Current rules prevent McCarthy from doing that. They provide conference membership to all elected Republicans. Members can be expelled from the conference only by a two-thirds vote of members, and those proceedings must “follow the rules of the House of Representatives, as nearly as practicable.” This effectively means that die-hard members can flout the speaker’s will without consequence.
The rules also give the conference and its steering committee the power to select members to specific House committees, but it is rare for members to be removed from those assignments for misbehavior. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the conference’s elections arm, traditionally does not oppose members seeking reelection in contested primaries, nor do the leadership’s PACs and super PACs, even if they privately want a member to lose.
This was true even in the recent case of Steve King, who lost his renomination bid in Iowa after making racist comments. McCarthy removed King from his committees but refrained from directly campaigning against him.
There’s good reason for these rules. Parties should represent their voters. Giving speakers or a committee of party leaders broad powers to determine which members belong to the conference contradicts that notion.
But this is no ordinary moment for the party. Time and again, the same group of malcontents have refused to demonstrate a shred of party loyalty. They demand things that cannot obtain the assent of their colleagues, much less Congress as a whole. They laugh in the face of their supposed friends by voting against what almost everyone in the party has agreed upon.
They can do this because of the immunity the conference rules afford them. Ostracism and leadership disfavor do nothing to change their behavior. In fact, many seem to think their political stature grows the more immaturely they act.
How to change that? Target their political aspirations. One holdout, Rep. Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.), is said to want to run for his state’s Senate seat next year. The defectors’ ringleader, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), is also rumored to be eyeing a run for governor when term-limited Ron DeSantis (R) leaves office in 2026.
McCarthy can damage those plans by setting a clear threshold for when a person can be removed from the conference and from their committee assignments for defying the overwhelming will of the party. For example, the rules could specify that any Republican member might face removal if they defeat a measure brought to the House floor that receives 95 percent support from conference members.
This would set a very high bar for a member’s removal. House Republicans have 222 members when at full complement. That means 211 would have to vote for a measure before this provision would be triggered. Groups such as the House Freedom Caucus or the Main Street Partnership could thus use their numbers to negotiate without risking adverse consequences.
Such a threshold should be paired with a provision for reinstatement. For example, any member who loses conference membership and a seat on House committees would automatically be reinstated if they subsequently voted with the conference on the bill (or another version of that bill) they initially opposed. Forgiveness is always appropriate if someone shows contrition.
McCarthy should also seek to establish when the NRCC and the leadership PACs can openly oppose an expelled member. This would be the ultimate power, as even the most accomplished fundraisers cannot match the power that leadership can bring to bear in a primary contest. This measure should be used carefully, but firmly.
These changes would create an American version of the power that parliamentary leaders in other countries possess. In Britain, for example, this is called “removing the whip.” A member who has the party whip withdrawn is expelled from the parliamentary party and cannot run for reelection as that party’s candidate. The U.S. primary system precludes a party leader from preventing renomination, but the millions of dollars the leader could deploy under my proposal would be a strong deterrent to defection.
For more than a decade, McCarthy and his predecessors in the speaker’s office have been assailed by hard-line nihilists. They must solve the problem once and for all by showing them that they, too, can play hardball.
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