Conservatives bark after the debt limit deal. Will they actually bite McCarthy?

Hardline conservatives are hopping mad. They have a way to get rid of McCarthy, but they’re holding their fire for now

House Freedom Caucus memebers (L-R) Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) and Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) announce they would oppose the deal to raise the debt limit during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on May 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. The conservative lawmakers urged their fellow House Republicans to vote against the compromise between Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden that would avert a government default. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

Nobody should be surprised at the rage House conservatives feel after the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced their deal to raise the debt limit.

The debt limit was always going to be a massive hurdle for Mr McCarthy, who made a number of concessions back in January to secure the speaker’s gavel. Any potential deal, no matter how conservative, would inevitably anger the members of his conference who initially opposed him.

That anger was palpable during a press conference for the House Freedom Caucus, the group of hellraisers that has historically poked House Republican leadership and usually succeeded in either pummeling them into submission or outright making a House speaker quit.

Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ), one of the initial opponents of Mr McCarthy, told me the deal reminded him of why he opposed Mr McCarthy as speaker in the first place.

“Historically, when he was been in leadership for 13 years, it was not uncommon for him to be the point man to go negotiate a spending cap deal with the Democrats,” he said.

Representative Bob Good (R-VA), one of Mr McCarthy’s most vehement critics, called it a surrender.

“It is a failure of leadership for us to surrender all the leverage and all the strength that we had with the majority House,” he said.

Of course, the negotiations during the speaker fight gave conservatives a tool they could use if they want: the motion to vacate the chair, which is essentially when the House can hold a “no confidence” vote in the speaker. In January, Mr McCarthy and House GOP leadership agreed to allow for any single member to file a motion to vacate, a break from past tradition.

Motions to vacate never directly lead to a speaker being voted out of office, but most put a target on a speaker’s back and significantly weaken them, as was the case when then Freedom Caucus member and future Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows filed a motion to vacate the chair and set the stage for John Boehner’s exit.

As a result, Mr McCarthy has lived with that dagger over his head since the moment he assumed the speakership. While he deftly navigated the negotiations and ran circles around the Biden administration by framing the narrative around the debt limit to the point he essentially forced the White House to the negotiating table, he also knew that any member, including the holdouts during the speaker fight, could file a motion to vacate and put an end to his career.

While many have speculated whether someone like Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) or Lauren Boebert (R-CO) would be the one to publicly execute him, their doing so would have little impact since most Republicans would see it as showboating. A motion to vacate would always have to come from someone who agreed to make Mr McCarthy speaker but felt betrayed by the deal.

But so far, despite all of the barking, as Olivia Beavers at Politico reported, so far only Rep Dan Bishop (R-NC) has openly floated the idea of filing a motion to vacate in response to the debt limit deal.

It should be noted that hardliners like Mr Bishop, who flipped his vote from initially opposing Mr McCarthy to supporting him in January, aren’t the only Republicans angry about the deal. Reps Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Wesley Hunt (R-TX), both announced they opposed the deal. Both of them supported Mr McCarthy’s bid for speaker from the beginning, with Mr Hunt returning to Washington after his son was born prematurely to ensure Mr McCarthy had enough votes.

But so far, even the most hardline members have not come out to support filing a motion to vacate.

“I think this bill indicates exactly why I have concerns about him being the speaker and so we’ll continue to focus on this bill,” Mr Biggs told me. Similarly, Rep Scott Perry (R-PA), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, dodged when he was asked at a press conference.

“I'll let each member speak for themselves. But for me, I'm focused on defeating this bill,” he said.

That might be Mr McCarthy’s saving grace: Throughout the speaker’s fight, as protracted as it was, his opponents never could cobble together a feasible alternative, which meant their saber-rattling only delayed the inevitable.

Similarly, if hardline conservatives don’t have the guts to actually use the loaded revolver that Mr McCarthy handed them in exchange for the speaker’s gavel, he might survive just yet.