House Democrats on Tuesday said they do not plan to save Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) when a vote on ousting him from the top spot hits the floor later in the day.
Emerging from a more than two-hour meeting in the Capitol, House Democrats said they will vote to oust McCarthy from the Speakership.
“We are following our leader and we are not saving Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters.
Asked if a decision was made as a caucus not to support McCarthy, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) responded, “yes.”
This news follows McCarthy’s statement that he won’t give Dems anything to save his Speakership.
It’s not that McCarthy hasn’t asked anything of Dems, it’s that he has worked hard not to include them, like all Republican speakers since Denny Hastert.
This is viewed as normal, but it hasn’t always been that way and perhaps shouldn’t be that way. There’s a universe where a Republican speaker facing a revolt from the right can gain Democratic allies by cooperating with them in some fashion or other.