Representative Kevin McCarthy of California contorted himself on Thursday to try to win over right-wing holdouts as his battle to become speaker limped toward a fourth day, offering concessions that could substantially weaken his authority and empower a strident right flank.
After a humiliating three-day stretch of 11 consecutive defeats in an election that is now the most protracted such contest since 1859, Mr. McCarthy dispatched his emissaries to hammer out a deal with the ultraconservative rebels, including agreeing to conditions he had previously refused to countenance in a last-ditch effort to sway a critical mass of defectors.
They included allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust the speaker, a rule that would effectively codify a standing threat that Mr. McCarthy would be at the mercy of the right wing at all times, and could be removed instantly if he crossed them.
That concession and several others, which Mr. McCarthy hoped would win over a large bloc of dissidents, would diminish the speaker’s power considerably and make for an unwieldy environment in the House, where the slim Republican majority and a hard-right faction with an appetite for disarray had already promised to make it difficult to govern.
Some of the changes left little doubt that the House would struggle to carry out even its most basic duties in the coming two years, such as funding the government, including the military, or avoiding catastrophic federal debt default. Already, the struggle has ground the House to a halt just as Republicans were assuming their majority, preventing any lawmakers from being sworn in, rules from being adopted or legislative business from being conducted.
Lawmakers were losing their security clearances, and a House committee confirmed that, if no resolution were reached by next week, congressional aides working for committees could not be paid, since the House would lack authority to process payroll on Jan. 13, the next payroll deadline.
But while people close to Mr. McCarthy said they were hopeful the compromises would soon persuade enough holdouts to support him, no votes had moved by nightfall on Thursday, and it was not known whether he could pick up the converts needed to prevail — or how long that might take. As negotiations continued, the House adjourned for the third straight day with no speaker.
As he left the House floor on Thursday night, Mr. McCarthy said that the negotiations had yielded “a little movement” and denied that the concessions he had offered would undermine his speakership.
“Has it undercut the power of all the other speakers?” he replied, after a reporter asked whether allowing for a snap vote for his removal would weaken him. “So why would it cut mine? It’d only be a weaker speaker if I was afraid of it.”
In fact, the specter of such a vote allowed right-wing lawmakers to push out John A. Boehner, the Ohio Republican, from the speakership in 2015, and the threat hung heavily over his successor, Paul D. Ryan, during his tenure.
But Mr. McCarthy appeared unworried by the events of the past week.
“The entire conference is going to have to learn how to work together,” he said in his most extensive remarks to reporters since the election began on Tuesday. “So it’s better that we go through this process right now.”
He added later: “If this takes a little longer, and it doesn’t meet your deadline, that’s OK. Because it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”
The spectacle of Mr. McCarthy repeatedly prostrating himself to please an intractable hard-right faction only seemed to fuel the opposition of some of his detractors, who regarded the Republican leader’s maneuvering as confirmation of their view that the Californian lacks principle and would do anything for power.
“There are no concessions,” said Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado. “The deal is over with him. He does not have the votes. He will not become speaker.”
The scene on the House floor on Thursday was one of hard-right lawmakers again and again refusing to spare Mr. McCarthy the humiliation of being defeated on vote after vote even as they negotiated privately with his allies, led by Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. It foreshadowed two years of dysfunction, fueled by a slim majority, an unyielding hard-right flank that disdains the normal operations of government and a leader who has been willing to undermine the power of the speaker’s gavel in his quest to grasp it.
Still, Mr. McCarthy’s allies held out hope that the concessions he had agreed to would appeal to enough Republicans that the small remaining group of lawmakers who have said they would never support the Californian’s bid would be isolated, and forced to back down.
“Every hour has been successively better than the last,” Mr. McHenry said. “Obviously, we started not at a very high place, but we’re now getting to a very good place.”
That did not appear to be happening yet. Ms. Boebert, who on Thursday offered the name of Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, had hours earlier declared on the House floor: “We need to get to a point where we start evaluating what life after Kevin McCarthy looks like.”
With all members elected to the House present and voting, Mr. McCarthy would need 218 votes to become speaker, leaving little room for Republican defections, as the party controls only 222 seats. He has consistently fallen well short of that level this week, drawing no more than 203 votes even as his Democratic counterpart, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has won 212, with every member of his party united behind him. On Thursday, Mr. McCarthy’s number slipped to 201.
To win the speaker’s gavel, Mr. McCarthy must lock down the support of all but four or five defectors. There are at least three lawmakers who have defiantly emerged as leaders of the “Never Kevin” movement, including Ms. Boebert and Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Bob Good of Virginia.
“You don’t ever have to ask me again if I’m a no,” Mr. Good told a reporter as he walked to the Capitol. “I will never vote for Kevin McCarthy.”
Mr. McCarthy’s allies bargained throughout the day anyway with a group of defectors more amenable to trying to break the stalemate, with some negotiators missing votes as they bartered back and forth.
“The devil is in the details,” said Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, when asked if he was open to voting for Mr. McCarthy in exchange for sweeping concessions.
The Republican leader had also committed to allowing the right-wing faction to pick a third of the party’s members on the powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form, according to a person who has been involved in the talks, who described them on condition of anonymity. Mr. McCarthy also said he would open government spending bills to a freewheeling debate in which any lawmaker could force votes on proposed changes, including those designed to scuttle or sink the measure.
The rebels have agitated for that change in an effort to give greater power over the federal purse strings to rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than the senior leaders who normally have carte blanche over such legislation. It could make it all but impossible to pass a spending bill in the House, leading to a government shutdown.
As private negotiations with the dissidents ground on and the seemingly endless filed votes continued on the House floor, some lawmakers resigned themselves to a dead-eyed state of arrested development, miserably trudging around the chamber carrying caffeinated beverages and wondering how they had reached this point.
Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate who has been unsparing in his criticism of the hard-right flank, suggested that the mutiny would not easily be forgotten.
“I am a Christian, I believe in forgiving; I can forgive the individual,” he said. “But when it comes to professional, who do you trust? There’s a lot of trust that’s been burned here.”
Reporting was contributed by Annie Karni, Luke Broadwater, Emily Cochrane, Christopher Cameron, Stephanie Lai, Zach Montague and Michael Gold.
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