House Republican calls animosity in Speaker race ‘pointless’

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on Sunday called animosity within the GOP in the recent race for Speaker “pointless” after Republican holdouts blocked Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from taking the top House leadership slot until the 15th round of voting.

Crenshaw told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there wasn’t “as much disagreement as everyone thinks” in negotiations about the House rules package and concessions the GOP holdouts wanted from McCarthy.

“That’s what justified the animosity all week and it seems very, very pointless,” Crenshaw said.

“There was no reason for us to keep voting, keep voting, keep allowing these speeches that just degraded and diminished and insulted Kevin McCarthy. We didn’t have to keep doing that. We could have just adjourned for the whole week and just kept negotiating. So that’s where the heartburn is and that’s what I want people to know. This deal was easy. That wasn’t the hard part,” Crenshaw said.

McCarthy secured the Speakership early Saturday after 15 rounds of voting over multiple days.

McCarthy eventually flipped a number of Republican holdouts and won 216 votes, despite the party’s new 222-seat hold over the House, while all Democrats voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

A group of around 20 Republicans nominated and voted for alternate candidates throughout the contest, bashing McCarthy in some of their nominating speeches.

Crenshaw last week said the hard-liners “are enemies now.”

On CNN Sunday, Crenshaw said McCarthy was always open to hearing asks from the holdouts.

“That was what created all of that animosity throughout the week. Because it’s not as if we were fighting over something. It wasn’t as if we were trying to stop them from getting something that they wanted. It’s that we didn’t know what they wanted,” Crenshaw said.

“There’s just there’s not a lot of heartburn over what the asks were. Our heartburn was just that this could have been done without all the drama.”

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