Tensions are flaring on Capitol Hill as the House of Representatives nears its two-and-a-half-week mark without a speaker.
Those intra-party disagreements burst into public view Thursday after a closed-door conference meeting on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans members privately debated bringing forward a resolution that would temporarily empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry to preside over legislative business while speaker-designee Jim Jordan struggles to shore up support for his embattled leadership bid.
For now, the effort to expand McHenry’s powers beyond his interim role has fizzled after only a minority of mostly centrist House GOP members expressed support for the proposal in the private House GOP conference meeting. Some Democrats had also expressed support for the move.
One conservative group is working to keep the proposal effort dead on arrival in the House should it reemerge as a formal resolution in the near future. Heritage Action for America confirms to National Review that if a resolution to empower McHenry comes to the floor in the coming days, the conservative advocacy organization will issue a key-vote alert urging members to oppose it.
“I don’t think the conversation has gone away completely, so we’re continuing to monitor,” Heritage Action’s Executive Vice President Ryan Walker told National Review Thursday afternoon. “If that were to come to the floor, we would weigh in with our key vote,” Walker said, meaning the advocacy group would add the vote to members’ legislative scorecards — a key metric for where the members stand on a number of conservative policy issues.
The Hill first reported Thursday afternoon that Heritage Action had emailed Capitol Hill offices that the organization was “considering a Key Vote in opposition” to empowering McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who was appointed as interim speaker following Kevin McCarthy’s surprise October 3 ouster.
Heritage Action’s pledge to whip members against the now-abandoned effort comes even after Jordan had briefly signaled support for the effort as a temporary measure to act on legislation as he continues to shore up support for his speaker bid. He confirmed to reporters Thursday that the effort is dead for now. “We decided that isn’t where we’re going to go,” Jordan told reporters on Thursday of the now-abandoned proposal. “I’m still running for speaker and I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race.”
But centrist Representative Dave Joyce signaled after Thursday’s meeting that the proposal could gain traction in the near future if the House cannot unite behind a speaker and remains legislatively paralyzed as a result. “I didn’t hear it was dead,” Joyce, who spearheaded the proposal, told reporters. “I think there are some of these folks in there who wish it was dead. But I think the overwhelming majority of the people in there agree that we can’t continue down in this paralysis when the world is on fire.”
Staunch right-wing opposition to the McHenry proposal heading into Thursday meant that, in order for the proposal to gain real momentum, Republicans would have had to get Democrats on board. That’s a nonstarter for Heritage Action, Walker tells National Review.
“It’s our perspective that there is no pathway to have a Republican-only led effort to give additional authorities to the Speaker Pro Tem. Knowing that, it’s clear that Democrats would have to go along with this effort,” Walker added. “It’s our perspective that it undermines those voters who elected a Republican majority to the House if they go in and make a deal with Democrats to give additional authorities to the Speaker Pro Tem.”
House Republicans have toiled over how to coalesce around a new speaker following McCarthy’s removal from leadership. The House GOP’s newest speaker-designee, firebrand House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, has failed to gain momentum after two failed floor votes even as his allies have ramped up an intense pressure campaign urging defectors to get in line. A third floor vote on Jordan’s speaker bid is tentatively scheduled for Friday morning.
Jordan told reporters after Thursday’s House GOP conference meeting that he plans to proceed to a third floor vote on his speaker bid, even as opposition to his leadership bid grows by the day and holdouts are digging in their heels in opposition. Part of that opposition has stemmed from the hardball tactics grassroots conservative organizations are taking to promote Jordan’s bid. A handful of Jordan opponents have signaled that their families have received death threats for voting against the Ohio Republican’s speaker bid.
Heritage Action has not formally endorsed Jordan, though Walker signaled in a social media thread this week that the Ohio Republican is “equipped and prepared” to tackle a number of key issues that are of import to Heritage.
“We do believe that Jordan will continue to try and convince those holdouts that he is the right person,” Walker told National Review of Jordan, a hardline conservative who co-founded the Freedom Caucus. “Ultimately, what we would like to see is a conference rally behind a Republican member who can get to 217 and lead the Republican conference, not a deal struck with Democrats to advance some bipartisan agenda.”