messy situation. Every time one of these spasms occurs within the party, I get hopeful that we're going to move into a better period, and that we'll at least be able to unite on the management of government, and that we'll be able to govern as a plausible ruling governing party.

 

LINDSAY:
You want lawmakers to govern at the end of the day.

 

TUTTLE:
We do, and that's for a couple of reasons. One, it's good to have a government that governs. But two, also, this is politically deadly. We continue to lose election after election because I think that the party has just lost a ton of credibility and we continue to hemorrhage that. So it's hard to say what the future of the party is. I want to say I'm hopeful that this is a moment where, you know, people come to their senses, but I don't know if that's the case. You know, every time I think it can't get much, it can't get too much worse, it gets worse.

 

LINDSAY:
On that sobering note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Chris Tuttle, a senior fellow and director of the Renewing America Initiative here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Chris, as always, thank you for joining me.

 

TUTTLE:
Thanks, Jim. Good to be here.

 

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We love the feedback. If you want to reach out to us with your thoughts about The President's Inbox, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or of our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla. This is Jim Lindsay, thanks for listening.