WASHINGTON — Though Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may have won the battle, if history is any indication, he had better be prepared for an ongoing war.
At least that’s the opinion of one Oklahoma expert.
Following a bruising – and historic – 15-round battle for Speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy was named Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday. McCarthy’s win topped an arduous four-day political fight within the Republican Party.
McCarthy eventually received 216 votes. New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries received 211 votes. Six Republicans agreed to vote ‘present,’ a move that lowered the threshold McCarthy needed to attain a majority.
But McCarthy’s fight is far from over.
Joe Foote, the retired Dean of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said McCarthy’s win came at huge cost. Foote should know, too. Foote served as press secretary for a previous U.S. Speaker of the House – Oklahoman Carl Albert.
Albert, a Democrat from Bugtussle, served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 through 1977 – at the height of the Watergate scandal. And though Albert – like McCarthy – faced a party that was fractured and splintered all Democrats, Foote said, voted to support Albert for speaker.
“When I was there, there were factions – mainly in the Democratic party and a little bit with the Republicans,” he said. “The Southern Democrats were pretty far away from the mainstream. But they always looked at the organizing of Congress as their ticket to ride.”
A Congressman “couldn’t get into the game” Foote said, without supporting his party’s nominee for Speaker. “Then the splintering could occur on policy matters,” he said. “I don’t think it was even in a member’s vocabulary that they would ever think about abandoning their party in the leadership battle.”
As an example, Foote pointed to former Oklahoma Congressman John Jarman. An attorney, Jarman served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1950 until 1977. “He probably was one of the most conservative members of the House,” Foote said. “He never voted with the Democrats in the House. He may have been a John Bircher. He was way, way out there.”
But Jarman, Foote said, voted for the Democratic candidate for Speaker when the House of organized. “There was no question then,” Foote said.
Foote said McCarthy’s four-day struggle to overcome the infighting in his own party was unheard of in the 1970s.
That feeling was echoed by Fourth District Congressman Tom Cole. Cole, who has served in Congress for 20 years, told The New York Times the efforts to derail McCarthy’s election as Speaker of the House was Cole was a temper tantrum by a small minority of congressmen who can’t even agree amongst themselves who they ought to be supporting.
“I don’t know how many times you’ve got to tell people we’re not moving,” Cole said. “This is the guy that got us here. We don’t intend to leave Moses on the other side of the river. He’s coming with us.”
The infighting, Foote said, makes the Republicans look dysfunctional – a far cry from the political world of the 1970s.
“I remember vividly being in a Holiday Inn motel room in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for 16 hours the day after the 1972 election while Speaker Albert spoke to or attempted to speak to every member of the Democratic Caucus, Foote said. “He (Albert) wanted to be the first to congratulate them on their victory and to ask him for their vote for Speaker.”
Foote said Albert considered those post-election calls “as some of the most important of his career.”
“He didn’t want to give any competitor for Speaker a chance to get their candidacy off the ground,” he said. “By the end of that long day, there was no question about who would be the speaker of the House. Of course, different times.”
The fight over McCarthy’s position, Foote said, has also created some long-term wounds. “No doubt there will be some Republicans where the wounds are so deep, they are going to (be) influenced either consciously or unconsciously over the next two years.”
The infighting over the speaker’s poste, he said wasn’t about policy.
“It’s wanting to blow things up with the party and reorder the Republican establishment,” Foote said. “This seems to be a prerequisite for them to reengineer the party.”
And though Foote said it will be difficult to know how the fight will eventually play out, he predicted a backlash of hard feelings throughout the 435 members of Congress and a damaged Republican leadership.
One media outlet described McCarthy’s fight for speaker as a war between “what’s left of the Grand Old Party conservatives and a new generation of tea party-to-Donald Trump hardliners preferring almost no big government at all.”
The speaker fight has also put the Democrats in the strongest position they’ve had in quite a while, Foote said. Because the GOP’s majority is a slim and because Democrats control the U.S. Senate, the pressure on Republicans to not be seen as obstructionist will be heavy.
“It’s not new at all that leaders in Congress would be challenged,” he said.
Yet McCarthy’s very visible four-day fight – the first in more than a century – is also a sign that bigger battles are on the way. During last week’s fight at least two other Oklahomans Republicans, Reps. Tom Cole and Kevin Hern, played major roles. Cole was an intermediary for McCarthy negotiating on McCarthy’s behalf with rival camps while Hern was tapped as an alternative choice for Speaker.
In fact, by the time the dust of the fight had settled, Hern had captured seven votes. Eventually, the entire Oklahoma congressional delegation would vote for McCarthy. Several media outlets have put Cole in line for the chairmanship of the House Rules Committee.
Hern’s sudden rise could also be leveraged for a greater leadership role, too.
Still, even with the win, McCarthy emerges as a weakened speaker with less authority – at least one paper – than previous House leaders. A fight, Foote said, that cost the GOP every minute it lingered on.
“It’s damaged them,” he said. “I’d be interested in seeing how played in most states.”