House GOP Poised to Change 'Vacate Chair' Rule That Downed McCarthy

With House Republicans poised to meet Tuesday evening, it was clear that one particular item would be topping their agenda: scrapping or at least amending the "vacate the chair" rule that brought down Speaker Kevin McCarthy a week ago.

"We're going to address changes regarding that rule, so that we don't have a similar situation again," Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., told Newsmax, referring to the vote in which eight Republicans joined with every Democrat in the House to dethrone McCarthy by 216 to 210.

Most House Republicans who spoke to Newsmax said they were sympathetic to changing the present rule in which a single member can make a motion to "vacate the chair" and have an immediate "up or down" vote on the fate of the speaker.

Both speaker hopefuls House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, support raising the threshold of votes required to make it more difficult to depose the speaker.

Any change in the rule to declare the chair vacant must be approved by the full House.

To secure the votes of Rep. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and other holdouts in the vote for speaker in January, McCarthy agreed to change the motion to vacate to a one-vote threshold.

The one-vote threshold had actually existed for well over a century but was only invoked once: in 1910 against conservative Republican Speaker Joseph Cannon, R-Ill. (it failed) and threatened against Republican Speakers Newt Gingrich in 1998 and John Boehner in 2015. The "motions to vacate" went nowhere against either but is considered key in convincing Boehner to resign a few months later.

Under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., House Democrats changed the rules to allow a motion to vacate only if it was ordered by a vote of a party conference.

"We're going to have to do something about that rule," Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., told us.

Rep. Fleischman agreed, saying "We'll definitely look at that rule to oust the speaker and do something. It will be a long arduous night, and I'm ready for it."

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.