Congress
Kevin McCarthy predicts GOP will lose House majority
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy predicted Republicans will lose the House in two weeks, citing historical midterm trends while also criticizing the sitting GOP leadership for how they’ve managed the chamber.
“In the last 100 years, all off-year elections, whoever is the party in power has the White House, has lost seats, and it’s only a few seats for the majority,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Thursday.
Democrats, he added, will “get a majority” in the House: “I’m not quite sure how big it is, but they will probably win the majority.”
The former speaker, who ushered in the current GOP House majority in 2022 but only led the conference for less than a year before being booted from the speakership, went on to fault his own party for giving the election away.
“It’s not that the Democrats are going to win this election,” he said. “Republicans are going to lose it.”
He pointed to the skimpy House legislative calendar as a factor. Speaker Mike Johnson and his deputies have routinely canceled scheduled session days amid member revolts that have undermined his grip on the razor-thin majority.
“You’re only given 24 months in a majority to manage it. They were in the fewest amount of days. They let the Democrats dictate,” McCarthy said. “You have to give a reason why to win. What are the three things Republicans will do if they win the majority? I can’t tell you what that is.”
Still, McCarthy cautioned that if Democrats win the House, it won’t be because they have laid out their own agenda and warned that he believes that Democrats will face their own hurdles.
“Democrats are not popular. They haven’t laid out an agenda on what they’ll do,” McCarthy said. “So they’ll have a really hard time governing in the next Congress.”