OBJECTIVE PREVIEW For a third day, divided Republicans leave the US House speaker’s chair vacant Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, as party leader Kevin McCarthy fails and votes on ballots to win enough GOP votes to seize the chamber’s gavel. In a harrowing string of fails again. ,
The pressure was mounting as McCarthy lost the seventh and eighth rounds of voting, and was launched on a historic ninth ballot, the last time it took place 100 years earlier, in a disputed election to choose the speaker. But with his supporters and foes at a standstill, feelings of both boredom and frustration seemed glaringly obvious, seemingly to no end.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a critic of McCarthy, also cast his vote for Donald Trump, a symbolic but clear sign of the wider division over the future of the Republican Party.
That’s not happening,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who named Kevin Hearn of Oklahoma, a new alternative, and urged colleagues to consider a future without McCarthy: “We need a leader who Don’t belong to a broken system.
McCarthy can be seen talking one after the other in whispered conversations in the House chamber, and has met privately with aides determined to persuade Republican holdouts that have bolstered his new GOP majority.
“We’re having good discussions and I think everybody wants to find a solution,” McCarthy told reporters shortly before the third session of the House adjourned.
Despite endless negotiations, signs of concessions and a public spectacle unlike any other in recent political memory, the way forward remained highly uncertain. What began as a political novelty, the first time since 1923 that no candidate had won the gavel on the first vote, is deepening into a bitter Republican Party feud and potential crisis.
Democrat Hakeem Jeffries of New York was renominated by the Democrats. He received the most votes on each ballot, but fell short of a majority.
Republican Party holdouts repeatedly put forward the name of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, assuring the standoff that the growing interweaving of race and politics will continue.
Donald, who is black, is seen as a rising leader of the party and the GOP counterpoint to Democratic leader, Jefferies, who is the first black leader of a major political party in the US Congress and has positioned himself to become speaker someday. are tracking.
Another black Republican, newly elected John James, nominated McCarthy on the seventh ballot. Republican Brian Mast of Florida, a veteran, appeared to wipe away a tear when he nominated McCarthy in eighth place, and insisted that the California Republican was not like past GOP speakers who have been ridiculed by conservatives. For the ninth ballot, Troy Nehls of Texas, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, took the nomination.
Nehls told his allies, “This battle we are fighting must end.”
Donalds was the pick of the holdouts, nominated this round by staunch McCarthy rival Matt Rosendale of Montana.
McCarthy is under increasing pressure from restless Republicans and Democrats to seek votes or to step aside so the House can fully open and get on with the business of governing. The incoming Republican chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence committees said national security was at risk.
“The Biden administration is running out of control and the White House has no oversight,” Republicans Michael McCaul, Mike Rogers and Mike Turner wrote in a joint statement. “We cannot allow personal politics to jeopardize the safety and security of the United States of America.”
But McCarthy’s right-wing detractors appeared intent on waiting him out for as long as it took. Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Scott Perry, R-PA, insisted that McCarthy could not be trusted, and tweeted his displeasure that negotiations over rule changes and other concessions were being made public.
Perry tweeted, “There is no deal.” “When trust is betrayed and directed to leaks, it is even more difficult to trust.”
A new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, want to elevate business as usual in Washington, and are committed to preventing McCarthy’s rise without concessions to his priorities.
To gain support, McCarthy has already agreed to several demands of Freedom Caucus members, who have been agitating for rule changes and other concessions that would give rank-and-file members more influence.
Mostly, holdouts led by the Freedom Caucus are looking for ways to reduce the power of the speaker’s office and give rank-and-file lawmakers more influence in the legislative process — with seats on key committees and the drafting of bills in one Ability to create and amend a more free-for-all process. One of their key demands is to reinstate a rule that would allow a single legislator to seek a motion to vacate the chair – essentially calling for a vote of all houses to oust the speaker. This is the same rule that Republicans in the previous Tea Party era threatened to oust Boehner, and McCarthy has opposed reinstating.
But those who oppose McCarthy don’t all have the same complaints, and he may never win some of them. A small core group of Republicans appears unwilling to ever vote for McCarthy. “I’m prepared to vote all night, all week, all month and never for that person,” said Gaetz, a Florida Republican.
The House, which houses half of Congress, is essentially at a standstill as McCarthy has failed, one vote after another, to win the Speaker’s Gable in a gruesome spectacle for the whole world to see. Ballots have produced roughly the same result, with 20 conservative holdouts still refusing to endorse him and leaving him far short of the 218 usually needed to win the gavel. In fact, McCarthy saw his support slip to 201, as a fellow Republican switched to voting only to be present.
Thursday can be a long day. The new Republican majority was not expected to be in session on Friday, the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A protracted and divisive speaker’s battle will almost certainly underscore the fragility of American democracy after an attempted insurrection two years ago.
California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, said in a tweet, “We must open the House and get on with the work of the people.”
Some Republicans appear to be uncomfortable with the way House Republicans have taken office after the midterm elections, only to see the chamber upstaged in the speaker’s race in its first days back in the new majority.
Colorado Republican Ken Buck voted for McCarthy but said Wednesday he told her “she needs to figure out how to make a deal going forward” or eventually fall out to someone else. Right-wing conservatives, led by the Freedom Caucus and aligned with former President Trump, were incensed by the impasse – even though Trump publicly supported McCarthy.
The disorganized start to the new Congress pointed to the difficulties faced by Republicans now in control of the House, similar to the way some previous Republican speakers, including John Boehner, had trouble leading a rebellious right wing. Result: government shutdown, impasse, and Boehner’s early retirement.
The longest battle for the gavel began in late 1855 and lasted two months with 133 ballots, during debates over slavery during the Civil War.