Pressure is mounting in the House of Representatives as Republican Kevin McCarthy continues to fail, one vote after another, in his attempt to get the 218 votes needed to become House Speaker.
Representatives held three votes on Tuesday and three on Wednesday.
Each time, McCarthy failed to win the support he needed.
The congressman made several key concessions overnight to try to appease his critics, including restoring a rule that a single House member could force a vote to oust the president.
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But when the House of Representatives voted for the seventh and eighth time on Thursday, he lost again, strongly opposed by 20 congressmen from the most conservative wing of the party.
One of McCarthy's staunch critics, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, even cast his vote for Donald Trump, a symbolic gesture, but one that highlighted the former president's influence on the Republican Party.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, on his way to the House of Representatives.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
The House, which is half of Congress, is essentially at a standstill, and what began as a political novelty, the first time in 100 years that a candidate did not win the presidency on the first ballot, has turned into a bitter Party feud. Republican and a potential deepening crisis.
A long session in the Lower House was projected for this Thursday, with no expectations of a concrete result.
The new Republican majority was not expected to be in session on Friday, which is the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
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Without a president, the Lower House
cannot be fully constituted
: neither be sworn in, nor appoint the chairpersons of the commissions, nor start the sessions, nor launch the investigations that the Republicans plan to do to the Biden Administration.
Throughout the days there have been endless talks, signs of concessions and a public spectacle unlike any other in recent political history, but the way forward remains highly uncertain.
Although some congressmen are optimistic.
Republican John James of Michigan, who put McCarthy's name on the ballot, said that while House Republicans were "stuck" at the moment, their candidate will win in the long run.
To
have a black president
The Democrats, who have the minority in the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections, re-elected Hakeem Jeffries, representative from New York, to lead the party.
Reluctants in the Republican Party again proposed the name of Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, assuring the stalemate that had increasingly racial and political overtones would continue.
Donalds, who is black, is seen as a future party leader and counterpoint to Democrat Jeffries, who is the first black leader of a major political party in Congress.
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“We could have elected the first black speaker in the United States House,” said conservative Republican Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who renominated Donalds on Thursday.
Right-wing conservatives, led by the Freedom Caucus and aligned with former President Donald Trump, seemed emboldened by the standoff, even though Trump publicly endorsed McCarthy.
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“This is truly an invigorating day for America,” said Florida Republican Donalds, who was nominated three times by his conservative colleagues as an alternative.
“There are a lot of members in the chamber who want to have serious conversations about how we can bring this all to a close and pick a speaker.”
Since 1923, the election of the president of the Lower House had not been submitted to several ballots;
the longest and most grueling fight began in late 1855 and raged for two months, with 133 votes cast, during the slavery debates in the run up to the Civil War.
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The disorganized start to the new Congress shows the difficulties ahead with the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives.
It's not the first time: Republican presidents have had trouble leading a rogue right-wing flank in previous administrations.
The result: initiatives that do not advance, government closures and confrontations.
With information from
NBC News
and
The Associated Press
.