US President Joe Biden has criticized the Republican power struggle for the presidency of the House of Representatives as embarrassing. “It’s not my problem,” Biden said Wednesday at the White House in Washington. But it is “embarrassing” that it is taking so long to appoint a new chairman of the Congress Chamber. The rest of the world is watching. “I’m focused on getting things done,” the Democrat said.
MPs adjourned to continue negotiations behind the scenes. Further votes are to follow from Wednesday afternoon (local time) until a candidate receives the required majority. It cannot be ruled out that there will be new candidates. These include Steve Scalise, who is already a member of the party’s leadership and supported McCarthy on Tuesday, and Elise Stefanik, who became the youngest woman elected to the US House of Representatives in 2014.
Republicans discuss alternatives
For the time being, McCarthy is sticking to his goal of being elected Speaker of the House, succeeding Democrat Nancy Pelosi. There is speculation as to whether he could still change the minds of the ultra-right through further concessions. The MP from California said on Tuesday that he wanted to stay until he won. But a number of representatives of the right-wing wing of ex-President Trump’s party have so far refused to support McCarthy because he is too moderate for them.
Jim Jordan from Ohio was also mentioned as a possible alternative, without being given any serious chances. In all three rounds, McCarthy was also behind the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who, however, also did not obtain the necessary majority for the office of speaker. Despite this, there is little doubt that a Republican will eventually become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Trump promotes McCarthy
In the run-up to the next vote on Wednesday, Trump himself appealed in online networks to elect McCarthy as the new chairman of the Congress Chamber. “Republicans, don’t turn a great triumph into a huge and embarrassing defeat,” the ex-president wrote in capital letters on his platform Truth Social, saying McCarthy would do a good and “maybe even a great job”.
Shortly after the Capitol was stormed, McCarthy said publicly that Trump was “responsible” for the attack on Congress. But then, like many Republicans, he did an about-face, based on the realization that Trump will remain the idol of the right-wing electorate. He was the first senior Republican to visit him at his luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, just about a week after Trump moved out of the White House after the Capitol storm in January 2021.
Despite Trump’s blessing, lawmakers from the right wing of the party are making his life difficult – they want to commit him to a radical course against President Biden’s government and secure more influence for themselves. McCarthy caused a stir in October when he warned that there would be no more “blank checks” for Ukraine in the future.
Internal division deepened
The series of votes, which humiliated McCarthy, is seen by some as a reprimand for the party establishment. “There is so much unnecessary unrest in the Republican Party,” Trump said on his online service Truth Social, without blaming McCarthy for the course of the inaugural session.
The contested election of the speaker could further deepen internal divisions among the Republicans – and endanger McCarthy’s political career, who wanted to take over the third highest office in the United States. “My vote yesterday was basically to end a deadlock because we weren’t getting anywhere,” Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, told CNN on Wednesday.
MPs can’t start work yet
In the midterm elections on November 8, the Republicans had won only a narrow majority in the House of Representatives. They make up 222 of the 435 MEPs, which is just above the majority of 218 votes. The “red wave”, as a landslide victory of the Republicans is called because of their party color, which many had expected, did not materialize.
With the changed majority and their new strength in the House of Representatives, the Republicans can make life difficult for Biden in the future. They have already announced parliamentary inquiries into the President and other members of the government, and they can block legislation at will.
Only when the “Speaker of the House” – the third most important representative of US politics after the President and Vice President – has been elected can the MPs be sworn in and start their work. The last time it took more than one round of voting to elect a chairman at the inaugural session of the Chamber of Congress was in 1923.
