The Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives could lose his office because he is accused by the most radical wing of his party of doing business with the Democrats
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, is in a difficult situation with part of his party and will most likely face a vote of no confidence in the next few days. Congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the most extremist Republican fringe, announced the vote following the agreement McCarthy reached with Democrats that made it possible to avoid the “shutdown,” or partial closure of Republican activities US Federal Government. Currently, only a minority of Republicans support removing McCarthy from office, but the situation is still uncertain: McCarthy will need partial support from Democrats to keep the office.
The Speaker of the Chamber, who is similar to our Chamber President, represents the majority party, of which he becomes the main representative. He has important leadership roles, especially when, as has happened in recent days, he has to work with a US president from the opposing party.
Kevin McCarthy, left, on Capitol Hill, Washington (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
McCarthy is 58 years old, a long-time Republican politician who has long been part of the party leadership and has come close to Donald Trump’s positions in recent years. From 2014 to the present he was also party chairman of the chamber.
Although McCarthy is considered a Trumpian and anything but moderate, there is a group of radical Republicans who believe that the Republican Party should be reformed to be even more extremist and who actually oppose McCarthy. It’s worth noting that the Republican Party has generally moved sharply to the right in recent years, so even the most moderate wing is not moderate at all. McCarthy’s last election for speaker in January had already been very complex and contentious: fifteen votes were needed before he managed to win the votes of the party’s most extremist wing. To preserve it, he had made some concessions, including the ability for any MP to request a vote of the chamber at any time to remove him from office.
It’s the tool Gaetz, a congressman elected in Florida, wants to use: “We have to change to find a leader we can really trust,” he said. Gaetz can count on the support of an indefinite number of colleagues, from a minimum of seven to a maximum of twenty-four. They accuse McCarthy of “selling out” them by colluding with Democrats to avoid the shutdown and failing to keep political promises made during the election, including not giving the central government any further spending increases to allow .
Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The number of opponents is limited, but enough to threaten McCarthy, considering that Republicans have a very narrow majority in the House of Representatives (221 seats for Republicans, 212 for Democrats). The way US politics works, Democrats would have to vote to remove a speaker from the opposing party: a few more Republican votes would be enough to remove him. However, there is no custom, the vote of no confidence in a speaker is an event that last happened a century ago and was never successful.
McCarthy said he was confident he could overcome the no-confidence vote. He said that Gaetz was motivated by personal reasons and that “he was more interested in securing interviews on television than in actually doing anything.” However, it is currently unclear how Democrats would vote in the face of a no-confidence motion. McCarthy recently announced the initiation of impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, which appear to have very weak grounds and no prospect of success. In general, cooperation with the democratic federal government is considered to be very limited and has so far only been initiated due to an exceptional situation, ie the threat of a partial closure of the federal government.
The most radical parts of the Democrats have already declared that they have no intention of “saving a Republican” and, above all, no intention of doing so “without getting something in return”: this position was adopted, among others, by Alexandria Ocasio expressed. Cortez, New York State Congressman. McCarthy could be forced to make concessions to the opposing party, and this could include financing new military aid to Ukraine, which was not included in the agreement and made it possible to avoid the “shutdown”, a kind of stopgap law to finance the government for the next 45 days, defined as a persistent solution. The right of the Republican Party is effectively against continuing to fund the Ukrainian army.
To keep McCarthy in office, it could be enough for a group of Democratic lawmakers to abstain, thereby reducing the required majority, which was originally set at 218 (the motion passed with a simple majority).
However, if the censure motion were to succeed and McCarthy resigned, the situation would be particularly confusing, particularly for Republicans. There is currently no alternative candidate who can bring the two parts of the party, the more moderate majority party, which, as mentioned, hardly has any moderates, and the minority party with even more right-wing positions, into agreement. McCarthy’s own difficult election in January had already highlighted how often the party was at the mercy of its most extreme party.
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