Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus Grind House to a Halt: ‘We’ve Told the Speaker There Will Be No Rule Votes’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was unable to mollify his critics on the hard right of the House Republican Conference on Wednesday as members of the Freedom Caucus blocked legislation from moving forward for a second straight day.

The standoff does not appear that will end anytime soon either, as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) told CNN’s Kristin Wilson that the House will only return on Monday, meaning no votes will take place on Thursday either. The Freedom Caucus voted down a rule to bring a set of Republican-backed bills to the House floor for debate on Tuesday in protest over McCarthy striking a deal with President Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling.

“House Leadership couldn’t Hold the Line. Now we Hold the Floor,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweeted on Wednesday. “HOLD THE FLOOR!” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) quickly replied.

Gaetz and Boebert, both known for their flame-throwing rhetoric and penchant for disrupting the GOP establishment, appeared on far-right Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in the last two days to lay out their game plan.

On Tuesday night, Gaetz declared he is working to force McCarthy into a “monogamous relationship” with either the Freedom Caucus or the House Democrats. “What we’re not gonna do is hang out with him for five months and then watch him go jump in the back seat with Hakeem Jeffries,” Gaetz added as Bannon chuckled. On Wednesday, Gaetz told Bannon that “we’ve told the speaker there will be no rule votes” until a pistol brace bill he supports passes — one of his many demands.

Gaetz joined NewsNation on Wednesday morning and laid out some specifics concessions he would like to see from McCarthy, saying:

I think that when our leadership couldn’t hold the line on spending, they surrendered the ability to exclusively hold the floor. Right now, we are refusing to allow the failure theater to continue to play out.

We want to see rescissions, more spending cuts. We think that McCarthy and his negotiators got rolled by Biden and the Democrats. And now House conservatives are flexing our muscle. We want to see a return to the normal budgeting process. We want to see review of individual bills come forward. And we’re very disappointed that we just underwrote $4 trillion in debt over the next two years.

“I’m not planning to execute on a motion to vacate today, but I’m also not interested in just surrender or placating,” Gaetz added when pressed on whether or not he wanted to oust McCarthy from the speakership.

McCarthy spoke to reporters earlier Wednesday and sounded optimistic the House would have votes later in the day. When asked if he had made progress with the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy replied, “We’re working through it, we can’t hold up the work for the American people. I can’t believe someone would want to hold up not allowing people to pick their own oven or stove they’d like to have.”

“We’re gonna get it back on track…. We’ve delivered some really big things but there’s a lot more to do. We’re still having conversations,” Scalise told reporters on Wednesday, offering a similar message.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) argued that Gaetz’s tact was actually backfiring and only stalling bills from the right wing of the GOP. “The floor could keep moving but the only thing that’s got a chance of passing is moderate legislation,” Massie told NBC News.

“Their tactic worked because it was a package of conservative bills that no Democrat would cross the aisle for,” he added, noting that the GOP leadership could bypass the Freedom Caucus as long as Democrats would joining to move bills to the floor.

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com