Much like Mark Levin, Newt Gingrich doesn’t understand why these handful of congressmen are seeking to oppose McCarthy for Speaker.
Gingrich says McCarthy was chosen by 85% of the Republican caucus and that these members won’t be voting against McCarthy, but against their fellow members who elected McCarthy.
Further, Gingrich says they don’t have the moral right to oppose McCarthy since he was already chosen by the caucus.
Watch:
What Gingrich said:
I don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re not voting against Kevin McCarthy. They’re voting against over 215 members of their own conference. Their conference voted overwhelmingly, 85%, for McCarthy to be Speaker. So this is a fight between a handful of people and the entire rest of the conference, and they’re saying they have the right to screw up everything…
The choice is Kevin McCarthy of chaos. And there’s nobody that’s going to replace Kevin because he has far more people totally dedicated to him than this handful of never-enders… Anybody that tried to replace Kevin would face total chaos, it would be impossible to govern.
So I hope in the next 24 hours that this handful of members will realize they don’t have the moral right to reject the choice of 85% of their conference. They don’t have the moral right to break up the House against the wishes of over 215 fellow Republicans. And I think it’s a remarkably short-sight and, candidly, selfish position and I don’t understand where they’re coming from.
McCarthy has agreed to every policy they’ve asked for. The truth is the Freedom Caucus has won a huge set of victories. You have to say to yourself that if you’ve got somebody and you give them everything they ask for and he still says no, is the problem him and not McCarthy?
Newt added:
And these five guys decided to go out as kamikazes and see if they can’t sink the whole Republican Party. And that’s what they’re doing. This is not about Kevin McCarthy. This is about the right of any five members to basically throw away the entire rest of the conference and tell the rest of the conference it doesn’t matter.
Gingrich makes a good point. It’s akin to what Liz Cheney plans to do to Trump if he wins the primary. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s similar. McCarthy won the conference vote. Members trying to blow it all up now to get a different result
is like trying to stop the Republican primary winner from becoming president by running as an independent.
And Gingrich is also right that McCarthy has such huge amount of support in the conference that nobody else would be able to govern if they blew it all up and won.
But despite all of this it appears we are headed for a contentious few days of votes, at the very least.