It didn't take long for U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy's fate to be cast. His colleagues voted on Tuesday to remove him as the third authority in the country less than 24 hours after his great rival in the Republican ranks, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the radical wing and a guy with an appetite for the spotlight, announced his intention to present a motion of censure against his leader in Congress. The historic decision plunges the United States into unprecedented legislative paralysis and leaves Capitol Hill in chaos.
After 14:30 p.m. (local time), the plenary voted to go ahead with the motion of censure, while reporters, squeezed into the press gallery, passed list to allies and rivals of McCarthy, and to the absences, the loudest of all, that of Nancy Pelosi. A little more than an hour of crossed speeches later, the fulminating political dismissal was consummated with an archaic and slow vote of live voice. Eight Republicans and all the Democrats present (208) withdrew their confidence in McCarthy, who attended from the middle of the chamber and with resignation to his public humiliation, already sung more or less at the end of the morning. At least he got several standing ovations from his faithful. It had been more than a century since the plenary had attended a process like this and it was the first time in history that a speaker has been dismissed in such a dishonorable way.
The reason for the eviction is McCarthy's pact in extremis last Saturday with the Democrats, from whom he took a vote to avoid the administrative closure in Washington, which resulted in a budget extension to maintain government funding until November 17. Left out of that commitment was aid to Ukraine, which divides the Republican Party. Gaetz, along with other wayward congressmen McCarthy has faced for nine months, when they put him through 15 votes before allowing him to be elected as speaker, considered that commitment an unforgivable betrayal.
Gaetz, banished by his own, took the floor from a microphone on the Democratic side before the final vote. He spoke with the vehemence of someone who has been waiting for his moment for some time. "My colleagues and I cannot support our party in the task of leading the country into chaos," he said to justify his initiative. "Chaos is President McCarthy. Chaos is someone whose word we cannot trust. Chaos is accumulating $33 trillion of debt, and an annual deficit of $2.2 trillion."
It was an intense day for him and another tumultuous day at the Capitol, a three-track political circus show broadcast live to a public opinion distrustful of its institutions and accustomed to the dysfunctions of Washington. It soon emerged that the House did not intend to run out of the two-day deadline for holding McCarthy's confidence vote. This, representative for California, tried to stop the blow and unsuccessfully save the drink, and appeared before the press with the half smile that has been frozen for several days on his face. He tried to convey self-confidence and announced that if he got the support of the Democrats it would not be in exchange for any compromise.
The Democratic Decision
Both parties held meetings behind closed doors. The congressmen left them to attend to the press, which ran from the office of one representative to another. By mid-morning, when "chaos" had already become the word of the day, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, confirmed to a swarm of reporters that he was not going to ask his people to vote to save McCarthy. The dilemma was whether to drop a rival who arouses no sympathy or save him to avoid paralysis of the House until a successor is chosen, while time moves to the next deadline to avoid the dreaded government shutdown. This Wednesday will be only 43 days away.
Earlier in the afternoon, Jeffries went further, sending a letter to colleagues confirming that they would vote to oust McCarthy given the GOP's "unwillingness to break with MAGA extremism. In the text, the politician accused his rivals of sowing "chaos, dysfunction and extremism among working American taxpayers", for, among other things, failing to make a funding commitment acquired with Biden, promoting "radical laws" and launching an impeachment (political trial) against the president for the troubles of his son Hunter without the prior approval of the full House.
Matt Gaetz addresses the media Tuesday morning. SHAWN THEW (EFE)
Gaetz's initiative had the support of several Republicans on the wing, who announced Monday that they were jumping on that boat: among them, Bob Good (representative of Virginia), Tim Burchett (Tennessee) and Eli Crane and Andy Biggs (both of Arizona). Good took the floor when it seemed that McCarthy had no solution with a speech that began by "regretting" that all this was happening and then mercilessly making wood from the fallen tree. For the eviction to take place, a simple majority of the participants in the vote was sufficient. The House has 435 congressmen, but there are two vacancies (one for each party). The composition that emerged from last November's election gave the Conservatives a slim lead of 222 to 213.
McCarthy didn't have to look far to find those guilty of being on the edge of the abyss. It is notorious that the political dream of his life was to become speaker of the House and that slim majority placed him on the verge of fulfilling it, and forced him to some concessions to the most extreme wing of his party. One of them was to change the rules so that the commitment of a single representative would suffice, instead of the five that were needed before, to table a motion of censure. That lone sniper has turned out to be Gaetz. Neither of them has hidden their mutual antipathy since January.
Then it took 15 votes to twist the fractious will of Gaetz and his people. It was a historic embarrassment: it had been more than a century since the House of Representatives had had to repeat the vote so many times to choose the majority leader.
This Tuesday did not have too many precedents either. The last time such an eviction attempt took place on Capitol Hill was in 2015, when then-Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina (who would later become Donald Trump's chief of staff) introduced a resolution to evict John Boehner (Ohio). The full never voted on it, but Boehner resigned.
In 1910, it was the speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon, who raised what is literally a motion to leave the position vacant and that, when promoted by the holder of the position functioned as a motion of confidence. Fed up with the criticism of some parliamentarians, he called for a vote so he could win it and thus turn the move into a show of force.
The fall of the gavel after the vote that expelled McCarthy on Tuesday left the echo with an urgent question: what now? Now his position will be occupied provisionally by the first of a list delivered by McCarthy himself to the secretary of the House. The choice is Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. Its first mission will be to achieve the appointment of a new speaker. There is no Republican candidate who enjoys so much support to achieve it.
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