Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Why McCarthy is having trouble getting the votes to be speaker

Why McCarthy is having trouble getting the votes to be speaker

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (C), speaks during a news conference after the close of a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives on a resolution formalizing the impeachment inquiry centered on U.S. President Donald Trump October 31, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Frost served 26 years as a Congressman from the 24th District of Texas (Dallas-Ft. Worth) from 1979 to 2005. During that time he served eight years in the House Democratic Leadership, four years as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and four years as chair of the House Democratic Caucus. He was a member of the House Rules Committee and the House Budget Committee. Since leaving Congress he served four years as chair of the National Endowment for Democracy and is the immediate past president of the Former Members of Congress Association.

As a former 26-year Congressman from Texas (1979-2005), I have observed and been personally involved in many House leadership races. Knowing that the race may have been concluded before you read this, I none-the-less believe that the following comments are important to shed some light on the current spectacle the American people have been subjected to and the inevitable chaos that will follow no matter who eventually wins the Speakership.


Leadership races are often already over before the first vote is cast. The most recent example was Nancy Pelosi’s race for speaker four years ago. The House was closely divided and there was a group of dissident Democrats who wanted her replaced with someone younger. To her credit, Nancy made a deal with the dissidents before the voting started. She agreed to limit her tenure to that term and one more. The opposition disappeared.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Kevin McCarthy has known for several months that there is a rump group in his own conference that would vote against him on the floor, thus denying him the 218 votes necessary to win. And yet, even with eight weeks’ worth of negotiating time, he was not capable of making a deal the way Pelosi did and thus has subjected him and his party to massive embarrassment on live television.

If McCarthy ultimately is successful in making a last-minute deal and winning the Speakership, he will have given away the store and be Speaker in name only. As we say in the South, he will be a “capon.” For those of you not familiar with the term, a capon is a rooster without testicles.

What most Members of Congress want is a Speaker with some guts who will drive hard bargains but ones that, in the final analysis, are for the good of the country. This has little to do with partisan philosophy but with strength and credibility on both sides of the aisle. Members in both parties often disagreed with Pelosi on some issues, but they respected her ability to arrive at a solution that served the national interests.

McCarthy’s problem from the outset was that he didn’t know how to compromise without surrendering his basic, core principles.

Both Democrats and Republicans have often complained about the power of the House Rules Committee, acting in concert with the Speaker, to structure debate in a way that overly restricts the offering of floor amendments. However, there is a balance to be struck here to ensure partisans on both sides of the aisle don’t “filibuster by amendment” and block important legislation for getting a final vote. I served on the Rules Committee for 26 years and saw both Democratic and Republican Speakers use this power to come to a final result on the floor.

McCarthy has been willing to give a minority of his own party veto power over major legislation through the rules of the House and veto power of his tenure as Speaker. A real Speaker (like Pelosi and Gingrich) would never give away the store to get the title “Speaker” while making it impossible to do the people’s business.

In addition, he has made a major concession that flies in the face of the lesson Republicans should have learned from their mid-term election debacle. He has promised that a future Speaker McCarthy would not financially support moderate candidates running against far-right fringe candidates in Republican primaries. The anticipated Republican wave never materialized in the 2022 midterm election because numerous safely Republican races went to the Democrats as the electorate voted against far-right extremists. Instead of steering the caucus back toward a more moderate Republican majority willing to govern, McCarthy is ensuring that the very group that is making his life miserable is going to grow! We have the debt ceiling vote looming on the horizon during the second half of this year, and a Republican caucus beholden to their fringe element may just be chaotic enough to drive the country’s economy over the cliff.

Let’s hope that however this drama ends, our country has a Speaker who retains enough power to pass legislation in the time of crisis for our country. If the public doesn’t like the final legislative result, it can always vote for the other party in the next election. That’s the beauty of having elections for the House every two years.

Read More

Presidential promises, promises, promises....

Former President Donald J. Trump answers question from Pastor Paula White-Cain at the National Faith Advisory Board summit in Powder Springs, Georgia, United States on October 28, 2024.

(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Presidential promises, promises, promises....

When Donald Trump made his first successful run for president in 2016, he made 663 promises to American voters. By the end of his 2021 term of office, he could only fulfill approximately 23 percent of his vows. Before we get too excited as to what will happen when Trump 2.0 takes effect on Jan. 20, let’s take a moment to reflect on covenants made by a couple of other presidents.

PolitiFact tracks the promises our presidents have made. PolitiFact is a non-partisan fact-checking website created in 2007 by the Florida-based Tampa Bay Times and acquired in 2018 by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists. Here’s a report card on three presidents:

Keep ReadingShow less
A bold next step for the Democratic Party

DEMOCRATIC PARTY FLAG

Getty Images//Stock Photo

A bold next step for the Democratic Party

In order to think about the next steps for the Democratic Party and the February 1, 2025, vote for a new Democratic National Committee Chair, it is useful to remember the context of three pairs of Democratic Presidents since the 1960s.

JFK and LBJ led the way for major progressive changes, ranging from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Affirmative Action and the War on Poverty. Johnson's Great Society was the most progressive agenda ever promoted by an American president.

Keep ReadingShow less
The 119th Congress: Some history makers, but fewer women overall

Vice President Kamala Harris presides over the electoral college vote count during a joint session of Congress in the House chamber on Monday, January 6, 2025.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The 119th Congress: Some history makers, but fewer women overall

When the 119th U.S. Congress was sworn in, some newly elected women members made history.

Emily Randall, from Washington’s 6th Congressional District, is the first out LGBTQ+ Latina. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks are the first Black senators to represent Delaware and Maryland, respectively — and the first two Black women to ever serve concurrently in the upper chamber. Sarah McBride, from Delaware’s at-large House district, is the first transgender member of Congress. All are Democrats.

Keep ReadingShow less
What can we learn in 2025 from the 100-year-old Scopes Trial?

Two groups of protesters, one blue and one red, marching with placards across an abstract American flag background.

Getty Images//Stock Photo

What can we learn in 2025 from the 100-year-old Scopes Trial?

Based on popular demand, the American Schism series will renew in 2025 with a look at science-based public policy caught in the crossfires of today’s culture wars.

Readers often send me comments on how this series effectively sheds light on our contemporary political divisions through careful examination and analysis of our own American history, since so many of our present issues are derivative of conflicts long brewing in our past. As I wrote last year on these pages, history can act as a salve for our present-day wounds if we apply it.

Keep ReadingShow less