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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a reputation for being a charming, back-slapping politician with a preternatural ability to forge personal connections, but in recent months, the California Republican has run short on friends.
The House Freedom Caucus is upset with McCarthy for agreeing to a modest debt ceiling deal. The White House is upset with McCarthy for holding the debt ceiling hostage in the first place. Senate Republican leaders are upset with McCarthy over funding levels for the military. Democrats are upset with McCarthy for pursuing a far-right reactionary agenda.
But despite all of this pushback, at least the House speaker can count on the support of his right-hand man, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, right?
Not exactly. The Hill reported this week:
Tensions between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) bubbled up into the open last week as House GOP leaders dealt with hard-line conservative rebels bringing action on the floor to a halt over the debt limit compromise with the White House.
We've been working toward this point for a while. The New York Times reported in early April, for example, that McCarthy had told colleagues he couldn’t rely on Scalise, describing the Louisiana Republican as “ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take a position on anything.”
Two weeks later, Politico reported that the House speaker was assembling a team of inner-circle advisers — and Scalise wasn’t included. The chamber’s top two Republican leaders, the article added, have “trust issues.”
Those issues appear to have gotten worse. Last week, when the Freedom Caucus derailed McCarthy’s legislative plans, and reporters pressed him for an explanation, the House speaker appeared to pass the buck to Scalise, saying, “[T]he majority leader runs the floor.”
A day later, Punchbowl News talked to Scalise, who didn’t seem especially eager to rally behind his party conference’s leader amidst the intra-party dispute. Asked specifically if McCarthy had broken promises to his far-right flank, the majority leader replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the promises were. I wasn’t part of that. ... So I still don’t know what those agreements were.”
The Punchbowl News report added that there’s “no doubt some bad blood between the two men,” and the “discord” between top House Republicans runs “deep.”
McCarthy’s differences with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are considerable and ongoing, but the House speaker’s differences with his own chamber’s majority leader appear even more serious.
Why does this matter? Because McCarthy is facing a series of legislative challenges in the coming months — avoiding a government shutdown will be especially difficult given recent events — and he’s going to need a lot of help from his House leadership team.
The apparent fact that the House speaker will have to deal with simultaneous divisions across multiple fronts, including trouble with his own majority leader, will make his job that much more difficult.