Minutes after setting in motion the first vote to oust a sitting Speaker of the House in over a century, Matt Gaetz declared that going after Kevin McCarthy would be his legacy. On the Capitol steps Monday night, surrounded by dozens of reporters and a handful of smirking congressional colleagues, he said, “I feel the judgment of history, I feel the weight of that. I am worried that when the history books are written about this country going down that my name is gonna be on the board of directors here. And if this country is going down, and if we’re losing the dollar, I’m going down fighting.”
“Bring it on,” McCarthy tweeted immediately after, repeating his earlier dare to Gaetz’s threat over the weekend after he turned to Democrats to override right-wing members and avoid a potential government shutdown.
The duel is the culmination of a long fight between the brash, controversial Floridian and the genial longtime member of GOP leadership from California that began in January during McCarthy’s excruciating fight to become Speaker. Gaetz was perhaps his lead antagonist as 20 Republicans held out for days to force concessions from McCarthy over the course of 15 ballots. Gaetz now accuses him of betraying their deal by relying on Democrats’ votes to pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling, fund the government, and support Ukraine against Russia.
It shouldn’t be an even fight. After all, McCarthy is one of the most powerful politicians in the country. He wields not only the Speaker’s gavel but sits atop a network of political action committees that controls hundreds of millions of dollars that can be used, or not used, in the next election. Gaetz not only lacks such powers, but he would quickly lose a popularity contest among House Republicans. If all Democrats vote against the Speaker, he would only need the support of four other Republicans, which he is likely to get.
To succeed, though, Gaetz needs to appeal as much to his colleagues’ fervent voters as he does to them personally. On Monday morning, when the House chamber was almost entirely empty, he stood up to deliver the opening shot against McCarthy. It was at an hour when the speeches usually deal with policy matters like dam removal in the Northwest. But the Republicans he needed to persuade weren’t the audience — C-Span was.
Gaetz’s declaration of war was written on notes in long spidery handwriting with some bits crossed out. Dressed in a black suit and yellow tie, he described McCarthy as surrendering to Democrats and accused the Speaker in particular of striking secret deals with the White House over funding Ukraine. “It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling Joe Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation,” he said.
“It is becoming increasingly clear who the Speaker of the House already works for,” Gaetz concluded, “and it’s not the Republican conference.”
The question for Gaetz might be how much grassroots support he can rally to pressure fellow conservative Republicans to take down McCarthy. As he put it to reporters when asked how many congressional allies he had: “I think tens of millions of Americans share my sentiments, and if you look go look at Newt Gingrich and Mark Levin trying to attack me online, it is an avalanche of criticism from their own supporters and their own followers and listeners where those folks are standing with me.” Online, a pattern emerged of congressional Republicans tweeting their support for McCarthy and immediately getting ratioed by disappointed right-wingers. “Look at the replies,” Gaetz wrote, quote-tweeting Elise Stefanik as she was swarmed by right-wingers for standing up for the Speaker.
Democrat Jared Moskowitz, who has known Gaetz for over a decade and served with him in the Florida legislature, used an analogy from the Avengers movies to describe how the House had come to Armageddon.
“We’re also kind of here because Kevin McCarthy gave Matt Gaetz the Infinity Stones. And now what a surprise Matt Gaetz is going to try to snap his fingers and make Kevin go away. This was inevitable.”
However, McCarthy’s fate doesn’t come down to Gaetz or even McCarthy himself. Instead, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will ultimately decide what happens. Gaetz seemed to think it likely that Democrats would save McCarthy, almost welcoming such a scenario.
“If the Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy, they can have him,” he said as cameras glared through the unseasonable October humidity, before expressing his relief that he could finally wash his hands of his longtime nemesis. “Because one thing is, when we stand here, a week from now, I won’t own Kevin McCarthy anymore. He won’t belong to me. So if the Democrats want to adopt him, they can adopt him.”
