2023-10-24 23:57:31
Three weeks after the fall of Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, the group was briefly threatened with a meltdown. Just a few hours after his nomination to succeed him in the third highest office in the United States, Tom Emmer gave up again. He is the third candidate in the group who has failed to rally the group behind him since McCarthy was overthrown by a group of hardliners from the right wing of the group.
Majid Sattar
North American political correspondent based in Washington.
On Tuesday afternoon, the group met again after a break. Previously, Emmer, who received the majority of votes in the fifth round of voting that morning, had not managed to gather the necessary 217 of 221 MPs behind him. Would there now again be pleas in the crisis meeting that the parliamentary group must finally find a compromise after three weeks of leadership vacuum and the paralysis of Congress? Shortly after the meeting began, it emerged from the group that the moderate Republican had given up. During the break, not only a few MPs who had voted against the previous parliamentary group leader made it clear that there was nothing to change about their voting behavior. Donald Trump also intervened from Manhattan, where he had to defend himself in court again. On his “Truth Social” platform, he called Emmer a “RINO,” a “Republican in name only” – as the former president calls all those Republicans who do not recognize him as the sole leader of the party. That was, so to speak, the death knell.
Tom Emmer on Tuesday in Washington: Image: AFP
Later, after the representative from Minnesota withdrew, it became apparent that potential candidates would present themselves to the group again on Tuesday evening, as they had done on Monday evening. Kevin Hern, an influential congressman from Oklahoma, and Mike Johnson, an up-and-coming congressman from Louisiana, were considered such. Both had already competed against Emmer in the morning. Both were defeated. Both are standing to Emmer’s right.
A comment from Majid Sattar Published/Updated: Recommendations: 26 Majid Sattar, Washington Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 52 Majid Sattar, Washington Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 15
In the morning it briefly seemed as if the group had the will to overcome the paralysis in Congress. In the fifth round of voting, Emmer prevailed against Johnson. Hern had already been eliminated. Emmer received 117 votes. Johnson 97. There was one abstention. Five MPs voted for candidates who were not on the ballot. But it quickly became clear that there was a larger group of MPs who were determined to stick with their rejection. Emmer, who was elected in a secret vote, advocated holding roll-call votes within the parliamentary group until he had the necessary 217 votes that he needed in the plenary session. In a first open vote in the group, 25 MPs voted against him. The Republican group has 221 representatives and the Democratic group has 212. Emmer could only allow four dissenting votes from his own ranks.
Jordan is not convincing mainstream Republicans
The 62-year-old MP from the Midwest is a close confidant of McCarthy, for whom he had tried to secure the majority over the past nine months. Those who refused to support him argued that electing such a moderate representative sent the wrong signal. Emmer, for example, supported the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which codified same-sex marriage at the federal level. Some party right-wingers and fiscal hawks also resented him for supporting the deal with President Joe Biden to raise the debt limit in the summer.
After McCarthy’s fall, the Republicans initially nominated their majority leader Steve Scalise to replace him. Since he failed to win over the party’s right, he withdrew his candidacy before the vote in the House of Representatives came. Jim Jordan, a leading representative of the party right and a close ally of Donald Trump, was then nominated. He had previously lost to Scalise in a fight vote.
Jordan brought it to a floor vote, but failed to persuade a group of mainstream Republicans to overcome their concerns about him. After three failed rounds of voting, the parliamentary group held another crisis meeting last Friday. The MPs revoked Jordan’s candidate status in a secret vote.
#Emmers #candidacy #lasted #hours