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Republican House member calls McCarthy's ouster a 'bipartisan failure' [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-10-16  

House Republicans are frantically trying to create some appearance of competence and non-chaos as Rep. Jim Jordan bullies his way toward the speakership. To that end, Rep. Larry Bucshon of Indiana had the audacity to repeatedly argue on CNN that the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker “will go down as a bipartisan failure.” While he did acknowledge that Republicans initiated it, he said that Democrats should have saved McCarthy’s bacon out of respect for the institution.

x GOP Rep. Larry Bucshon says on CNN that he thinks McCarthy's ouster "will go down as a bipartisan failure" pic.twitter.com/lcPtVfpZgn — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2023

“I supported Speaker McCarthy. I thought it was a bad idea,” he said of the vote to oust McCarthy. “I think historically it’s going to go down as a bipartisan failure. We had eight people on our side, of course, that led this, but we also had every Democrat in the House vote to remove the speaker of the House.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar broke in. “You think this is going to go down as a bipartisan failure?” she asked.

“I really do,” Bucshon replied. “Yes. I think it’s going to be mostly on the eight people in the House Republicans, but I do think, institutional-wise, history will say that removing a House speaker with 208 minority votes was a bad idea. Yes, I do believe that. But again, let me just say, you know, this is on Republicans. We had Republicans that brought up the vote. But I do think history will write ...”

Again, Keilar broke in. “But you're in the majority. Sir, you’re in the majority, and the majority elects the speaker. So it’s up—just historically, it’s up to the majority. That’s just the way it goes: It is the responsibility of the majority party. Why put that on the minority party?”

“Well, it is the responsibility to elect the speaker. That’s true, but that’s not what we did. What we did is, for the first time in U.S. history, is we removed the speaker. So, you know, yes, if we didn’t get the Republican votes …”

Keilar pressed: “But why not just own that, I mean, shouldn’t—just, why not just own that?”

“Weeelll,” Bucshon said, in a “come on, cut me a break here” tone.

“That’s what your party did,” Keilar noted.

“I think we have” owned it, Bucshon replied, in the midst of making the argument that actually Democrats owned a lot of it. “But I think, I’m talking about history of the House of Representatives going forward, I don’t think history will write that it was a good idea to remove the House speaker, regardless of who started it.”

Regardless of who started it. So Republicans can start something that’s a bad idea, and then it’s the responsibility of Democrats to bail them out. That’s a big “no thanks” from me on that one.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/16/2199776/-Republican-House-member-calls-McCarthy-s-ouster-a-bipartisan-failure?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_7&pm_medium=web

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