2023-10-03 21:53:54
He United States Congress This Tuesday he entered the chaospushed by the rebellion of a group of representatives of the far right against the leader of the Republican majority in the Lower House, Kevin McCarthy. The speaker did not obtain enough votes this Tuesday to abort the motion to remove him from office presented the day before by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. 11 Republicans have joined 207 Democrats to reject his initiative, giving way to debate and voting on Gaetz’s motion. And at the time of writing these lines the possibility of McCarthy becoming the first impeached House speaker in history of the United States, a fact that is not only historic but also promises days, or perhaps weeks, of legislative paralysis .
The last hours represent the culmination of the intense internal war open between factions of Republican Partybut they also expose the price that the training must pay for your radicalization since the emergence of his leadership Donald Trump. Because on the one hand most radical congressmen aligned with the former president and candidate for 2024, despite being a minority in the Lower House that the Republicans control with a fragile majority after the last legislative elections, have gained a immeasurable power. And on the other Democrats have refused to save McCarthy, a politician who has aligned much of his agenda with the radicalized positions of Trump and his acolytes, has recently approved the opening of a process to try to impeach Joe Bidenand which they claim cannot be trusted.
The result is this moment of chaos and uncertainty, which puts Congress and the country into unknown territory. Because if the speaker position is left vacant as Gaetz’s motion intended, second in line of presidential succession, McCarthy will be replaced on an interim basis by someone who will be chosen from a list he himself prepared. But the only authority of that ‘speaker’ temporal, according to legislative experts, will be to organize the election of the new president of the House. AND As long as there is no one elected to the position, legislative paralysis is assuredan extremely complex situation that endangers, for example, progress in the approval of the budget to keep the government operational.
A rebellion in slow motion
Precisely the vote this weekend on a measure that gave a 45-day extension to the budget and avoided the government shutdown in extremis was the last straw that, at least on paper, broke the camel’s back for Gaetz and the rest of the radical group. McCarthy pushed the law through the House with more Democratic votes than Republicans. And although the law excluded aid to UkraineGaetz accuses McCarhty of having reached a “secret pact” with the Democrats and Biden to ensure that more assistance will be approved for kyiv, which the ultra-conservative wing opposes.
The rebellion, in any case, comes from further away. In January McCarthy had to do concessions to the ultras to become president of the House after an agonizing and humiliating process in which he needed 15 rounds of voting. Already then the convulsion was predicted. And despite having taken legislative steps in these months to appease them, including opening the process to try to impeach Biden, or moving away from commitments that he reached with the White House in the agreement with which the ceiling of the debt and prevented the US from defaulting, has not stopped the rebellion.
The possibility of him saving his position lay in the fact that the democrats They would support him, either actively or passively, by absenting themselves from the vote on Gaetz’s motion or by voting only “present” and lowering the necessary majority. But after hours of intense conversations it was Of course the Democrats were not going to be the ones to save him. In a letter that Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic minority leader, sent to his caucus, the position of the leadership was announced, which had already been debated in a two-hour meeting, which opened with a video showing McCarthy on the same Sunday trying to blame them for having brought the government closer to a closure. And Jeffries used as an argument against McCarthy his “lack of will to truly and completely break with MAGA extremism,” the acronym of the Make America Great Again movement allied with Trump.
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