The Washington Examiner’s Sarah Westwood explained why nominee for speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) approach is “not working” after he failed to secure enough votes even after a sixth round.
“Whatever Kevin McCarthy is doing in terms of his approach to negotiating with his opposition, it’s not working. He really has to do something at this point to change the momentum,” Westwood said on Fox News‘s Your World with Neil Cavuto.
“Otherwise, even some of his allies are going to start to break away from him,” she warned.
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Westwood said with each vote, McCarthy is losing more and more leverage, which could give defecting Republicans an “off-ramp.”
“You’re going to start to see I think some Republicans have the off-ramp by opposing the process. … With each successive round of voting, McCarthy is losing leverage, and the House Freedom Caucus, the other holdouts that are withholding their support for him, they’re gaining it,” she said.
“He still has horses left to trade. He has not caved on many of the demands for the changes to the House rules package, but he needs to start trading those horses if he still wants that speaker’s gavel,” Westwood argued.
The California Republican was blocked again on Wednesday from becoming speaker by 20 Republican lawmakers, all of whom rallied behind Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) as an alternative.
Westwood further explained that some Republicans are withholding their vote in the hope they will get a better deal from either McCarthy, who has yet to concede on several points, or another candidate, such as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). But, she pointed out, they’re on a trajectory to get a worse outcome.
“The reality is they’re paving the way to get a much, much worse deal than the one McCarthy is offering them right now because any consensus speaker … they are not going to accept any of the demands that the conservatives have right now, let alone this watered down version that McCarthy is trying to push,” Westwood said.
“And in fact, they’re going to take that slim House Republican conference backwards in terms of the leverage they have,” she added.
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She further sounded off on other possible outcomes of the speakership battle.
“They’re going to adjust, potentially, the ratios of Democrats and Republicans on committees to water down Republican strength if this is going to be some sort of bipartisan speaker situation,” Westwood explained. “So conservatives have to be careful that they don’t overplay their hand and end up with a speaker who puts them in a much worse position for two years.”
A motion to adjourn until 8 p.m. was passed by voice vote on Wednesday, pausing the second day of voting for House speaker.
