Karl Rove, former Bush White House aide and Fox News contributor, broke down why he believes the voting for the House speaker is unlikely to stop anytime soon, calling the GOP’s failure to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) an “utter unmitigated disaster.”
“With us, former White House deputy chief of staff to Fox News contributor. Karl, I suppose you have to be wondering what sort of horse trading was done in between the votes here,” began Fox News anchor Sandra Smith.
“Well, I’m more interested in the horse-trading that went on beforehand, because my understanding is, is that yesterday, late in the day, late in the afternoon or into the evening, McCarthy made two concessions on the motion to vacate, where he had offered to allow such motions to take place if five members supported it. The Freedom Caucus people wanted one, he conceded,” Rove began, adding:
They also wanted a special committee, church style committee, to investigate the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI. And he agreed to let that happen.
But what’s interesting is after that, they moved the goalpost. Suddenly, they wanted to have Scott Perry made chairman of the committee and for Perry to be able to designate who the committee members were. No, no speaker has that authority. That has to be done by the committee on committees.
“In addition, they wanted Freedom Caucus members to be able to designate what committees they wanted to serve on. And then the Freedom Caucus wanted to give the speaker a list of subcommittee chairs that they would be able to designate the chairman for, which, again, is, you know, no group in the House that gets to be able to do that. The Black Caucus doesn’t get it. The Veterans Committee, nobody gets to be able to do that. That’s done by the committee on committees,” Rove continued, laying out the demands made on McCarthy.
“So they constantly are moving the goalposts. They are clearly, they wanted to set up a new entity. You know, there are specific rules on how you go about putting the House of Representatives on record to engage in outside litigation. They wanted to be able to have a separate committee that they would control that would have that authority in unto itself,” Rove explained, adding:
So these are extraordinary demands by the Freedom Caucus and both for personal power. Scott Perry to be the chairman of this high-profile committee, the Freedom Caucus members to be able to designate what committees they served on and so forth. It’s a pretty extraordinary list. And what was interesting was after after McCarthy had conceded on their two big issues, they came up with a whole bunch of other demands.
“So, Karl, we are watching this vote take place and the others have just jumped to seven. We assume that the Democrats are hanging tough on Jeffries and remain unanimous. So those others, we would expect, are all from the Republican side, which means that McCarthy loses on the second ballot. So where do you go from here?” asked anchor John Roberts.
“Well, I think you keep voting and you keep you know, at some point they got to step forward and say, this is what we want. Well, they’ve stepped forward and said what they want and they’re not going to get it from McCarthy. And my sense is, even if McCarthy were to withdraw, that the rank and file Republicans are unlikely to be for any of these changes and are likely to withdraw some of the concessions that they’ve already made to the Freedom Caucus,” Rove replied.
“You know, I think this alliance, this Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy alliance is going to be interesting to see if it pays off because we know things changed a couple of years ago and that alliance was formed. And obviously, that was a big speech that Jim Jordan made on the House floor just a moment ago Karl,” added Smith.
“Yeah. And look, one of the reasons may have been is that that last night the Freedom Caucus said we want to take one of his major responsibilities, something that he has talked about for months and months and months, an investigation of the activities of the Department of Justice and the FBI. And they wanted to strip it away from him and his committee and give it to a committee that would be chaired not only by Scott Perry, but that Perry would designate the committee members as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” Rove noted, adding:
The incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, does not have the authority to designate who his committee members are. Those are designated by the committee on committees, and yet they wanted to strip an important part of his jurisdiction away and then decide, you know, to name one of their own, to be chairman of it, and then to be able to decide who was going to sit on that select committee.
“So Karl game this out for us. If if they keep voting and McCarthy never reaches the magic number, whether that be 218 or something less than that, depending on whether or not some people start to drop out through attrition, then you got to say, okay, well, this is never going to happen. So where do you go from there? Who could you bring forward as a potential consensus candidate to become speaker?” asked Roberts.
“Well, first of all, you have to have McCarthy agree to toss in the towel, because the the okay group, the only the ‘Only Kevin’ group are going to stay with him until, you know, until the cows come home. He’s going to have to release them. So the first step is he has to come to a place where he says, ‘I’m throwing in the towel,’” Rove explained, adding:
And then second of all, then becomes, if that were to happen, then there’d have to be discussions about who that that person is. And remember, everybody now with the Freedom Caucus, if they were able to achieve that, would it would would bring about is is countervailing pressure from others other elements of the House Republican caucus would say well if they were able to get that, then we’re going to come forward with our set of demands, particularly if they’re able to get somebody who agrees that they will do things like allow Freedom Caucus members to designate committees they serve on and so forth. There are going to be other demands from other groups of the House Republicans. This is it.
This is an utter, unmitigated disaster. Chaos tends to bring about chaos until it no longer brings about chaos. We’re a long way from the point at which chaos stops bringing around more chaos.
Watch the full clip above via Fox News
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