Rep Kat Cammack: The Struggle to Elect a New Speaker Could Last a “Month”

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) ,congresswoman for FL-03 and small business owner, joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss the moves made by Matt Gaetz and the small contingency of Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Her and Guy discuss how damaging this move was to the Republican party and how long this might draw out. Listen to the full interview below.

Full Interview:

Cammack had this to say on how long the fight to nominate a new Speaker might go:

“We have a lot of family discussions that need to happen. If I was a betting woman, I would say we will be paralyzed for the next month because at this point I don’t see someone who can get to 218 because there’s too many preconditions that are being tossed out, saying, this is my hard line, this is what I want. And also I’ll put this out as my precondition. I want what the American people want. I want us to get back to freakin work.”

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: With us now is Kat Cammack, a Republican congresswoman from Florida in the third Congressional District down in the Sunshine State. And, Congresswoman, it’s good to have you back here.

Rep. Kat Cammack: Hey, Guy, how are you doing?

Guy Benson: Well, you know, still just exhaling from what we all saw yesterday. And you were in a front row seat as a member of Congress. Just played that clip from McCarthy’s press conference last night. How similar was that in terms of substance and tone to what he said when you guys were meeting privately shortly prior to that?

Rep. Kat Cammack: Yeah. I mean, that was it in a nutshell. I will say, you know, there was there was a lot of shock in the room just because it was you know, typically we go into that room and it’s, you know, a lively discussion. It’s a back and forth. It’s about an hour long. The meeting was maybe all of 10 minutes. And it was so swift that we all were looking around at each other saying, wow, that that really just happened. But then, of course, the the the follow up to that was we’re adjourning. And I immediately was, no, we cannot leave. The American people need us here. They need us working. We are on a time clock. We have got to get to work leaving on a Tuesday and coming back the following week. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. And so there was a lot of back and forth. But the message from from McCarthy was essentially just that he didn’t deviate from that. He talked about being grateful that he had the opportunity to serve. He thanked a lot of the people in the room, thanked his team, his staff, and it was very short, sweet and to the point.

Guy Benson: I want to ask you about this now recess, because you said the chamber is adjourned. You guys can’t do anything so long as there isn’t a speaker. Is part of the thinking that based on just the complete. Tearing down of the leadership structure yesterday, that if you guys tried to just bounce right back and vote for a new speaker, that would be an ugly, protracted, chaotic mess. And so they want to sort of like let things shake out, let some candidates get declared, make their case in private, and then try to pull this thing together next week. That’s at least what I would imagine they did this for. It’s a lost week. It could be longer than a lost week, which is frustrating. But I can also totally imagine just extending the humiliation for hours or days if there wasn’t really any sort of plan for what was next.

Rep. Kat Cammack: Yeah, I mean, and I can understand that, you know, there’s a lot of emotions that are running high among members, and that element certainly is still there. You know, I’ve talked to members all day today, all last night. Many people the common theme is I’m just numb. And so there was a sense, certainly from Patrick McHenry, he said this, I’m not putting words in his mouth. He said, you know, I think people need to go home, cool off. Temperature needs to get lowered in the room. And I understand that strategy. It is it is a valid tactic. That being said, we are in a situation where now we have 41 days, 41 days before we are up against another government shutdown where the troops we had legislation to pay the troops during a shutdown that did not get passed. We we had legislation that would do the work of 70% of the government through regular order that did not get passed. So here we are on a deadline and this is crisis government and nothing good ever comes out of that. So there is this element of, yes, we need to get a speaker in place. We need to get rocking and rolling because that’s what the American people want. They want us to get back to work. They don’t care about the reality show that’s playing out up here. They don’t care about the inside baseball. They certainly don’t care about the personalities. They want to know that we’re cutting spending, that we’re securing the border, that we’re addressing the crime wave, that we’re doing the things that we were actually sent here to do. And for me, it’s very frustrating that people’s personal ambition, that their personality conflicts are getting in the way of doing the work that we were sent here to do.

Guy Benson: Yeah, and Democrats Democrats don’t do this. Democrats fight to win. They’re ruthless. And even if they hate each other’s guts. They make it work because winning and losing is too important to them. Power is too important to them. I’m not saying become the Democrats in every way, but man, there’s certain tactical pages that need to come out of their playbook. Obviously, the Republicans seem to be doing the opposite in a lot of ways. You said it’s time to rock and roll with a new speaker. Okay. So in the mind of Kat Cammack, who should that be? I know Jim Jordan apparently is in. Steve Scalise is in. There might be others. Do you have a preference at this stage?

Rep. Kat Cammack: I don’t I don’t have a candidate that I’ve thrown my my name by behind at this point because, one, I’m very realistic in the sense of we need someone who can get to to 18, we need to 18 because and.

Guy Benson: Someone I mean what’s the start there?

Rep. Kat Cammack: That anyone? Well, that’s the big question of the day. And so certainly the calls have been going out. I’ve talked to several of the candidates today, and I think they’ve got great ideas, great visions of the two that have announced. Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise. They’re great guys. Jim Jordan is my chairman on weaponization, great guy, visionary, incredibly intelligent, very conservative. I really respect him. We need someone who can get it to 18. Jim could be that guy. Steve could be that guy. But we’re going to have to have a lot of conversations in the coming days to see who can get there. But the thing that I also want to caution folks on is this is not a game that people can play fast and loose on. I’ve already seen some of my colleagues putting out demands for certain things of I want this and I need that. And this is my hard line and this is my red line. And let me tell you what, if we get on the House floor and this turns into a messy multiple round deal, the gavel will go to the Democrats because there are already people talking about cutting a deal with the Democrats. And if in fact.

Guy Benson: Hang on, you said when you say people people want to cut a deal with the Democrats, are we speaking about Matt Gaetz because he’s been very good at that recently?

Rep. Kat Cammack: Yeah, I do want to remind people that, yes, Matt Gaetz did with eight Republicans and all Democrats, stripped the Republicans of their ability to govern.

Guy Benson: And they do that. They do that in the name of true conservatism. But I think the point you’re about to make is two can potentially play at that game. And if the moderates are sick of getting jerked around this way, I saw people floating the idea of a handful of moderates teaming up with all the Democrats to make Liz Cheney speaker of the House. It’s just maybe a bit of a crazy notion, but not completely implausible given what we’ve just seen. I’m not sure Matt Gaetz would want to trade Kevin McCarthy for Liz Cheney, but if there is a big giant mess again, who knows what might happen with an empowered, unified Democratic minority with Republicans peeling off all over the place?

Rep. Kat Cammack: Well, I can’t speak for Matt Gaetz, but I highly doubt that he would support Liz Cheney for speaker. But obviously, there are a lot of lessons that have been learned over the course of the last couple of weeks. And one of those being. It only takes a small handful of people to start putting together a strategy to get what they want. And don’t think for one second that the moderates in the Republican conference haven’t watched what’s happened. And they’re sitting there saying, I could cut a deal. I could get the committees that I want. I could get something for my home state delegation, I could get this done, and they would be a hero back in their districts because they’re in Biden districts. And so if this ends with Hakeem Jeffries with the gavel in his hand, that’s unforgivable.

Guy Benson: Or just someone or anyone to the left of, let’s say, Kevin McCarthy. Right. Because I’m not sure if it would be Jeffries, But it may be or maybe it would be someone who’s super moderate, like talk about, you know, Rhino unit party, someone who represents that this is the danger that you create when you decide to align with the entire opposition party for your own self-aggrandizing stunt, which is what this tiny handful have done. And so what comes next, As you said, open question. Not exactly sure if anyone can get to 218. Is there a sense and this is an important question, Congresswoman, is there a sense that when there’s a new speaker, there will also be some new rules so we can’t do this exact same thing again the next time Matt Gaetz feels like he needs a little bit more face time.

Rep. Kat Cammack: I will tell you, based on the conversation that I have had today, there is a significant push to reform the rules package, as we call it, that dictates how many members you need for a motion to vacate. There is a very big push on the reform element. On the other side of that coin, you have 40, 50 members who are saying, no, we want to keep the. Rules as it is. So we have a lot of family discussions that need to happen. If I was a betting woman, I would say we will be paralyzed for the next month because at this point I don’t see someone who can get to 218 because there’s too many preconditions that are being tossed out, saying, this is my hard line, this is what I want. And also I’ll put this out as my precondition. I want what the American people want. I want us to get back to freakin work. I want to secure the damn border. If people would stop with their personal wishlists and start doing what is necessary to actually get the work done up here, we’d be in a much better place. We need to love our country more than we despise each other, and that’s what we need to get back to. And that’s the frustration that I certainly have. But if I was a betting woman, I would say next week we will still be paralyzed. Which means no floor activity. No, no legislation getting passed. I think we’re going to be in this for a very long moment.

Guy Benson: On that note, I know it’s not easy math wise to start talking about expelling people from the party when the majority is so tenuous and tiny to begin with. But there’s a lot of rancor and anger directed at in particular, one, maybe two or three of the folks leading that charge yesterday to defend a straight. Kevin McCarthy. Is there, do you think, a realistic chance that someone like Matt Gaetz might get thrown out of the conference or at least a move to do that?

Rep. Kat Cammack: I know that there are people who have talked about it. You know, that gets very, very tricky. I will say I’ve talked, I’ve talked to a couple and I and I think of this from the perspective of his constituents, you know, his constituents then lose their voice and their representation now. I am in no way saying that, you know what? They’re they’re responsible for that. But I think that. You do that. And that further divides the conference. But there are people who have, as part of their preconditions, they want him out. They want to see some change made. And I think at this point in time, Guy, we need cooler heads to prevail. Everybody’s looking for their pound of flesh right now. Everybody is looking for, hey, I need to get this element. And as much as it drives headlines to say we’re going to kick this person out, we’re going to do that, I don’t think that that’s helpful. We have such a small minority and every day that goes by, that is the day that Biden gets stronger. That is another day that the Senate gets more leverage over the House. And it’s one more day that the American people are losing weight.

Guy Benson: So a wasted majority, a wasted nominal majority. Every day that you guys can’t operate by choices made by the majority itself, at least enough members of the majority itself. Speaking of getting kicked out, we’ve seen Patrick McHenry, who is sort of the acting quasi leader at the moment. In some ways, he ejected Nancy Pelosi from her little spot in the Capitol and a Steny Hoyer as well. They used to be in leadership. Obviously, they’re not anymore. As a courtesy. They were able to keep sort of a little office space in the main Capitol building. Not anymore. McHenry said outright, You guys are out of here. That was seen as kind of retaliation for the Democrats doing what they did, which I get why they did it politically. But also they’re empowering that GATES and they want to pretend like they’re the adults in the room, and yet they did what they did to empower Mac Gates and to cause all this. Is that too petty in your mind, or is that well earned as like a little blowback for what the Democrats did and their hand in this yesterday?

Rep. Kat Cammack: No, I think that’s well-deserved if we’re being very technical. The room that Nancy Pelosi occupied, past tense, was reserved for former speakers and now Kevin McCarthy. That is his room. So Nancy no longer has the privilege to occupy it. But beyond that, I think what they have done to Democrats is once again, they have put their party before the country. They knew what would happen as a result. They knew that the House would shut down. They knew that it would empower Biden to continue down this treacherous path of spending us into oblivion because they want us paralyzed. They don’t want us active. And so they knew that this would be great for the D, triple C, the Democratic Congressional Party, because they would be able to run ads saying, look at the dysfunction when they’re not in chaos, just attacking each other and fighting each other. They’re completely immobilized. The Democrats wanted this. Make no mistake about it. And I think anyone who says that this was, you know, some element to help us get to a better outcome in the short term, this is this is Congress’s majority.

Guy Benson: No, no. The Democrats obviously wanted it, which is how they some of them said they weren’t going to vote for it and then they did anyway because of this political play. 94, 95, 96% of House Republicans didn’t want it, but just enough did they join with the Democrats. Now the House is Speaker less. And based on what you just said, it might be speaker loss for a while. Let’s hope that’s not the case. But I mean, we’ve we’ve been sentient observers for the last eight or nine months. So your prediction might not be wrong. It’s certainly not crazy. Kat Cammack, Republican of Florida, member of the House of Representatives on the Guy Benson Show. Congresswoman, thank you so much for your time.

Rep. Kat Cammack: Thanks, Guy. Appreciate you.