This Is the Week America Finds Out How Seriously It Has to Take Matt Gaetz

Well, over the weekend Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy figured out how to avoid shutting down the government (for 45 days, at least). Now, naturally, the story turns to the question of whether House Republicans will depose McCarthy for figuring out how to avoid shutting down the government.

This effort will be led by fourth-term Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has a Trump-like sense for finding things to say and do that are so far past the window of appropriateness that they verge on performance art, such as wearing an industrial-grade gas mask at the Capitol during COVID or tweeting at Trump attorney-turned-critic Michael Cohen that his wife was going to cheat on him when he went to jail. (Gaetz was also investigated, but not ultimately charged, on suspicion of participating in the trafficking of minors for sex with a close associate of his in Florida politics who has since been sentenced to prison.)

Gaetz has been an enemy of McCarthy’s for some time. During the selection of a speaker earlier this year, another member of the House GOP caucus had to be dragged away from Gaetz by his face after the Florida representative allegedly reneged on an agreement to support McCarthy in the wake of several inconclusive votes. (In addition to the usual objections that GOP extremists raise about their leaders during their cyclical leader-purging processes, Gaetz reportedly believes that McCarthy did not sufficiently have his back, as it were, while he was being investigated for sex trafficking. Classic reason for a relationship to deteriorate!)

Nominally, then, Gaetz says he will be submitting a “motion to vacate the chair” as soon as Monday afternoon—i.e., moving to end McCarthy’s speakership—because McCarthy compromised with Democrats on a bill that keeps the government open without securing any cuts to social spending or allocating further funds for law enforcement at the southern border.

More broadly, it’s a test of whether Gaetz, previously a scene-stealing side character in the majestic drama of American politics, is now someone of actual influence. And while he reportedly aspires to higher office, he’s also always had the air of a man whose callow youth may extend for the entire duration of his life. When Gaetz was 26, for instance, he was arrested on suspicion of driving his father’s BMW home from a nightclub called “The Swamp” while intoxicated. Gaetz has said he made “bad decisions” on the night of the arrest but he was not ultimately charged with a crime. His father, Don Gaetz, was the wealthy co-founder of a for-profit hospice chain who himself served as the president of the Florida state Senate, and in 2021 Politico reported that the elder Gaetz once secured his son a job as a legislative aide to a fellow Republican only for Matt to refuse to show up for work on the grounds that he needed time to “sow his wild oats.” Matt Gaetz says that account is not accurate.

For his part, an exasperated McCarthy has reportedly encouraged Gaetz’s motion to vacate on the reasoning that if he survives, any further threats will be understood as empty posturing. As to whether the motion will succeed, the Capitol Hill reporters who know the most are saying that no one knows. There are currently 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House. Gaetz is trying to persuade as many as 20 Republican hard-liners to vote to depose McCarthy, hoping that many or all Democrats will join them on the reasoning, more or less, that McCarthy is a Republican and they don’t feel obligated to help him.

Or McCarthy could come to an agreement with swing-district Democrats to support his speakership, which would help those Democrats sell themselves to voters as bipartisan problem-solvers and conceivably incentivize McCarthy to be more cooperative in upcoming budget negotiations (and less tolerant of his members’ dubiously founded effort to impeach Joe Biden). Collaborating with Democrats, though, could cause McCarthy to lose further support from conservatives, which could mean he’d lose a subsequent motion to vacate. Gaetz, on Monday, suggested that if he loses the first vote he’ll simply keep pushing to hold more, which could theoretically tire out enough rank-and-file Republicans that they agree to abandon McCarthy in favor of another potential speaker that Gaetz finds acceptable. Or it could annoy them such that they support the passage of a Gaetz-sidelining rule that makes it harder to file a motion to vacate in the first place. There are a lot of balls in the air, in other words, and while Matt Gaetz has always seemed like a world-class jester, it is probably past time to find out if he really knows how to juggle.