While GOP members nearly came to fisticuffs, "Democrats ruled by fists from Nancy Pelosi," Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told Newsmax, warning the left of the House is going to try to "manipulate" new House GOP rules in their favor.
"We're never gonna get a perfect speaker; we're never going to get a perfect rules package; and it's going to look like this every single major vote that we have in the House, so get ready," Tenney told "Saturday Report" after the high drama that lasted into the wee hours of Saturday morning. "We're going to be in Washington a lot; and we're going to be hashing this out, because there are a lot of historic changes in a lot of these rules and what we're going through."
House Republicans have just a 222-212 majority, a thin needle to thread, as the 15 votes to name a speaker showed, Tenney told host Rita Cosby.
"It's a high risk operation for Kevin McCarthy, our new speaker, because for the first time, he's going to be facing a very, very narrow majority with a rules package that is going to actually minimize the power of the speaker; and it's going to force us into consensus."
Democrats are going to try to exploit Republicans and their new rules, Tenney continued.
"We're always going to be in this cloak-and-dagger situation where Democrats, who I consider to be much more diabolical when it comes to the rules, and Nancy Pelosi, who is — I think — an abuser of power to a level of never seen," Tenney said. "It's going to be interesting to see how much they try to play us and try to manipulate those rules to benefit them."
Tenney was disappointed the House GOP needed to avert an adjournment to Monday and elected McCarthy as speaker only after a 15th vote.
"Obviously, that 14th vote was a little bit disappointing to many of us because we were told that they had the votes and they were promised the votes, and then some of the people who allegedly had made promises didn't live up to them. And so we had to go back to the drawing board," Tenney said.
Ultimately, the final six holdouts never voted for McCarthy, but merely voted "present" to permit him to become speaker with 216 votes instead of 218. With the six non-votes, the majority for the remaining 228 of the 234 members present in the House was just 215.
"Some started out principled, in my opinion, and then became just petty grievances," Tenney said the of the remaining holdouts. "And that's what concerned me was this, 'I just don't like Kevin McCarthy.'
"I mean, Matt Gaetz, who's a friend, actually admitted, 'Look, I don't care what Kevin McCarthy does; I'm never going to vote for him for speaker,' which ultimately he did not. They voted 'present' in order to get this the speaker across the finish line without recent receiving 218 votes, so the numbers came down."
"Get ready" for more high House drama for the 118th Congress, Tenney concluded.
"It's going to be very difficult to operate this majority with such narrow margins with what we saw," she said. "If this is what it's going to look like, we are in for a long term.
"This is going to be day in and day out, not being able to come to consensus."
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