Ousting of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker

Overview

Ousting Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker refers to the push to remove Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives led by hard-right conservatives in Congress (particularly Matt Gaetz), which was also supported by House Democrats. On October 3rd, 2023, the House ultimately voted to remove McCarthy as House Speaker. Following his removal from the position, discourse and memes erupted on social media, largely mocking the former House Speaker.

Background

Kevin McCarthy's time as House Speaker has been fraught since his election in January 2023. During the House Speaker election, McCarthy had difficulty securing enough votes from hard-right Republicans in Congress, who voiced that they viewed McCarthy as too willing to work with Democrats, particularly when it came to passing spending bills.^[1] This resulted in 14 rounds of House Speaker elections without McCarthy winning a majority. He won on the 15th after making some concessions to right-wing members of the Republican party, including a concession that allowed one congressperson the power to bring forth a motion to vacate the Speaker.

Developments

The rift between far-right House Republicans and McCarthy came to a head in September 2023 when it appeared that Congress would not agree to pass a budget that would be necessary for keeping the government open. On September 20th, 2023, Matt Gaetz spoke to the media and laid the blame for the impending shutdown solely on McCarthy (video from The Washington Post shown below). Gaetz blamed McCarthy for not "moving individual spending bills" and not honoring promises he'd made, presumably to Gaetz and other members of his hard-right caucus.

However, on September 30th, the House of Representatives struck an 11th-hour stopgap deal that avoided a shutdown and kept the government open for another 45 days, thanks in part to McCarthy making concessions to Democrats.^[2] This incensed Gaetz, who declared he would bring forth a motion to remove McCarthy as House Speaker. Such a vote would need the majority of Congress members to pass (shown below).

“I am relentless and I will continue pursue this objective,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz tells @JonKarl of his push to vacate Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. https://t.co/KInxWHwCkT pic.twitter.com/NOWDqfFwvA

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 1, 2023

On October 3rd, it was reported that Democrats would be unified in voting against Kevin McCarthy should a motion to remove him reach the House floor,^[3] nor would they vote to table (meaning delay) it.

Later that day, the procedure to remove McCarthy began, as Gaetz brought the motion to the House floor.^[4] Representative Tom Cole put forth a motion to table the vote. That motion was defeated 218-208, with all present Democrats and 11 Republicans voting against tabling the measure, setting up a vote to remove McCarthy.

Then, later that afternoon, the House of Representatives voted to remove McCarthy as Speaker of the House. He lost the vote 216-210, leaving the future of the House uncertain. McCarthy was the first Speaker of the House to be voted out in United States history.

Online Presence

The vote to remove McCarthy led to an outpouring of schadenfreude online, as many on both the left and right joked about his ousting. In particular, a tweet from McCarthy posted the day before the vote which read "Bring it on" was the subject of memes on social media (example by @eve6^[5] shown below).

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References