Johnson Confirms House Likely to Address New Rules for Motion to Vacate

Former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spent years working his way through the ranks to get to his ultimate goal… being elected as Speaker of the House.

His time as Speaker ended in a flash when he reneged on promises made, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made a motion to vacate, which was successful and resulted in House chaos.

Speaker Johnson clearly wants to avoid that from happening again, and he now believes that during the next congressional session, the rules to make a motion to vacate will be changed.

No More Chaos

My regular readers know that I fully supported McCarthy's removal as Speaker. I was vocally opposed to him getting that position after the GOP won the House after the 2022 election.

Even though the GOP took over the House, I think we can all agree that Republican leadership since 2020 has been pitiful. McCarthy is part of that problem, with the other cogs being Senator McConnell (R-KY) and Ronna McDaniel.

Having said that, I thought when the motion to vacate was made, there would have been a solid plan in place to move a new Speaker in seamlessly, but that clearly did not happen.

Republicans were made to look like fools as they put one candidate up after the other, all failing to get enough support until Johnson was finally installed.

Johnson has not been very good, however, at least in my opinion, and I highly doubt he will be elected as the Speaker in the next Congress if the GOP manages to hold the House.

Regardless, Johnson believes the motion to vacate rules will be changed to prevent the chaos that took place over the speakership.

Johnson stated, “The motion to vacate is something that comes up a lot amongst members and discussion. … I expect there will probably be a change to that as well. But just so you know, I’ve never advocated for that; I’m not one who’s making it into this issue, because I don’t think it is one for now.

“I just think it’s something that a lot of members on both sides of the aisle talk about openly that they have a desire for [a] more normal process on the House floor again.

“So we’ll be looking at that on the House rules package in our respective caucus and conference packages as well as going to the new Congress. And that’s just something we should do in due course, be good stewards of the institution.”

Currently, a motion to vacate can be made by any member of Congress, which was part of the rules concessions that McCarthy agreed to when he was made Speaker.

Prior to that, it required a majority of either party for the motion to be considered.

I think we can all agree that McCarthy’s removal was an embarrassment for the GOP, not in his removal, but in how unprepared the caucus was to deal with such a scenario.