McCarthy Ouster Not Entirely Unprecedented
The House of Representatives voted this week to declare the office of Speaker vacant. In short, 216 House members - 8 Republicans and 208 Democrats - voted to remove Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as Speaker. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., motioned to vacate the chair (i.e., to remove McCarthy as Speaker). But McCarthy's allies failed to table (i.e., prevent) an up-or-down vote on Gaetz's motion.
The House reinstated the ability of a single lawmaker - like Gaetz - to force a vote on removing the Speaker last January as part of a rules package (H. Res. 5) that authorized the procedures regulating its activities during the 118th Congress. In 2019, Democrats raised the number of votes required to force a vote on removing the Speaker. At the time, the House adopted a rules package for the 116th Congress (H. Res. 6) that stipulated that a motion to vacate the office of Speaker required the support of "a party caucus or conference." That is, a majority of Democrats or Republicans were needed to force a vote to remove the Speaker.
McCarthy proposed lowering the required number of lawmakers to force a vote on removing the Speaker from a majority of either party to five lawmakers in the majority party at the beginning of the 118th Congress. And McCarthy, ironically, agreed to reinstate the pre-2019 motion-to-vacate rule to secure the votes he needed to become Speaker.
This is the first time the House has removed its Speaker using a motion to vacate. Some scholars have voiced alarm that a small group of Republicans have disrupted the House by removing McCarthy as Speaker. But this isn't the first time a subset of House members has played an outsized role in determining how the institution operates.
The Revolution of 1910
At the beginning of the 61st Congress, a progressive faction within the Republican majority, bolstered by its close alliance with a like-minded president (Theodore Roosevelt) and joined by most of the Democratic minority, proposed several reforms to the House rules. Specifically, progressive Republicans joined Democratic leaders in calling for removing the Speaker - Joseph G. Cannon, R-Ill., - from the Rules Committee and expanding the panel's size. The bipartisan group also called for limiting the Speaker's role in the committee assignment process for most House panels.
Another bipartisan group comprised of rank-and-file Republicans and a minority faction of 23 Democrats defeated the cross-party coalition's efforts on the House floor. The 23 insurgent Democrats, led by John Fitzgerald, D-N.Y., proposed creating a Consent Calendar to allow members to call up minor legislation on the House floor without being recognized by the Speaker. They also wanted a guarantee that the minority would be allowed a motion to recommit legislation before a final vote on it on the House floor. They also called for strengthening the Calendar Wednesday rule (first adopted at the end of the 60th Congress) that instituted a weekly call of committees. The procedural innovation gave committees, especially minor ones, greater access to the floor.
After defeating the progressive effort, this bipartisan group then proposed a compromise rules package that was subsequently adopted by the House. The package included removing the Speaker from the Rules Committee, expanding its membership from five to ten members, and stipulating that its members would be elected by the full House and not appointed by the Speaker. The 1910 reforms also established a discharge procedure to allow members of the House to bypass committee consideration of legislation.
Cross-Party Coalitions in the 1920s
Notwithstanding this setback, the progressive-led coalition would eventually succeed in passing their rules package over the objections of their opponents.
The Revolution of 1910 signaled the rise of a faction of midwestern and western progressive Republicans who would plague Republican majorities throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. While Republicans remained relatively united during the presidency of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, their intra-party divisions were harder to suppress after Republicans Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge assumed the presidency.
Tensions rose after the 1922 midterm elections when the Republicans' large majority in the 67th Congress (1921-1922) was reduced considerably. (In the 67th Congress, the House comprised 302 Republicans and 131 Democrats - plus two other members. In the 68th Congress, the House included 225 Republicans and 207 Democrats - plus three other members).
The 68th Congress's (1923-1924) incoming Republican majority was smaller, and its divisions were harder to overcome. As a result, it would be largely incapable of enacting its agenda over the following two years. In this environment, a group of approximately fifteen progressive Republicans successfully blocked the election of Frederick H. Gillet, R-Mass., to be Speaker on eight ballots. Gillet finally prevailed with 215 votes on the ninth ballot, but only after the progressives agreed to support him on the ninth and final ballot. (Two hundred and eight votes were required to prevail.)
In exchange, the progressive Republicans received a commitment from their leadership to allow an open-rule debate on a package of rules reforms (something Reed was determined to avoid during the 51st Congress). In the subsequent debate, the House adopted a rules package that included most of the progressives' original demands.
The House adopted the rules reform package by a vote of 253 to 114. The package liberalized the discharge rule to make it more workable for members. Specifically, it created a discharge petition and stipulated that 150 signatures were required to successfully circumvent committee consideration of legislation. It also specified that discharge petitions would be the first order of business on two Mondays every month. The reform package prohibited the chairman of the Rules Committee from bottling bills up in committee with a pocket veto. It repealed the so-called Underwood Rule of 1911, making it harder to amend tariff and tax legislation on the House floor. The reform package required a two-thirds vote for same-day consideration of special orders reported from the Rules Committee. It changed the Consent Calendar procedures to require three objections instead of one to block a member from calling up a measure on it.
Republicans would repeal some of the reforms at the beginning of the following Congress after increasing the size of their majority in the 1924 elections. In the 69th Congress, the House comprised 247 Republicans and 183 Democrats (plus five others). The Republican majority raised the number of signatures needed to discharge a bill from 150 to a majority of the House.
The Takeaway
Cross-party coalitions' success in this period highlights the influence intra-party factions can wield by reframing the debate and/or structuring the legislative process to advantage their preferred outcomes. Progressives did so in 1923 by opposing Gillet's election as Speaker on eight separate votes to secure an opportunity to debate a rules reform package under an open rule. They understood that Republicans' divisions would make it easier for them to prevail in a debate over the process when coupled with the desire of more junior members to play a more significant role in the process and the Democrats' partisan interests.