It didn’t take long for the fate of U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to become known. His colleagues voted this Tuesday to remove him as the third authority in the country, less than 24 hours after his great rival in the Republican ranks, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the radical wing and a man with an appetite for the spotlight , had announced his intention to submit a motion of censure in Congress against its leader. The historic decision plunges the United States into unprecedented legislative paralysis and leaves the Capitol in chaos.
After 2:30 p.m. (local time), the plenary session voted to pass the no-confidence motion, while the reporters crowding the press box heard a plea from McCarthy’s allies and rivals, and from those absent, the loudest that was all, that of Nancy Pelosi . A little over an hour after the exchange of speeches, the devastating political dismissal was completed with an archaic and slow vote. Eight Republicans and all Democrats present (208) withdrew their trust from McCarthy, who was present from the middle of the room and was already singing with resignation about his public humiliation more or less at the end of the morning. After all, he received several standing ovations from his believers. It had been more than a century since the plenary had taken part in such a process, and it was the first time in history that a speaker had been dismissed in such a dishonorable manner.
The reason for the eviction is McCarthy’s in extremis pact last Saturday with the Democrats, from whom he elicited a vote to prevent the administrative shutdown in Washington, which resulted in a budget extension to maintain government funding until November 17th. Aid to Ukraine was not included in this commitment, dividing the Republican Party. Gaetz and other wayward congressmen, whom McCarthy had faced for nine months, viewed this commitment as an unforgivable betrayal when they demanded 15 votes from him before allowing him to be elected speaker.
Gaetz, who he banned, spoke via a microphone on the Democratic side before the final vote. He spoke with the vehemence of someone who has been waiting for his moment for a long time. “My colleagues and I cannot support our party in the task of leading the country into chaos,” he said, justifying his initiative. “Chaos is President McCarthy. Chaos is someone whose word we cannot trust. The chaos has piled up $33 trillion in debt and a $2.2 trillion annual deficit.”
It was an intense day for him and another tumultuous day at the Capitol, a three-ring political circus show broadcast live to a public distrustful of its institutions and accustomed to Washington’s dysfunction. It soon became known that the House of Representatives did not intend to use the maximum two-day deadline for McCarthy’s confidence vote. Trying unsuccessfully to stop the blow and avoid the drink, this representative from California appeared before the press with the half-smile that had been frozen on his face for several days. He tried to project confidence and announced that he would not receive Democratic support in exchange for commitment.
The democratic decision
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Both parties held closed meetings. The congressmen left them to deal with the press, which ran from one representative’s office to another. By midmorning, with “chaos” already the watchword of the day, Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries confirmed to a crowd of journalists that he would not ask his people to vote to save McCarthy. The dilemma was whether to ditch a rival who did not inspire any sympathy or to save him to avoid paralyzing the chamber until a successor was elected as time ticked toward the next deadline for the feared government shutdown avoid. This Wednesday there are only 43 days left.
Earlier in the afternoon, Jeffries went a step further, sending a letter to his colleagues confirming that they would vote to remove McCarthy because the Republican Party was “unwilling to break with MAGA extremism.” [siglas en inglés de Make America Great Again, lema del trumpismo]. In the text, the politician accused his rivals of sowing “chaos, dysfunction and extremism among hard-working American taxpayers” for, among other things, failing to honor a funding commitment made with Biden, promoting “radical legislation” and introducing legislation Impeachment of the President over his son Hunter’s affairs without prior approval of the plenary session
Matt Gaetz speaks to the media on Tuesday morning. SHAWN THEW (EFE)
Gaetz’s initiative had the support of several extreme Republicans who announced Monday that they were jumping on that ship: including Bob Good (Representative of Virginia), Tim Burchett (Tennessee), and Eli Crane and Andy Biggs (both of Arizona). Good spoke when it seemed McCarthy had no solution, with a speech that began with him “regretting” that it all happened and then mercilessly turning the fallen tree into firewood. A simple majority of those voting was sufficient for the eviction. The chamber has 435 members of Congress, but there are two vacancies (one for each party). The composition resulting from last November’s election gave the Conservatives a narrow lead of 222 to 213.
McCarthy didn’t have to look far to find those responsible for putting him on the brink. It is notorious that the political dream of his life was to become speaker of the chamber and that this narrow majority put him on the verge of fulfilling it and forced him to make some concessions to the most extreme wing of his party. One of them was to change the rules so that the effort of a single representative was sufficient, instead of the five previously needed to table a motion of no confidence. That lone sniper turned out to be Gaetz. Since January, neither of them has hidden the mutual dislike they profess.
Then it took 15 votes to bend the stubborn will of Gaetz and his people. It was a historic embarrassment: It had been more than a century since the House had to repeat the vote so many times to elect the majority leader.
What happened that Tuesday didn’t have much precedent either. The last time such an eviction attempt took place at the Capitol was in 2015, when then-Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina (later Donald Trump’s chief of staff) introduced a resolution to evict John Boehner (Ohio). The full House never voted on it, but Boehner resigned.
In 1910, it was the President of the House of Representatives himself, Joseph Cannon, who literally made a motion to leave the office vacant and which, when sponsored by the incumbent of the office, functioned as a motion of confidence. Tired of criticism from some lawmakers, he called for a vote to win them, turning the move into a show of force.
The fall of the gavel after the vote that disqualified McCarthy this Tuesday left an urgent question in the echoes: What now? Now his position will be temporarily filled by the first on a list that McCarthy himself submitted to the Secretary of the House of Representatives. The chosen one is Republican Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. Your first task is to appoint a new speaker. There is no Republican candidate who has as much support for this.
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