Kevin McCarthy deserves to be House speaker

OPINION:

The election of a House Republican majority has been four years in the making. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California recruited candidates, raised half a billion dollars to fund those candidates, ensured state redistricting protected Republican interests, and organized the House minority into a powerful force whose vision reverberated throughout the nation. All of this led to the ascension of the Republicans’ House majority.

We are quickly discovering, however, that some conservatives are cursed with a disease that prohibits them from declaring victory. Despite winning a majority, a handful of Republicans in the House are threatening to withhold their vote in a last-ditch effort to deny Mr. McCarthy the speaker’s gavel.

Some claim that Mr. McCarthy isn’t conservative enough. Others blame him for not winning the House by larger margins. All these dissenters are willing to ignore the will of the Republican Conference, where Mr. McCarthy garnered support of 85% of his colleagues, to foist another person to the top position.

This circular firing squad needs to end.

Because the Republican House — paired with a Democratic Senate and Democratic president — won’t have the votes to move game-changing legislation in the 118th Congress, they will need to hold countless hearings and oversight investigations of the Biden administration to move the limited government ball forward. Mr. McCarthy has already pledged to “investigate every order, every action, and every failure” of this administration and received the endorsement of conservative stalwart Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican whom no one can call a “squish” or “sellout,” as a result.

But instead of preparing for hearings on Hunter Biden’s laptop, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s funding of the Wuhan lab, the FBI’s continued intrusion in U.S. elections, and a host of other issues, Republicans in Congress are delaying the speaker’s delegation of committee assignments to argue over whether a back-bencher who has never lifted a finger to secure a House majority should be the speaker, rather than the person who made it happen.

The leadership door is open to any House member capable, willing and able to raise funds, recruit candidates and support them. It is the height of arrogance to think that the person who invested four years of their life doing these things should be denied the position for someone who didn’t do those things.

Moderate members of the House have already said that if Mr. McCarthy doesn’t win, they will begin working with Democrats to elect a compromise speaker. Is that what conservative Republicans really want to happen? Talk about shooting one’s own cause in the foot.

And speaking of shooting oneself in the foot: Those who do not want Mr. McCarthy to assume the gavel are pushing internal rule changes that would require the will of the Republican majority — as opposed to the speaker’s discretion — to move legislation to the floor. This would represent suicide for the Republican majority.

Republicans’ House majority was not secured in congressional districts that former President Donald Trump won in 2020 but in districts that President Biden won — often by upward of 10 points. Forcing the members in those districts to vote publicly on partisan bills (bills that will inevitably die in the Democratic-led Senate anyway) will imperil some of their reelection prospects — hurting, not helping, the Republican cause.

The time has come to end these games. The time has come to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.

• Edward Woodson is a lawyer and host of “The Edward Woodson Show,” which airs weekdays on WZAB Miami, streaming online at EdwardWoodson.com.