McCarthy’s Ouster Highlights Deeper GOP Dysfunction
A small group of radicals used a quirk in the rules to boot a leader who enjoyed the support of the vast majority of the Republican conference.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
Former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership position on Oct. 3, 2023, by a group of dissidents within his own party.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In an historic vote, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from his leadership position Tuesday by a small group of radical members of his own party, led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.
The Republican conference has been plagued with dysfunction for a while now. Still, the vote was a stunning display of just how broken and dysfunctional the system has become. Other House speakers have been pushed out, and Republican Speaker John Boehner retired while facing a threat of being ousted. But this is the first time a sitting speaker has been removed by a vote. Gaetz exercised a little-known procedure that hadn’t been used in more than one hundred years to push a vote to “vacate” the speaker’s chair. When it was over, eight Republicans and every Democrat had voted to remove McCarthy.
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McCarthy’s Ouster Highlights Deeper GOP Dysfunction