Thursday on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, vowed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would not go without Republican opposition in his effort to be House Speaker.
Partial transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: House Freedom Caucus Member and Virginia Congressman, Bob Good joins me now. Congressman, should Kevin McCarthy be concerned tonight? Is there rumblings afoot in the Freedom Caucus that you need to go in another direction?
REP. BOB GOOD (R-VA): He absolutely should be concerned. His only priority the last two years has seemed to be able to get the majority and become speaker just for the sake of having the majority becoming speaker. He’s essentially had a two-year audition where he had the exclusive opportunity to earn the vote of the conference to demonstrate that he was willing to fight against the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer agenda, and he failed to do that. In all across the country, Republican voters continue to tell me and other members of Congress and candidates that they don’t support Kevin McCarthy because he’s not a true conservative and they want someone that will fight. There’s many examples in the past two years where he’s failed to do that.
When I came in as a new freshman two years ago, he told our freshman class, hey, we’re going to control the floor, that the majority number is so small with only five or six majority for the Democrats, that we’re going to control the floor, because we’re going to lead the fight. We’re going to be united in our fight. And over and over he’s failed to respond to our efforts to fight as a minority when there’s no real pressure like there will be in the majority.
He didn’t support our efforts to vacate the chair when Nancy Pelosi was at her weakest moments. He didn’t support our efforts to request recorded votes. He didn’t support our efforts to fight suspension bills. He has not supported our efforts to fight against the NDAA when we had the leverage to block it as Republicans because Democrats couldn’t pass it, a bad NDAA bill without Republican votes. On issue after issue and time after time, he has failed to support our efforts to fight, truly fight against an oppressive Democrat majority.
INGRAHAM: Congressman, you caucus is pushing McCarthy to restore the motion to vacate, that’s the House rule recently ditched by the Democrats. It allows a single member to force a vote on the speakership at any given time. How big of a sticking point is that for your caucus?
GOOD: Yes, we gave him a rules package. We asked him two months ago to change the rules of Congress, when we get the majority, to change the Republican rules, the rules of our conference, and to change the rules of Congress to empower regular members. One of those being able to vacate the chair. A secure, confident leader understands that he or she has the trust of the support of those they purport to lead and they’re not threatened by that.
But that was a rule that was in place in the 115th Congress until Nancy Pelosi changed it. But we want other changes. Amendments from the floor if 10 percent Republicans support it, a majority of the majority rule where he can’t pass legislation that a majority of Republicans don’t support, that we get to elect our own chairman of our respective committees, that we have the Holman rule that would allow to us defund certain agencies or departments or even salaries of individuals that are violating the oath of their office. There’s rules that we want to change to empower regular members instead of having the control with a few elites at the top like we currently have in the Democrat majority. We shouldn’t have that under a Republican majority either.
INGRAHAM: Congressman, is there anyone else’s whose name is floating out there that would want to be speaker?
GOOD: I can tell you that there absolutely will be a challenge to Kevin McCarthy’s leadership bid when we have our organizational meetings next week, and the intent on November 15 when that is scheduled to be will be to demonstrate that he doesn’t have near 218 votes, and then that opens it up for anyone to be considered on January 3rd. And I think there’s a lot of members of Congress who will be interested in being speaker once it’s clear that Kevin McCarthy does not have the required 218 votes
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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