Is the Republican establishment ruling the House of Representatives now humbled and ready to listen to their conservative constituents in the wake of House Speaker John Boehner's shock resignation?
Don't bet on it for a single minute, says Newsmax political analyst Dick Morris, who believes the GOP mainstream will push Rep. Kevin McCarthy into the speaker's chair simply to keep the status quo.
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"They want McCarthy in power because they'll share in the goodies and there's only one way to teach these guys a lesson and that's to beat them in primary fights," Morris said Tuesday to J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan on
"Newsmax Prime." "I hope up and down the people that support McCarthy, who come from districts where there's a strong conservative movement, face primary fights and are defeated, just like Eric Cantor was.
"You need a few more of those scalps on the wall before these idiots take you seriously."
Morris, who was an advisor to President Bill Clinton, said the old guard Republicans could be on the ropes as the newly-emboldened conservative side ramps up its fight for more power.
"Their seats are threatened because they might be opposed by Republicans who run primary fights against them who defeat them and the seat would stay Republican but it would switch from moderate liberal to conservative," Morris said.
But there are other possibilities as well, Morris believes.
"One is that Trey Gowdy [of South Carolina] is pushed as a possible majority leader, the No. 2 position being vacated by Kevin McCarthy to run for speaker," he said. "And that could be a possible deal if the Republican conservatives said, 'OK, you take Gowdy for No. 2 and we'll take McCarthy for No. 1, and any negotiations and anything they do, they do it together.'
"That was kind of how Boehner preserved the peace in the early years of his tenure because the conservatives tended to trust Eric Cantor a little bit and Cantor and Boehner did most of the stuff together. Cantor was the majority leader before McCarthy."
But then there's another destructive possibility, according to Morris.
"If the Republican majority steamrollers the choice of McCarthy of speaker and installs another moderate liberal as majority leader, the House Republicans on the floor of the House could defect and refuse to vote for that speaker," he said. "And the Speaker McCarthy, would need not just a majority of his caucus, but a majority of the Congress as a whole to elect him speaker.
"You could have a situation where 180 Republicans vote for McCarthy, 180 Democrats vote for Pelosi, and 40 conservative Republicans vote for some other candidate and the House can't organize, it can't do any business, it can't function because there would be that delay."
That scenario could drag on for weeks or even months, said Morris, author of
"Power Grab: Obama's Dangerous Plan for a One-Party Nation," written with Eileen McGann and published by Humanix.
"That's a terrible prospect that could really hurt the Republican chances for victory," he said. "So I hope the Republican leadership will take account of that and will come across with something that will satisfy the conservatives."
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