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Republican Kevin McCarthy takes over the "gavel" with which the speaker chairs the sessions of the House of Representatives
Photo: SHAWN THEW/EPA
In the end everything went very quickly.
Just after midnight, Kevin McCarthy was able to garner enough votes to become Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
After 15 rounds of voting and endless debates between his own party friends, he had reached his goal.
Republican lawmakers finally got to do something they had waited four long days for: cheer.
They chorused, "USA, USA, USA."
With a mixture of pride and relief, McCarthy then scaled the gallery where the speaker usually sits.
He solemnly held the wooden mallet (»Gavel«) in his hand, with which he may now chair the sessions of Parliament.
"Now the hard work begins," he said in his inaugural address.
And: »This week it became clear: I never give up.«
It hasn't taken that long to elect a speaker for the US House of Representatives in decades.
McCarthy and his party are there.
But at what price?
The party has given a catastrophic picture, despite its late success it seems dysfunctional and completely divided.
Wild scenes in the plenary hall
Shortly before the last ballot, an unprecedented drama ensued.
McCarthy had actually assumed that he would already have a majority in the 14th ballot.
"My father always told me it's not about how you start, it's about how you finish," he happily piped in front of the doors of the House of Representatives.
He could already see the success he had hoped for.
Everything was prepared for the great triumph in ballot 14.
But then the dream bursts again.
Most of the 20 mutineers from their own ranks, all of them hardliners from the right fringe of the faction, largely gave up their resistance to their own men.
But in the end, McCarthy was just one vote short of an absolute majority.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the leading rebels, could have turned the tide for McCarthy.
But he merely abstained, which wasn't enough for McCarthy.
So it came to wild scenes in the venerable plenary hall of the US Parliament.
McCarthy himself jumped up from his seat, stormed angrily at Gaetz and started talking to him.
MP Mike Rogers wanted to attack Gaetz with a loud roar, but another party friend was just able to hold him back.
At the request of the Republicans, the House of Representatives should adjourn again.
Until Monday this time.
Then, within minutes, the next turning point suddenly came.
After negotiations between McCarthy and the last dissenters, a deal was probably found after all.
A final ballot was scheduled.
This time it was enough for McCarthy because six of the mutineers abstained.
This chaos on the Republican side is only a foretaste of what will follow in the US Congress in the coming months.
McCarthy is off to a bad start as a speaker.
He is as weak as hardly any other speaker before him.
In order to win over the last remaining rebels, McCarthy has apparently made behind-the-scenes concessions that are likely to massively erode his power as spokesman.
He was so desperate to win the prestigious speaker's post that he said yes and amen to every demand from the hardliners.
One of the most important points: In the future, a single member of parliament should be able to apply for a vote of no confidence against the speaker.
Lots of power for the hardliners
At first, McCarthy only offered to limit this quorum to five MPs.
Given the narrow majority in the House of Representatives, the new regulation could mean in practice that the speaker practically permanently lives with the danger of losing his office within hours.
Individual members of parliament could put him under pressure, even blackmail him, simply by threatening to trigger a vote of no confidence, in order to achieve their own goals.
The haggling of the last few days seems to be the lesson.
It shows MPs that they only have to hold out long enough to get McCarthy's wishes granted.
Another important point on which McCarthy has conceded: he had to promise that the party leadership would no longer interfere in certain primaries of candidates for the House of Representatives by injecting funds into individual party friends.
That sounds quite technical, but it could have massive repercussions on the direction of the party: So far, McCarthy's party leadership has tried in some cases to support more moderate candidates in the primaries, the so-called primaries.
By giving these politicians generous campaign donations from the faction's coffers, they wanted to ensure that the rise of particularly radical candidates was thwarted.
In addition, McCarthy has apparently allowed the hardliners to fill some of the posts on the important Rules Committee.
This committee sets the rules and agenda for the entire House of Representatives.
There they could use it to block important legislative projects before they even reach the entire plenary session of parliament.
All of these and other concessions that may have been made confidential are likely to make the new speaker's life harder, rather than easier.
Worse still, these compromises with the hardliners could even jeopardize the ability of the entire Congress to function and thus the ability of American politics to act at the federal level as a whole.
The forthcoming battle with US President Joe Biden and his Democrats over state finances is particularly sensitive in this context.
Sometime after July, the so-called debt ceiling in the US budget must be raised by Congress.
To do this, the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats, and the House of Representatives must agree on a common line that finds a majority in both houses.
The problem: In principle, raising the debt limit is unavoidable because otherwise the USA, as the most powerful economic nation on earth, would no longer be able to service its debts, which in turn would have catastrophic consequences for the financial markets.
Therefore, some Republicans want to use the negotiations with the Democrats as a lever to push through massive cuts in the state budget.
This, in turn, is rejected by the Democrats.
McCarthy promised the hardliners he would support their line against the Democrats.
In other words, tough, even dramatic, clashes between Democrats and Republicans are to be expected in the coming months.
The late success in the speaker choice was therefore perhaps the easiest task for McCarthy.
