On January 3, the first day of the new U.S. House of Representatives meeting, the first thing in the program is to elect the next speaker to take over the role of Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Since the Republican Party won 222 seats in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections, slightly crossing the majority threshold of 218 seats, theoretically, the first day of the House of Representatives meeting will be able to elect the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives candidate Kevin McCarthy without incident, and the meeting will be adjourned smoothly. , just like the Senate meeting on the same day.
In fact, McCarthy himself has entered the Speaker's Office of the House of Representatives ahead of schedule.
However, in the three consecutive rounds of voting in the House of Representatives, McCarthy still failed to get enough support from Republican members, and finally adjourned the meeting and resumed it in the next day.
This is the first time since 1923 that the speaker of the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives failed to be elected in the first round of voting. This session of Republican congressmen and McCarthy can be regarded as setting a new historical record.
Intra-party rebellions are coming one after another
In the first two rounds of voting, a total of 19 lawmakers led by members of the ultra-conservative Republican "Freedom Caucus" opposed McCarthy's appointment as speaker; by the third round of voting, the number of opposition votes had increased to 20.
While the Democrats, now in the minority, had little hope of winning, their minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, had won more votes than McCarthy in all three ballots.
The unity of the Democratic Party and the division of the Republican Party can be regarded as a perfect contrast.
Although during the voting process, Republican members who opposed McCarthy gradually concentrated under another member of the Liberal Caucus, Jordan (Jim Jordan), but Jordan himself expressed his support for McCarthy. A man who could unite the party better than McCarthy.
McCarthy himself made clear between the voting process that he would hang on until he won.
During the voting process, members must call out the name of the speaker candidate they support one by one.
Pictured here is House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik counting votes for McCarthy.
(Reuters)
Since the necessary condition for the operation of the House of Representatives is the speaker, if the speaker cannot be elected, the House of Representatives will not be able to carry out any normal work.
"Retaking the House of Representatives" can be regarded as a "consolation prize" for the Republican Party after the poor mid-term elections.
Unexpectedly, on the first day of the "House of Representatives Re-light", the Republican Party's infighting brought the House of Representatives to a standstill.
Since the end of the mid-term elections in November, McCarthy has made repeated efforts to compromise with extremists in the party, hoping to gain their support and be successfully elected speaker.
According to the document released on January 1, McCarthy has accepted various demands of the extremists, including banning remote hearings (handy for the Democrats after the epidemic), prohibiting House employees from forming unions, and allowing lawmakers to vote to reduce the salaries of government officials. Zero, creating a new commission to investigate the "weaponization" of the DOJ and FBI, etc.
Among them, what is more noteworthy is that McCarthy agreed to adjust the threshold for launching the "kick out the speaker" vote to five, which in disguise left a very convenient way for future Republican extremist congressmen to "force the palace" against the speaker of the same party.
However, members of the Liberal Caucus were not satisfied with this, and asked McCarthy to lower the threshold for this vote to 1, and promised not to use the resources of the Republican leader to influence the Republican primary election.
Some members of the Liberal Caucus who came to the political stage under the banner of "anti-establishment" did not have a clear request, but just blindly opposed McCarthy himself as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Matt Gaetz of Florida, for example, suggested that the right speaker might not be someone who, like McCarthy, has been seeking the speakership.
Even if McCarthy can finally win the support of fellow party members to take the post of speaker, he will have to face the long-term "rebellion" of these extremists in the future.
Matt Gaetz, who firmly opposes McCarthy as speaker.
(Reuters)
Self-inflicted?
McCarthy, from California, the Democratic Party's main party, was originally a member of the state legislature who was willing to cooperate across the party.
After being elected to the House of Representatives in 2007, he has been rising rapidly in the Republican political arena in Washington. He even called himself "young guns" (young guns) with a group of young colleagues, and packaged himself as a new generation of Republican leaders with policy ideas.
However, during Obama's first term, the Tea Party extremists rose in the Republican Party, and McCarthy, who was determined to become the Speaker of the House, embarked on the road of "both left and right", pleasing both the traditionalists and the extremists in the party.
McCarthy, who served as the party whip from 2011 to 2014, even supported the then Republican Speaker John Boehner to canvass for a cross-party legislation, while on the other hand he voted against it at the last minute, beckoning to the extremists.
"The right and the left" and "two sides are not human" are often two sides of the same coin, and now McCarthy should have a deep understanding of this.
After being forced to withdraw from the party speaker competition in 2015, McCarthy finally became the leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives after 2018. As long as the Republican Party can regain Congress, he is the natural candidate for speaker.
On the first day of the new House of Representatives meeting, Pelosi went to Capitol Hill with her husband who was attacked at home earlier.
(Reuters)
After 2016, McCarthy also became an important congressional ally of Trump, and was affectionately called "My Kevin" by Trump many times.
After the 2020 presidential election, McCarthy also publicly declared that "Trump won the election" and led Republican congressmen to support Trump's judicial action to dispute the election results. He even called on Trump supporters to "don't be quiet." ".
After the congressional riots on January 6, 2021, McCarthy still voted against confirming Biden's election.
The Congressional riots did shake McCarthy's support for Trump for a time.
In party discussions, he said he would ask Trump to resign; in his speech a week after the riots, he stated that Trump should be held responsible for the riots.
However, seeing that the congressional riots did not shake the support of Republican voters for Trump, McCarthy soon went to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to plead guilty to Trump and restore the old relationship.
To this day, McCarthy is running for speaker and still has Trump's endorsement.
The arrogance of the extremists in the Republican Party today is to a large extent created by politicians like McCarthy who seek power by unscrupulous means.
For McCarthy, the consequences at this moment are absolutely self-inflicted.
In order to please the extremists, the future speaker of the Republican House of Representatives may "take a slant" on issues such as raising the deficit ceiling and investigating Biden's son, which is not a good thing for the Democratic administration to govern.
However, judging from the denial of extreme Republican candidates by voters in the mid-term elections, the extreme trend of Republicans in the House of Representatives will lead to their own destruction.
From a longer-term perspective, the Democratic Party can definitely laugh at the infighting of the Republican Party in the next two years.
Republican internal strife failed to elect the speaker of the House of Representatives Opposition: McCarthy is not enough to the right McCarthy did not get enough votes to be the speaker of the US House of Representatives