For the first time in a hundred years, a majority party in the House of Representatives, in this case the Republicans, fails to elect its president, the famous speaker of the house.
After three consecutive elections, Kevin McCarthy failed to win the job; the session has been postponed to Wednesday at the end of the morning. In practical terms, this means several things: in the absence of a president, the lower house cannot swear in new members, legislative committees cannot be formed, nor can that area of Congress be put to work. Without a president nothing works.
What happened is an indication that McCarthy’s personality does not have the necessary consensus among his brothers. In the three votes he faced a reality: he could only lose the vote of four of his own, which he did not achieve.
The winner of the day was the New York Democrat, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who managed to captivate some Republicans who prevented McCarthy from getting the necessary votes.
The end of this first day shows that there is no easy way out for McCarthy, whose effort to reclaim the job collapsed in the face of opposition from the Tories. Needing all 218 votes in the House, he got only 203 in two rounds, even fewer than Democrat Hakeem Jeffries in a GOP-controlled body.
But the third ballot was even worse with McCarthy losing 20 votes once night fell on the new House Republican majority. Tensions rose when all other matters came to a halt. His followers complained that this situation froze all plans to end some of President Biden’s policies.
McCarthy had promised a “battle on the floor” for as long as it took to defeat his fellow right-wing Republicans, who refused to give him their votes. But it was not entirely clear how he could bounce back after becoming the first House speaker candidate to fail to come to power with his majority party in a century.
“We all came here to get things done,” said second-ranking Republican Rep. Steve Scalise in a stirring speech urging his colleagues to drop their protest.
Criticizing President Biden’s agenda, Scalise stressed that “we can’t start fixing those problems until we elect Kevin McCarthy as our next president.”
It was a chaotic start for the new Congress. He pointed to a tangled path ahead, which will set the mood for months to come. There is no assurance that Republican “mavericks” will be brought back on track by party policies outright.
A new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump’s agenda, wants to change the usual agenda in Washington. They vowed to stop McCarthy’s rise and not compromise his priorities.
“The American people are watching, and it’s a good thing,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who nominated fellow conservative Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio as a speaker alternative.
It was the second time the Conservatives had ousted a reluctant Jordan, McCarthy’s rival-turned-ally, who had risen days ago to urge his colleagues, including those who backed him, to stop voting for McCarthy.
Jordan got six votes in the first round, 19 in the second, and one more in the third.
After a raucous private meeting of the Republican Party, a group of conservatives led by the Freedom Caucus, the political wing of the Trumpists, were furious. They called the meeting a “bashing” by McCarthy allies and stood firm in their opposition.
“There is one person who could have changed all of this,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., chairman of the Freedom Caucus. In his opinion, McCarthy rejected the group’s latest offer for rule changes during that meeting Monday night on Capitol Hill.
“If you want to drain the swamp, you can’t put the biggest alligator in control of the exercise,” added Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
