Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls for Gaetz’s expulsion from GOP conference

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called Tuesday for the expulsion of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) from the House Republican Conference, claiming the Florida Republican is violating conference rules to carry out an agenda against Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Gaetz, after much threatening to do so, filed a motion to vacate on Monday, which McCarthy had no choice but to schedule a vote for within two legislative days.

DEMOCRATS HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE ON MCCARTHY’S SPEAKERSHIP TOO

Due to the House Republican’s razor-thin majority, it wasn’t difficult for Gaetz to gather enough votes to secure McCarthy’s ouster. In the Tuesday vote, the motion to vacate succeeded, garnering a majority of House members by a vote of 216 to 210, with eight Republicans joining Democratic representatives who were instructed by their conference leadership to vote to oust McCarthy.

According to Gingrich in an op-ed for the Washington Post, Gaetz “should be expelled from the House Republican Conference.”

The former speaker justified his call by pointing to a House Republican Conference rule, which states that the privilege of bringing a motion to vacate “should only be available with the agreement of the Republican Conference so as to not allow Democrats to choose the Speaker.”

The threshold for forcing a vote on a motion to vacate was revised so that one member could do so during concessions McCarthy made in January in order to secure enough votes for the speakership. However, Gingrich wrote, “the agreement made when McCarthy became speaker doesn’t supersede the conference rules. Gaetz still needs a majority of the conference.”

Explaining his own credibility on the matter, Gingrich recalled fighting “against the GOP establishment” during his tenure as speaker. But, he said, “when I rebelled, I represented the majority view of the caucus at the time.”

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Instead, Gaetz “is simply violating the rules in the pursuit of personal attention and fundraising,” he wrote. He further claimed that the Florida representative is “destroying the House GOP’s ability to govern,” calling him “an anti-Republican.”

Gaetz did not provide comment to the Washington Examiner.