Will Speaker McCarthy happen or will it not?

We are one day away from inaugurating the 117th Congress and we are still unsure as to who will hold the speaker's gavel.

In November 8, 2022, voters across the country went to the polls to decide who their representative, senator and governor would be. Pundits predicted a large republican win both in the house of representatives and in the senate, little did these pundits know that wouldn’t be the case. Come election night, Republicans are barely leading democrats in the house and were projected to lose the battleground state of Pennsylvania with losses in Maryland and Massachusetts which were widely expected. By all accounts, Democrats overperformed expectations, including in the house of representatives where democrats actually made a few unexpected gains. Regardless, Republicans narrowly won the house and will be sworn in tomorrow, January 3rd, 2023.

However, right off the bat the house republicans face a crisis already and that is who will hold the speaker’s gavel tomorrow. Will it be Kevin McCarthy? The man who has led house republicans over the last 4 years, or might it be somebody else? Might the next speaker in fact actually be a democrat? The answer to those questions are that the likelihood that the next speaker is a democrat are little to none and so who will the next speaker be? Well, realistically speaking, the next speaker will probably still be Kevin McCarthy. While at the moment, there are nine house republicans who have made it clear that they will vote against McCarthy, it would be bold to assume that they weren’t staging some sort of political show to keep the attention to themselves. Negotiations will happen, deals will be made and eventually conclusions will arrive. I don’t see it likely that McCarthy refuses to deliver some concessions in exchange for the vote of these 9 house republicans but i do know that it’ll take sometime before he eventually reaches a deal in exchange for their vote.

So does McCarthy have enough support to become speaker? No, he doesn’t as of now but that doesn’t mean that won’t change tomorrow. In the event that McCarthy does not become speaker, the possible names that could take the post are Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik, Drew Ferguson and Tom Emmer, however none of them have the same amount of experience that McCarthy has.

At the end of the day, nothing is impossible in politics and McCarthy can very well end up as a loser among his caucus yet again, with the first time being in 2015 when he didn’t have enough votes to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner. However, the times are different, maybe this time, McCarthy can pull it off but it surely isn’t looking good for him.