Kevin McCarthy at the announcement of the results of the second round of voting for President of the House on Capitol Hill, January 3, 2023. ALEX BRANDON / AP
It was only hours before the 118th United States Congress made history on Tuesday, January 3rd. It only took a fire that had been blazing for weeks to overwhelm the Republican Party, which still has a majority in the new House of Representatives. The choice of speaker should have been a happy moment for favorite candidate Kevin McCarthy (California). It was just the opposite. Three rounds of voting – an event without precedent since 1923 – did not allow him to gain that honor and succeed Nancy Pelosi. The Republican’s flesh-eating and forced smile did not hide the stigmata of the political torture to which some twenty of his peers subjected him during that theatrical session. A suspension of the meeting, decided until Wednesday, offered him a brief respite to try to heal internal divisions.
Out of the 434 elected officials set to take office Tuesday, Republicans have 222 votes versus 212 for Democrats. This very narrow majority therefore leaves the right at the mercy of elected extremists who scoff at every electoral discipline and are determined to overthrow the table on which traditional politics is made.
Grouped within the Freedom Caucus faction, these thirty representatives hail from the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) generation, but do not necessarily follow the direction of Donald Trump, who had called for a vote for McCarthy without any enthusiasm. Among the dominant figures of this generation, Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) is one of the few to support this classic candidacy. “If only the grassroots understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard-fought Republican majority,” she lamented on Twitter Tuesday.
Also read: Article reserved for our subscribers Kevin McCarthy, the man who dreamed of becoming Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The mistrust of “Never Kevin”
In the course of the midterm elections in early November 2022, several mandate holders – the “Never-Kevin” – had expressed their distrust of this candidate, who was considered an apparatchik with no real conservative flame. In their minds, politics is a bonfire of tweets and live feeds on Fox News or Newsmax channels, designed to roast democratic enemies and the too-soft elements of their own camp. It doesn’t matter to these inquisitors that there is no real alternative to McCarthy. “If you’re going to clean up the swamp, you can’t use the biggest alligator to lead the exercise,” said Matt Gaetz (Florida), one of those “Never Kevins.”
You have 64.64% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.