Today - 3 October, 2023 - marked the first time in American history that the Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), was removed from his position. While McCarthy's current situation is somewhat out of the ordinary, it's not unprecedented.
1910 was a strange time in American history - right between the Age of Imperialism and World War 1, but also in the grip of the Progressive Era and the ideological battle over the government's place to be involved in industry and the economy. It was also the 7th year of George Norris', a progressive Republican (don't forget the parties gradually traded platforms from 1860-1955) from Nebraska, career in the House of Representatives.
Norris liked the idea of the government regulating railroads, and labor unions. Progressive things as determined by the era. But the Republican party - from the top down - wasn't terribly interested in those things, so they could just, you know, ignore it.
And this is because the Speaker of the House was occasionally referred to as the "czar," a nod to imperialist Russia, given the power that he had, specifically three:
1. The Speaker of the House had the power to appoint the chair of each congressional committee. If you wanted a long, fruitful political career, you needed to be friendly with the Speaker.
2. The Speaker of the House chaired the Rules Committee, which scheduled the bills that would come to the floor for a vote.
3. The Speaker of the House also had the power to recognize - or not - anyone who wanted to speak, or make a motion. If you answered the question, "For what purpose does the gentleman rise?" incorrectly, or not to the Speaker's satisfaction, he wouldn't let you speak.
Norris was a representative under the Speakership of Jospeh Gurney ("Uncle Joe") Cannon (R-IL).
Cannon was powerful enough that his retirement in 1923 was noted by the cover of Time Magazine's debut issue, who referred to Cannon as "The supreme dictator of the Old Guard," going on to say "To Uncle Joe the Speakership was a gift from Heaven, immaculately born into the Constitution by the will of the fathers for the divine purpose of perpetuating the dictatorship of the standpatters in the Republican Party."
But soon Rep. Cannon's power would be challenged by members of his own party.
Rep. Norris at one time asked Cannon for a seat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Cannon told him to come back when he "had a reputation." This was the problem with the House of Representatives, according to Norris: real progress was kept in check by the Olds in Congress. Norris wrote a resolution that he kept in his pocket for years that would strip Cannon of his immense power, which held a lot of appeal for the Progressive faction of the Republican Party as their efforts were often thwarted by Uncle Joe. Norris just needed the right time.
Cannon grew up a Quaker in North Carolina. But given that the Quakers were anti-war and anti-slavery, they moved to Indiana in 1840. Cannon's father died when Joe was 14, leaving him as the head of the household and whose work helped pay off the family house's mortgage within five years. Cannon was fascinated by the law, graduating from the University of Cincinnati and starting a law practice in Tuscola, Illinois (because he ran out of money on a train ride from Terre Haute to Chicago). The 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates made a Lincoln believer out of Cannon. In 1872, Cannon was elected to the House of Representatives, beginning a 51-year career in the House of Representatives.
Cannon lost two elections for Speaker of the House, but was still able to advance as Chair of the incredibly powerful Appropriations Committee from 1895-1903, when Cannon finally won the Speakership he so desperately wanted. He made himself chair of the House Rules Committee.
As Cannon ascended to Speaker of the House, Theodore Roosevelt was in his third year as president following the assassination of William McKinley. Both Republicans, they were on opposite ends of the spectrum. As progressive as Roosevelt was, Cannon was fervently not. Cannon grew to resent Roosevelt's style, once remarking that Roosevelt "had no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license."
While the power of the Speaker of the House was dramatically expanded by his predecessor Thomas Brackett Reed, Cannon used that power as a dictator. He could give - and take away - committee chairmanships, allow - or ignore - debates on the floor, and allow - or ignore - voting on bills themselves. He even influenced the outcome of votes themselves - on a voice vote, Cannon once declared "the ayes make the most noise, but the nays have it."
This was why Progressive Republicans wanted reforms to the system like direct primaries for U.S. Senators instead of the candidates being chosen by State Legislatures - to weaken the power that politicians like Cannon unwaveringly wielded.
Cannon had his eye on the presidency in 1908 but Roosevelt was able to engineer the Republican Convention to favor his Secretary of War William Howard Taft. When Taft handily emerged victorious over William Jennings Bryan (the "Buffalo Bills of Presidential Candidates," according to...me), he and Roosevelt agreed that they couldn't just remove Cannon from the Speakership, though the first cracks in Cannon's power emerged in the Speaker elections that followed in 1909.
Twelve "insurgent" Republicans refused to vote for Cannon's re-election as Speaker, led by the aforementioned Rep. Norris. Though Cannon did, in fact, win another term as Speaker, Democrats and the insurgents were able to force some concessions and revise some of the rules, pissing Cannon off to the point where three of the insurgents were removed from their committee chairs and others moved to less prominent roles. Telling the press, "Adam and Eve were insurgents...Judas was an insurgent and sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. I have no doubt he would have been applauded by the newspapers in Jerusalem had there been any in that day."
Speaker Cannon's power was inversely proportional to his relationship with President Taft. Taft stayed out of the business of the House of Representatives, but he wanted Cannon out. Cannon wasn't a fan of Taft's nomination of Edward D. White, a (gasp) Catholic Democrat to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Ultimately the beginning of Cannon's downfall came from within the Republican party itself.
The powerful Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) told Roosevelt that the Republicans risked losing the House if Cannon remained as its Speaker. Having been lambasted by the press in his erstwhile presidential aspirations, Cannon's popularity with the American people took a hit. Still, he remained defiant, telling the press he wouldn't resign until his constituents forced him to.
On March 16, 1910 the House of Representatives pulled the moderately-unprecedented step of rejecting the Speaker's ruling on a procedural matter. Chair of the Census Committee Rep. Edgar Crumpacker (careful with that spelling, vicar) brought forth a resolution on the upcoming census, despite the resolution not appearing on the order of business. Crumpacker said that the census was required by the Constitution, and Constitutional matters overrode whatever the House of Representatives had planned. Cannon agreed and ruled in favor of the resolution. Then the House of Representatives voted not to sustain Cannon's ruling.
The following day - when most politicians were out celebrating St. Patrick's Day - Rep. Norris was finally able to unleash hell. His resolution was to create a brand new Rules Committee, with all 15 members elected by the House. The Speaker of the house, who had traditionally been the head of the Rules Committee, would be barred from this new iteration, putting the new Committee above the Speaker...who just happened to be Cannon.
Article I Section 5 Clause 2 of the Constitution says that the House has the ability to determine its own rules, providing the justification Norris needed to bring this new committee to a vote. Cannon couldn't procedure his way out of this one. He simultaneously dismissed the resolution but also tried to whip up the votes to strike it down.
Delay tactics were used by Cannon's lieutenants to prevent the vote from taking place, but the holiday and the weekend recess meant that Cannon didn't have the votes. On March 19 Cannon ruled that Norris' resolution was out of order and came with the receipts and precedents of previous Speakers. The House vetoed Cannon's ruling on appeal 182 to 163. Immediately the House voted on Norris' resolution, which carried all 149 Democrat votes and 42 Republican votes. A new Rules Committee was formed, without Cannon on board.
Cannon deftly declared the Speakership vacant, which meant an election in the House for a new speaker. Rather than risk the Democrats winning that election Republicans voted to keep Cannon in place, but with vastly limited power thanks to the new Rules Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dalzell (R-PA). So Uncle Joe wasn't stripped of his Speakership, just his immense power.
Ultimately Henry Cabot Lodge's prediction to Roosevelt rang true: Republicans lost the majority in that fall's midterm elections for the first time since the elections of 1894. The Republican Party split in 1912 into the Republicans and the Progressives, opening the door for a Teddy Roosevelt 3rd-Party presidential bid against his old-friend-turned-bitter-rival William Howard Taft.
Roosevelt had promised that he would not seek re-election in 1908, despite having already been president since 1901. And he was allowed to do that, because he had only won one election, in 1904. He served out the remainder of William McKinley's term after McKinley was assassinated. Because of that, he was eligible for a second term on his own. He would seek that term in 1912. Taft had saddled up a little too closely - for Roosevelt's comfort - to the conservative faction of the Republican party. Taft went too easy on the big trusts, didn't go after enough reforms, wasn't progressive enough for Roosevelt.
In that campaign Taft called Roosevelt "the greatest menace to our institutions that we have had in a long time." Roosevelt said Taft was an agent of "the forces of reaction and of political crookedness." Taft called Roosevelt a "honeyfugler." Roosevelt called Taft a "puzzlewit." I don't know what either of those things mean, but it was clearly going great for the Republicans.
Roosevelt's 3rd Party bid was the most successful 3rd Party campaign in presidential history (In 1992 Ross Perot garnered 19 million votes, but 0 electoral ones), winning 88 electoral votes, but ultimately the election split the Republican vote, allowing Woodrow Wilson to win the 1912 presidential election with 42% of the popular vote.
