The Republican lawmaker who was the opponent to Kevin McCarthy for House speaker in 2015 until the Californian unexpectedly dropped out of the race told Newsmax his old rival will be a successful speaker, in part because of the controversial House rules changes he agreed to in order to woo many of the 19 "Never Kevin" Republicans who opposed him to the end.
"Kevin will do great with these rules changes," said Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., who spoke to Newsmax in his office Friday night, less than two hours before McCarthy secured the speaker's gavel after 15 grueling ballots by the full House.
"He's agreed to all the things I ran on in the speaker's race in '15," he added with a smile.
Webster recalled how he ran against then-Majority Leader McCarthy following the surprise resignation of then-Speaker John Boehner in the fall of 2015 (having received 12 votes against Boehner for speaker in January, leading to Webster's removal from the powerful Rules Committee).
Chief among the planks in the Floridian's platform was what he called "flipping the process."
"I'd make it principle-based, where ideas are good because of what they say rather than because they are pushed by a committee chairman or a member's seniority or the party of the sponsors. Rank-and-file members would be successful." This is, in effect, one of the demands made by McCarthy's opponents — namely, greater power for individual members on legislation that reaches the floor. Another is permitting amendments on the floor prior to a vote.
As to McCarthy's acquiescence to making it easier for members to propose a "motion to vacate" the chair and thus set the stage for an immediate election of a new speaker, the Floridian said: "It's fantastic. Speakers will come and speakers will go, but this will always be there to keep them following the will of the members. If your motivation is power, I suppose you won't like it. If your motivation is governance, you will."
McCarthy also agreed to limiting bills to a single subject. This prompted Webster to smile and point out, "In my presentation before the [Republican] Conference [in the 2015 race], I called for a 'germaneness rule' — namely, that any amendments to a bill stick to the subject of the bill and nothing else."
In predicting a bright future for McCarthy and the House Republicans for accepting the concessions, Webster said he was not worried about the dragged-out election and the inevitable narrowness of the election of the new speaker.
"That's what happened to me in 1996, when Republicans won the House in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction," he told us. "And I made agreements with other Republicans and got elected speaker by [a vote of] 61-59 over [Democrat] Buzz Ritchie. Our low approval ratings were flipped right-side up. And just as [the GOP-controlled House] is now dealing with a Democratic president, our Republican legislature then was dealing with a Democratic governor [the late Lawton Chiles] and we beat him every time and overrode every veto. And I made friends with a number of my Democratic colleagues who were opposing me on every vote, such as [present Florida Democratic Reps.] Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel."
Following some unfortunate comments about Hillary Clinton in 2015, McCarthy withdrew from the race for speaker and, after the conference abruptly adjourned, then-Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reluctantly entered the race and beat Webster to become Republican speaker-designate.
Webster never got to be speaker of the U.S. House. But he was quite hopeful on Friday to see his agenda affirmed by his former rival, McCarthy.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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