GOP senators pressure House to solve Speaker drama 

Republican senators say their party’s brand is suffering serious damage because of the failure of House Republicans to elect a new Speaker after nearly three weeks and warn that the GOP’s image will take a major hit if Congress can’t move on must-pass legislation soon. 

Senate Republicans have spoken hopefully of working with each of the candidates to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on a long or intermediate term basis — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) — only to have their hopes of a resolution dashed each time.  

They say the “embarrassment” in the House could tarnish the GOP’s brand heading into the 2024 election, so that the party not only loses its majority in that chamber but fails to pick up White House and Senate as well.  

“My message to fellow Republicans is people elect us to lead, and they’re not leading right now,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who called the ouster of McCarthy and the subsequent failures to muster 217 votes for a successor an “embarrassment.” 

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said the chaos in the House is now likely to become a campaign issue in 2024. 

“It’s going to be hard for us to govern if we can’t come together on people who represent the majority of the members of the House,” he said. “I presume the Democrats are going to say, ‘Do you really want to have Republicans run your government if they can’t run themselves?’” 

Republican senators felt like they’ve gotten whiplash trying to track the sudden developments and reversals of the debate to elect a Speaker.  

The House will hold a candidate forum Monday at 6:30 p.m. to vet new aspirants to the Speaker’s gavel and then conduct a secret ballot election Tuesday morning. 

Early last week, it appeared that Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had momentum after lawmakers such as Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who had publicly opposed him, switched their positions to “yes.”

But his bid for the Speakership quickly crumbled after he lost on the first ballot Tuesday and then was his support erode on a second ballot.

That spurred talk of passing a resolution to further empower McHenry, the Speaker pro tempore, to run the House. But that quickly fizzled when Jordan announced he would continue his quest for power.  

Jordan then lost even more Republican support on a third ballot Friday, when three GOP colleagues flipped their earlier votes to other candidates.

“It doesn’t sound too promising, in my view,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said of the prospect of electing a Speaker anytime soon.  

“Get a leader; you were elected to lead,” she said. “It’s not good for the party’s brand.” 

Senators were shocked and dismayed by reports of the bitter infighting among House Republicans behind closed doors.  

“We can’t keep aggravating each other within the conference or we’re going to end up A) not getting anywhere B) losing, and it’s not good for the country,” Capito warned.  

Republican senators are worried that the political spectacle in the House is not only putting the slim House majority at risk but could also undermine their chances of winning back the Senate.

Senate Democrats need to defend 23 seats, including ones in Republican-leaning states such as Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, while Senate Republicans only have to worry about 10 GOP-held seats, none of which are especially endangered.  

“It certainly doesn’t help the Republican brand. It shows a split, clearly, within the Republicans there,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “When the Republicans took the House, it was a great opportunity to demonstrate leadership and it’s been hard. It’s been really rocky. 

“It’s never good when it’s aired so publicly, the pretty significant decisions but we’re seeing that play out,” she said.  

There’s mounting Republican anxiety that they won’t be able to move an emergency defense spending package to provide aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan anytime soon.  

They also worry the leadership vacuum in the House has paralyzed the annual appropriations process so long that it appears increasingly inevitable the spending bills will have to be crammed into a massive year-end omnibus package, something GOP senators vowed they would try to avoid.  

“We just need to get back to work,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (Ky.) leadership team. 

McConnell, who urged House Republicans earlier this month to find a new Speaker quickly, said Friday that Congress needs to act immediately on an emergency spending package to provide military aid to Israel and Ukraine and address the surge of migrants at the southern border.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are worried that the leadership stalemate in the House may delay this package for weeks.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the political food fight among House Republicans is “not good” and “doesn’t help.” 

“The Founding Fathers wanted an emotional branch, and they’ve got one. They express the anger and frustration of the American people, and that’s what you’re seeing playing out,” he said of the fighting within the House GOP conference. 

Rounds said his constituents are “disgusted” with what’s happening in the House.  

“They’re angry. I don’t try to defend what the House is doing. I simply recognize that [constituents] have every reason to say that these guys need to come together over there,” he said.  

But Rounds acknowledged that House members don’t care what senators think about their public airing of dirty laundry.  

“They’re not going to listen to us anyway,” he said.