Dec. 23, 2022: Jan. 6 report drops, a McCarthy foe speaks

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

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🗓️ 23 December 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

The Jan. 6 committee released its final report on Thursday night — an 845-page document drawn from nearly 1,200 witness interviews and reams of hard-won documents that places Donald Trump at the center of the deadly assault. POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Nicolas Wu write “Trump’s incendiary lies about the 2020 election activated an extraordinary coalition of far-right militants and conspiracy theorists who not only joined the mob but were its vanguard smashing through police lines." Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) — a "Never Kevin" Republican — would likely be dismissed by his colleagues as a gadfly. But given the unexpectedly slim House majority the GOP gained in November, Good and a handful of like-minded conservatives hold McCarthy’s fate in their hands — and stand ready to wield considerable power next year, no matter who ends up as speaker. Playbook co-author Rachael Bade sat down with Good for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast this week to try to understand the rebellion brewing against McCarthy. We learned that Good & Co. are formulating a plan for the Jan. 3 speaker vote. He said Anti-McCarthy members are currently plotting to back Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on the first ballot to prove McCarthy can’t get the gavel. But once the second ballot is called, they’ll begin coalescing around another, unnamed candidate — a GOP lawmaker most have already agreed upon, Good said, but one that he will not name for fear of hurting this person’s candidacy. While Playbook reported extensively this week on the quiet effort to prepare No. 2 leader Steve Scalise as an alternative, Good stayed mum, explaining that this person, quote “cannot be part of, and they are not part of, the effort to block McCarthy.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good morning, Playbookers. I'm Kara Tabor. Tis the Friday before Christmas. When all through the House, the never Kevin Republicans are working to make McCarthy speakership chances. Go South. This is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.
0:22.7	Just days after the 2020 election.
0:26.0	Then Representative-elect Bob Good of Virginia stood up in a closed-door GOP conference meeting
0:31.9	and lambasted his party's top leader, Kevin McCarthy.
0:35.8	Why, he demanded to know, had McCarthy spent millions in
0:39.4	GOP primaries to try to defeat conservatives like himself? McCarthy had backed incumbent
0:44.7	representative Denver Riggleman against Good's challenge from the right, a decision, Good believed,
0:50.4	that left his own campaign politically wounded and financially drained for the general election.
0:55.5	McCarthy reminded Good, that he went on to spend $2 million to help elect him that fall.
1:00.6	Good shot back that McCarthy never gave him a customary congratulatory call after the election.
1:06.2	Instead, Good recalls, that when he called the GOP leader several weeks later,
1:10.7	McCarthy groused on about having to, quote, spend money to keep a seat I shouldn't have to spend
1:15.8	money on. So it was that McCarthy and Good got off on the wrong foot. And until McCarthy invited
1:21.5	Good to his office on Thursday, more on that later, the two had never sat down one-on-one to clear the air.
1:29.8	Rivalries, resentments, and reclamations are common in politics.
1:34.1	Of course, but this one festering relationship could have dire implications for McCarthy's long-standing ambitions to be House Speaker.
1:42.4	Good is now one of the five so-called never-kevin Republicans,
1:46.3	who are vowing not to support McCarthy's bid under any circumstances. Playbook co-author, Rachel Bade,
1:53.4	sat down with Good for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast this week to try and understand the rebellion
1:58.1	brewing against McCarthy. We not only came away convinced that good is probably never going to back the California
2:04.1	Republican for Speaker, but keen to glimpse at how the opposition has been driven by strategic,
2:08.9	ideological, and at times personal reasons. Here's a taste of that interview.
	...

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