Former President Donald Trump offered last week to temporarily serve as House speaker if Republicans cannot settle on a choice to replace former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
USA Today reported on Sunday that Trump’s offer will be declined.
But while some Republican voters may be disappointed by such news, they do want the next speaker to be a Trump loyalist.
CBS News and YouGov released a poll on Sunday that found 59% of Republicans in the survey want the new speaker to be “specifically loyal to Donald Trump.”
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Among self-professed “MAGA” types inside the GOP, that requirement is supported by 84%.
Meanwhile, almost half of GOP voters in the survey, 49%, said they want the next speaker to “be part of” the MAGA movement.
But perhaps more important than supporting Trump is working to rid the nation of current President Joe Biden.
Overall, 72% of Republican respondents told CBS that they want the new speaker to focus on impeaching Biden, compared to just 30% of all respondents in the poll.
And for all the talk of how Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and those other seven Republicans who joined him in the historic step of ousting McCarthy have created chaos and undermined the work of Congress, voters across the board are happy to see McCarthy gone.
In all, while each side had different reasons for wanting McCarthy to go, 67% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 53% of Republicans are fine with his removal.
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Among all respondents, just 23% indicated that McCarthy’s ouster would be “bad” for the country. Most, 51%, said there would be no change in Congress because of it.
On Sunday, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, one of seven GOP lawmakers who joined Rep. Matt Gaetz in the internal rebellion, said the idea of Trump as speaker, even temporarily, would not fly.
“That’s not going to happen,” Buck told ABC News. “It shouldn’t happen, and we have a lot of talent inside the House,” he said. “We’ll settle this inside the House Republican conference, and we will elect someone who’ll have the unity and the backing of the full conference.”
As of Sunday, House Republicans were looking at either House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana or Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio as McCarthy’s successor.
Trump recently endorsed Jordan for the job.
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