Tom Cole (R-OK) is changing chairs from Rules to Appropriations. He spoke with Ryan Lizza of Politico:
One of the consequences of that process-wise [motion to vacate], rules-wise, was that the Rules Committee, which you chaired until very recently, was stacked with some of the more “exotic” members who don’t always do the will of leadership. It used to be known as “the Speaker’s Committee” and that hasn’t always been the case in this Congress.
No, I think this is very different. Frankly, none of those members were involved in any effort to overturn the speaker.
Right. But they were sort of a few clicks to the left of that.
The reality is, this was McCarthy’s idea. It is, “If I’m going to have a problem, I want to see it in the Rules committee, not on the floor.”
And we’ve never had a problem in passing a rule. We never lost in committee.
But you lost—
On the floor.
Six rules since June—
Seven from January of last year.
That’s a conference problem, not a Rules Committee problem. Because we didn’t lose them. We’re not responsible once it goes out the door. Our deal is to produce the rule that our leadership asked us to.
Sure but that doesn’t include all the rules that you didn’t even put forward in the committee presumably because you didn’t think they’d pass.
That’s not true. There’s no rule that we ever seriously considered that we couldn’t get out of committee.
Is there a moment when the tradition of members of the majority not voting against a rule, when the dam broke and you saw that this is going to be a thing going forward?
First time it happened. You know, the rule is a tool for the majority, any majority, either side to shape the legislation in a way that it thinks maximizes its chance to pass. That’s what the rule is for. What happened here is people decided they would start using it as a weapon against others, and they thought they could be the only ones. Well, the minute somebody starts to do it, other people think — “Oh, okay, you get to do it. I get to do it.”
What enforced this previously that doesn’t work anymore?
I think people aren’t willing to play for the norms. Go back to the very beginning. Why would 21 people think that they should decide that 86 percent of their conference [doesn’t get to choose McCarthy for speaker]? So this is not something that starts in Rules or whatever. This is something that’s been with us for a while.
Is it generational? Is it ideological?
I go back to Boehner. People used this as a weapon against Boehner. They used it as a weapon against Ryan or the threat of it. We just finally saw the dam break. And part of this is, I think, these are comparatively newer members in many cases, not always, that use it. And I would argue it’s a lack of respect for the institution and the wisdom of the institution. These things have evolved over not decades, but centuries. This is a 234-year-old institution. Nobody lost a rule in 20 years. And does anybody think the people that have used it are people that, frankly, are going to likely ever be elected leadership. So it’s, you know, you’ve got to grow up.