
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana won the Republican nomination for speaker of the House and swiftly won over some of the eight rebels who voted to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last week. However, many GOP legislators claim he would essentially carry on the policies of his predecessor.
The majority of Republican House members claim that Scalise supports McCarthy’s perspective on issues like expenditures and tactics like the investigation into President Joe Biden‘s impeachment.
Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said in an interview on Wednesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who spearheaded the drive to remove McCarthy and had been his main adversary for months, “is different from the personalities involved.”
If elected speaker, Scalise will take over the same slim Republican majority that must contend with a Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.
Although Scalise had been McCarthy’s deputy since 2019, and the two had cooperated in numerous legislative fights, their relationship occasionally became frosty and tense.
Garcia claimed that Scalise’s strategy for tackling government funding, the most difficult issue before Congress, was similar to the one the House had already taken.
Bring the single-subject appropriation proposals to the floor in order to force the Senate to participate, Garcia said. “What he outlined is similar to what we were in the middle of doing,” Garcia said. Thus, I believe it to be a comparable tactic.
This isn’t a McCarthy-Gaetz issue anymore, he continued. Therefore, I believe Scalise has a stronger chance of succeeding.
Newfound excitement
Gaetz declined to elaborate when asked how Scalise would be superior to McCarthy.
“All of them,” he responded.
He supported Scalise and added, “There’s a renewed excitement.” “The Louisiana legend who will lead us is here with us. And I believe that he will inspire our activists. He’ll be a fantastic spokesperson for the nation, in my opinion. He’ll do a terrific job of unifying the Republican conference, in my opinion.
In the wake of the terrorist attack by Hamas, Scalise declared that his “first order of business” would be to adopt a bipartisan resolution supporting Israel. McCarthy claimed this week that he would have put the resolution to a vote if he were speaker. According to him, he will “be calling on President Biden to sit down to talk about the crisis at the border,” a subject that was of utmost importance to McCarthy while he was speaker.
Additionally, other Republican members stated that under Scalise, the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, whom Scalise challenged for the speaker’s candidacy, will remain one of the primary investigators in the House’s impeachment investigation into Biden.
Garcia responded to the question by saying, “Under Scalise, I don’t think — from a platform or paradigm perspective — any of that changes.”
The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, has been charged by special counsel Jack Smith. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, said she wants to defund Smith and hold floor votes on impeachment. Without going into detail about any possible pledges he may have made, she said that she had discussed her aims with Scalise and left feeling “confident” that she would be able to “aggressively do my job” if he were to become speaker.
In a majority when 96% of the members decided to keep McCarthy as speaker last week, continuity is only natural. Because of the razor-thin margins and the support that Democrats gave to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., for the position, eight defections were enough to force him out of office.
After adjourning without fixing a schedule on Wednesday, it is unclear when the House will vote on a new speaker. If absentee votes don’t change the barrier, Scalise will need to win at least 217 of the 221 Republican votes.
According to Scalise, there is a lot of busy work and essential work to be done on behalf of those who are struggling. We’ll give you that vision, we promise.
Republicans who don’t mean it positively claim that Scalise will carry on McCarthy’s policies.
Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., who wasn’t prepared to back Scalise, said, “I think the conference had an opportunity to give the country the belief that we were going to bring essential change, and rather the conference voted for status quo.” “Mr. Scalise has undoubtedly been a member of our leadership team for a long time. So it’s difficult to imagine that he will be a change agent.
“Steve is a person who can unite”
According to two members who were in the room on Tuesday night, Scalise told Republicans he wanted to see 85% of the House’s spending legislation passed during his first two weeks in office. That would continue McCarthy’s strategy, which involved pushing through the House funding legislation that broke a bipartisan budget agreement for the next two years and advanced a number of conservative demands but had no chance of clearing the Senate.
Steve, I believe, has the ability to bring people together. And that has become his signature. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., said, “I’m ready to give him the benefit of the doubt to get it together.
Scalise and McCarthy, as well as Scalise and Jordan, have a lot in common, according to Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon.
“Even with Jim — I mean, at that point, you’re splitting hairs over the ideological distinctions between Jim and Steve. There is little if any, space between them, Fallon said. “I listened to their arguments when they spoke for five minutes before answering 90 questions. To be really honest, I didn’t hear a lot of policy differences. … Both of them desire passage of the [appropriations] measures. Both of them desire regular order with substantial member input.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennessee, who voted to remove McCarthy, failed to make a comparison between the two when he was pressed on how they differed from Scalise.
Burchett changed the subject, complimenting Scalise and declaring his support for the speakership. “I don’t know,” he added. “I’ll only highlight Steve’s advantages. He is aware of budgetary conservatism. He has experience dealing with strict legislation in the past. And I believe that will benefit him greatly in the field.
It was a “mistake” for Scalise to reject McCarthy’s new rule requiring the caucus to gather 217 votes for a speaker before any votes are cast on the floor, according to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a conservative who initially opposed McCarthy but changed his mind after he gained concessions.
Roy told reporters, “We shouldn’t have abandoned that process, which was bringing us together, to determine how we were going to come together before we took the floor. “We did, then. We must immediately investigate the situation.