Comment In the hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, Republicans saw the House majority firmly in their hands. Leaders had prepared several news releases outlining their priorities for Day 1, scheduled to be released around the same time that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) would declare victory against a backdrop of “Take Back the House” before the clock struck midnight DC hotel. Instead, McCarthy took the stage hours later than expected Wednesday morning as Democrats clung to a small, but not insignificant, number of seats, halting Republican celebrations. “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” McCarthy said in a four-minute speech shortly after 2 a.m. Almost a full day later, that prediction has yet to come true. The House majority remains unknown as of Wednesday afternoon, as many races remain close in areas Republicans thought they would win easily. House Republicans, of course, are widely expected to win the majority. But some are frantic for what appears to be a razor-thin victory as they face what many say privately is the impossible task of governing an ideologically fractious congress by narrow margins. At the center of this act is McCarthy, who has methodically plotted his way to a governing majority over the past four years as minority leader. While his calculations probably didn’t upset his chance to become speaker of the House, the expected narrow margin of victory complicated his path. Far-right members of the conference are considering how to use the narrow majority to their advantage, while more centrist members worry that they will be held hostage to fringe ideas that lead to a failure to govern and that those demands for concessions from McCarthy will only grow. “We have to figure out how to get this party together and work,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” show Wednesday. “I’m going to push as hard as possible on how to do this because I have a clear vision for it. But it will require a lot of people to do the hard work.” A thinner majority could strain Republicans the same way House Democrats spent last term juggling a five-seat majority, encouraging members to make demands and stall legislation at their whims. The candidates who made history in midterms Allies say the goodwill McCarthy has fostered among ideological factions at the GOP convention will help secure all 218 votes needed to be named speaker in January. But the expected slim majority will likely force him to make concessions on policy and other aspects of governance, according to more than 20 Republican lawmakers, generals and aides spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Kevin McCarthy has worked incredibly hard and he and [Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.)] They traveled to this country, joined the conference in politics… [and] hired incredibly qualified candidates,” retired Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Wednesday. “Leader McCarthy has the vision and I think the ability to unite this new congress into the future in the majority.” A hesitant conference seems to rule Polls in the final days before the election continued to show Republicans winning over voters who said the economy remained their top issue. Republican lawmakers, aides and strategists, in turn, preemptively took a victory lap, touting McCarthy’s political instincts and recruiting success as key to the “red tsunami” in the House. But since the tsunami was extinguished before it made landfall, some Republicans are questioning McCarthy’s strategy and wondering whether the results will force him to redirect priorities — and recalibrate who he listens to. One House Republican, who won re-election on Tuesday, argued that the margin of victory is a mandate for McCarthy to finally silence the electoral denial and baseless claims that have been embraced by far-right candidates and lawmakers at the House GOP convention. “Last night was shameful,” the lawmaker said. “We have the worst president since Jimmy Carter, the highest inflation in 40 years, and we don’t know if we got the majority when we woke up this morning? It’s embarrassing and humiliating and says a lot about the conference… There should have been a historic red tide, and instead it was a low tide.” The lawmaker specifically singled out the party’s embrace of Green, former President Donald Trump and Rep. Lauren Bobert (R-Colo.), who align with the party’s far right, as a miscalculation. Some pointed to Bobert’s surprisingly tight race as a sign that voters in some parts of the country are rebuking ideology in safe seats, let alone throwing districts where they tend to reject the extremes. That outlook was echoed by several House Republican aides, who acknowledge the expected slim majority could upend the relationships conservatives have cultivated to legislate and govern. While there are many bills that Republicans will be able to quickly pass — such as defunding the Internal Revenue Service in the Inflation Reduction Act, passing a parental rights bill and expanding drilling to produce more energy in the United States – conservative policymakers worry that narrow margins will make it impossible to reach agreement on places where Republicans are bitterly divided internally, such as immigration, government funding and the of the debt limit. It’s an outcome Republicans have tried to avoid after seeing how the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus held power under the presidencies of John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). As No. 2 behind Boehner and Ryan, McCarthy embraced the Freedom Caucus after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding member, challenged him for minority leader in 2018. Rather than abandon the group, McCarthy he cultivated a relationship with Jordan and brought the team to the decision table. This has largely held the Freedom Caucus back over the years, though it hasn’t stopped them from making demands. The results from the midterm elections will likely embolden caucuses to “demand aggressive reforms to get the House of Representatives back to the American people and working again,” as described in a memo released by the group last month. How Democrats Kept Huge Losses and Other Takeaways from the Midterms To help his effort to consolidate the speech, McCarthy promised to restore committee work for Greene and Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), add more members to the influential steering committee and place the Freedom Caucus members in the Legislature who prefer committees. However, Freedom Caucus members may be encouraged to demand that McCarthy reinstate the “leave of seat motion” rule, which allows any member, at any time, the ability to move a motion to remove the speaker. It’s the kiss of death that doomed Boehner and Ryan. Leadership aides have said over the past several months that it was unlikely the Freedom Caucus would make such a request, especially if the group’s numbers dwindled. But Freedom Caucus members predicted before the election that if their ranks expanded, they could be far more influential than any of them imagined. So far, a handful of staunch MAGA allies have won seats in the new majority, and it is unclear how many other pragmatic members McCarthy recruited to help build his governing majority will win. “It’s going to be contentious,” said one GOP strategist involved in House races. “He’s going to have the same problems that Pelosi had — there’s going to be a small group of extremists that will get together and make it brutal for him.” While the Freedom Caucus may have more traction, many GOP members and senior aides acknowledged it can only go so far. There is no consensus leader who mobilizes members in a similar way as Jordan to upset Boehner and Ryan. Jordan continues to stick with McCarthy and has publicly reiterated his support for his one-time nemesis to become speaker. In addition, McCarthy can argue that he is still the one who supported the majority, visiting 39 states since August and raising $500 million from political action committees connected to the campaign and recruitment. “If you’re the minority leader on election day and you win the majority, [you’re] he will probably be the speaker,” McCarthy said at a leadership retreat in March. “They’re not going to change coaches between the playoffs and the Super Bowl. Doesn’t mean they won’t hold my feet to the fire.” Keeping the conference together will fall to McCarthy and whoever is elected with a majority, the person responsible for making sure members are in line and voting the way leadership directs. Before the midterm elections, GOP leadership aides were telegraphing that the majority would not seek bipartisan results as they aimed to make life difficult for President Biden and Senate Democrats facing re-election in 2024. But in a stunning admission Wednesday, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who chairs the Republican National Campaign Committee and has officially announced he is running for the whip, told reporters he agreed with a lawmaker who told him a slim GOP majority should seek bipartisan consensus to pass legislation. Several aides acknowledged privately that they would have to seek Democratic support on key issues, something Democratic leadership aides said would not be easy. Some Republican strategists who spoke to The Washington Post on Wednesday were quick to throw Emmer under the bus, criticizing him for spending too much time preparing his campaign for the House whip and not enough for the Republican general election. “I am amazed that Rep. Emmer believes his path to Republican Whip is with the support of…
