Democrats may have blown their chance to get rid of their archnemesis in Congress.
According to The Washington Times, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz offered to resign from Congress if the Democrats would vote for a Republican to become speaker. Gaetz made the offer while on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show on Thursday night.
Gaetz spoke before 15 Republican holdouts switched their votes and backed the beleaguered Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Ingraham suggested that Gaetz, Rep. Lauren Boebert, and other anti-McCarthy rebels were “playing with fire” by creating a scenario where the GOP would strike a deal to get a moderate Republican to be speaker but “essentially both parties share power.”
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The Free Press reported on Thursday that Gaetz had been assured earlier in the process by left-wing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that the leftists would not cut a deal with McCarthy that allowed him to become speaker with support from Democrats. A day later, AOC reversed herself and said Democrats were “open” to that idea, if some were named to committee chairmanships.
During an interview with Gaetz on Thursday, Ingraham, who like many so-called conservative pundits were willing to accept McCarthy rather than see the fight for more right-leaning values continue, repeatedly tried to get him to concede that Democrats could broker a deal with McCarthy to gain or keep power, at the expense of conservative GOP lawmakers like Gaezt and Boebert.
During the interview, Gaetz rejected that idea.
His contingent of conservatives, he said, have “zero trust” in McCarthy, “whose compass is like a wet finger in the wind.”
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“No, absolutely not. That will not happen,” Gaetz said of Democrats backing McCarthy or some other moderate.
“I’m on the floor, Laura. These 212 Democrats are going to vote for [Rep.] Hakeem Jeffries [for speaker] every single time. He is a historic candidate for them. They are not going to leave off under any circumstance,” Gaetz told Ingraham.
“If Democrats join up to elect a moderate Republican, I will resign from the House of Representatives. That is how certain I am,” he added.
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