In a brief interview this Tuesday on MSNBC, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), an established ally of House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), ripped Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as the Florida Republican pursues the attempted removal of McCarthy as Speaker.
Bice focused on how Gaetz’s antics were taking up time the House could be using to pursue basically anything else. “Matt Gaetz wants to wreak havoc and chaos in the Republican Party, and he’s doing just that,” Bice said. “And unfortunately, the American people are pawns in his narcissistic game of charades.” She specifically noted how Gaetz’s insistence on certain wins in the appropriations (meaning government funding) process was undercut by his debilitating push against McCarthy, which was occupying the House on Tuesday and threatened to drag further into the week.
Bice tried to shift blame to the Senate for the lack of further action beyond the House itself on some of the policies that Republicans have pursued and passed that haven’t actually become law, though it’s sometimes been a struggle for the GOP to assemble the necessary support for presenting a plan or getting it passed. It was Democrats who put plans over the top to both raise the government’s debt ceiling and fund it for the following month and a half, keeping a possible federal shutdown at bay for now once GOP leadership in the chamber finally put a so-called cleaner measure on the floor, meaning it had fewer additional policy moves attached to the funding in the legislation.
Democrats were voting against McCarthy continuing as Speaker this week, having long since gathered behind the potential ascent to that position of their own party’s House leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). McCarthy was evidently resistant to any kind of negotiation with Democrats with the aim of helping keep his job, though just a small number of Republican defections was set to mean the GOP majority lost its controlling numbers that would actually leave McCarthy in the role. What was the end game for Republicans? Lock Gaetz out of the Capitol?
