Amid House speaker drama, many in GOP want to do away with motion to vacate
The race is on to elect a new House speaker showdown following the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday.
Two Republicans have officially thrown their hats into the ring ahead of the party hoping to choose a new leader next week.
Latest headlines:
Democrats don't plan to save McCarthy's speakership
During a more than two-hour caucus meeting, Democrats were strongly encouraged to vote to not support Speaker McCarthy as he fights for his job, sources tell ABC News.
"It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement. "Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair."
Several Democrats said they don't plan to bail McCarthy out.
"We're not voting in any way that would help save speaker McCarthy," Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said.
Vice Chair of House Democratic caucus Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said, "the leadership put out the facts and the caucus heard from a lot of members… we need a functioning government and speaker McCarthy has shown he cannot govern."
Has an effort to remove a House speaker ever succeeded?
A motion to vacate has only ever been voted on once, in 1910, in an effort to boot then-Speaker Joseph Cannon. The effort failed.
In 2015, then-Rep. Mark Meadows filed a resolution to force a vote on then-Speaker John Boehner’s leadership. But because Meadows didn’t introduce it on the House floor, it wasn’t taken up for consideration.
While history shows previous such efforts over the years have always failed -- it's possible this one could succeed.
Read more from ABC News' Tal Axelrod here.
Gaetz: 'Chaos is Speaker McCarthy'
Gaetz took aim at Cole's comments as he also slammed McCarthy and criticized Capitol Hill's approach to spending.
"Chaos is Speaker McCarthy," Gaetz said, rebuffing how Cole argued that the motion to vacate would create needless disruption in the chamber.
"Chaos is somebody that we cannot trust with their word. The one thing that the White House, House Democrats and many of us on the conservative side of the Republican caucus would argue is that the thing we have in common: Kevin McCarthy said something to all of us at one point that he didn't really mean and never intended to live up to."
Gaetz went on to lambast the size of national debt and deficit as well as the lack of single-subject spending bills -- something McCarthy has said he is also focused on enacting.