This content was posted on January 7, 2023 – 5:56 AM January 7, 2023 – 5:56 AM
Washington, 7 January (EFE).- Republican Kevin McCarthy was finally elected President of the United States House of Representatives this Saturday after winning 15 votes after convincing a sufficient number of ultra-congressmen from his own party who refused to vote for him to support.
The abstention of six rebellious Republicans paved the way for the election of McCarthy as speaker of the chamber just after midnight, by 216 votes, after four grueling days that ended today with this victory that ended the chaos in Congress.
As with the previous vote, and unlike the first thirteen, the Radical Republicans presented no alternate candidates to McCarthy, who feuded in this final round with House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries, who received 212 votes for the same as in the previous rounds.
In that final vote, six ultra-Republicans abstained, paving the way for McCarthy’s election by reducing the number of votes he needed to be elected.
This latest round came after a penultimate one that saw tense moments between McCarthy and radical conservative Matt Gaetz, an ally of former President Donald Trump, who thwarted his election by choosing to abstain from voting when the Californian Legislators with one voice close to victory could spare. vote.
According to The New York Times, Trump, who this week called on his supporters to support McCarthy, called Gaetz when he saw the election of the party machine candidate was in jeopardy.
McCarthy’s appointment ends a grueling and chaotic week in the US Capitol that began last Tuesday, when for the first time in a hundred years the House Speaker was not elected in the first ballot because of critics within his own party.
Those critics were about 20 far-right congressmen, many loyal to Trump and members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus group, who didn’t have the nerve until this Friday.
In Votes 12 and 13 held Friday morning, some of them have begun to support McCarthy, while the rest of the congressmen cheered every step taken to resolve the situation.
And it is that the 118th Congress could not begin without a Speaker of the House of Commons. The only way to get him elected was to repeat the vote until a candidate achieved a majority, which happened just outside the weekend.
To enlist the support of the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus, a group formed in 2015 by the most extreme Republicans – many of them members of the now-defunct Tea Party – with the aim of pushing the Republican leadership to the right, McCarthy had to do a few things, Concessions not disclosed.
Private collusion addressed a number of demands the rebel Republicans had, such as the power to table a motion of no confidence in the House Speaker, several co-chairs on the Rules Committee that votes on border issues be guaranteed, the head on various subcommittees and have within the Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful in the Chamber, relevance.
After McCarthy’s election, all congressmen will be sworn in and the new legislature, which will last two years, will begin.
The President of the House of Representatives, also known as the Speaker, is a key political figure whose responsibilities include setting much of the legislative calendar and deciding which projects will be voted on and when.
It will also be the third agency in the country, after United States President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, to also chair the Senate, and the second in line of succession.
After the 15 votes, this unusual event in American democracy has come to an end, as the last time more than one vote was needed to choose the “Speaker” was in 1923.
At that time the President of the Chamber was elected in a ninth vote, five fewer than on that occasion but a far cry from the sixty that had to be taken in 1869. EFE
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