Kevin McCarthy might just be to blame

CNN
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Chaos is back in control.

Two years after political mayhem mastermind Donald Trump fled Washington in disgrace, the Republican Party has finally regained some of its power.

But they still don’t know how to use it properly.

After weeks of vowing to hold President Joe Biden accountable, the new Republican House majority arrived in town on Tuesday and quickly failed at its most basic task: electing a speaker. The ultra-hardline uprising at an already hardline conference has humiliated California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, whose decades-old dream of wielding a gavel has been dashed – at least for now.

Trump, who is partly to blame for the debacle after his selfish intervention in the midterm elections and contributed to a smaller-than-expected majority in the Republican House of Representatives, asked to endorse McCarthy in the holdout on Wednesday. called.

“Republicans, don’t turn a big win into a huge and shameful defeat,” the former president wrote in all caps on his Truth Social platform.

Many of the rebels are strong supporters of Trump, and McCarthy spoke with Trump on Tuesday night amid signs his support is beginning to fray.

Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, known for embracing conspiracy theories over stable governance, “because 19 Republicans decided to blow up the president’s campaign.” complained that the party was sabotaging its own goals. (Green endorses McCarthy).

McCarthy became the first candidate in a century to lose the House Speaker’s ballot. Most poignantly, this deadlock means that the Republican Party cannot even take the lead in winning the midterm elections.

One surreal day, the 118th Congress opened, and while Republicans fought Republicans, Democrats, who should have mourned the loss of their majority, were rejoicing at the GOP circus they saw. rice field.

“Hakeem, Hakeem,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York was nominated by the Democrats as the new leader in the first three roll calls of the new House, which is to be ruled by Republicans.

At one point, right-wing hero Ohio Firebrand Rep. Jim Jordan rose up to nominate McCarthy as chairman. I am more interested in that).

A debacle of a day in which McCarthy seemed to have no strategy other than a banging his head against a brick wall approach ended with the House ludicrously half-baked. The smartly dressed families who traveled to Washington to see new lawmakers proudly take the oath of office were bored and disappointed. Very few.

“I never thought I would be productive after this day,” McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday. However, he insisted he would not drop out of the race.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said, adding, “We only need 11 more votes to win,” thinking we could get more members to vote, lowering the required threshold. There is

The situation will become clearer as the fourth vote looms on Wednesday, but Republican sources familiar with the matter have allowed CNN’s Manu Raju to continue negotiations for the rest of the day. He said the House of Representatives could postpone it because of this.

But there are some conclusions from Tuesday’s drama.

— The Republican civil war that erupted in the Tea Party’s backlash against the Obama administration is far from burning out. And as soon as the party smelled power again, the strife quickly became apparent, as radicals sought to destroy the party’s establishment, which had already shifted to the far right to appease them.

— Even if McCarthy wins, he’s a weaker voice and, though he may be in office, he holds little power. It took the Californians several weeks to gather a majority. Either he counted the votes incorrectly or he was out of control of his meeting. Neither scenario effectively sets fire to the Democrats and the White House, and is unlikely to lead to a majority capable of making a strong case for voters in the 2024 election. For example, how will Republicans unite on difficult votes, such as government appropriations bills?

— You can’t convince a political arsonist. Rep. Matt Gates of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona and other members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus have made multiple concessions from McCarthy, according to leadership sources, including weakening the speaker’s ability to cling to power. But they refused, making it clear that this was as much about personality as it was about ideology. stamp the stigma.

“Perhaps the right person for Speaker of the House is not the one who has been selling his stock for over a decade to get it.”

— McCarthy may have nothing to offer the rebels to win the vote. They don’t care that the Republican majority in the House wants McCarthy. You can appear on conservative talk shows, drive fundraising, and hone your MAGA credentials by venturing into the “bog”.

Former Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump, lost the primary to a former president-backed rival and then lost the general election to Democrats – CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday Government forces for themselves in it.

“It’s just drama. …they have this oversized platform,” she said.

— That means a small Republican majority will control the 118th Congress, meaning McCarthy could only afford to lose four votes as presidency. It didn’t just give the hardliners a chance to hold McCarthy hostage in the speaker competition. That means the House can be closed at any time with just a few votes. This is not just a final speaker issue. Given the looming conflict over the government budget and the rising debt ceiling, the White House should also be concerned.

Ironically, McCarthy may have only himself to blame. By embracing Trump immediately after first criticizing him for the January 6, 2021 riots, he irrevocably tied the party’s midterm election campaign to Trump’s reputation. But many voters were alienated by the former president’s election denials, and he won a much smaller and unworkable House majority than McCarthy expected.

— One interpretation of the midterm elections is that voters, exhausted by Trump-era turmoil and a once-in-a-century pandemic, cry for stability and calm, giving back all the power that was available in November I was willing to do it. to Republicans. (They fell short of the red wave in the House, but Republicans failed to win back the Senate and Democrats won a majority.) Tuesday’s farcical scene in the House is what voters are thinking about in November. It was very different from what I was used to.

—and Democrats are already trying to make political capital out of it. “This is going to change everything for the Democrats. We now have a great opportunity to step up and show what we can do.”

If anything, McCarthy weakened with each roll call, even as a senior Republican source told CNN that he would never back down and that “we’re going to war.” Some GOP members now refer to the rebels as the “Chaos Caucus” or “Taliban 20”.

But one congressman who opposed McCarthy, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, vowed to fight for “six months” if he had to block California’s bid for chairman. Having prematurely settled into Speaker’s office suite, McCarthy is left with a painful reality. The question involves whether his bid is doomed, given that it seems impossible for him to win over the handful of his most staunch opponents. Several Republicans appeared to be toying with the possibility of another candidate emerging late Tuesday after the party was ridiculed.

But a compromise that could unite the ultra-right and more moderate members who won in the Biden district seems unlikely.

McCarthy will have another chance on Wednesday to show he can dominate the conference and finally bring some order to the new Republican majority. Perhaps one day of infighting would convince all Republicans that they are in danger of squandering their majority.

“We have an agenda and we want to execute on that agenda. Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore told CNN. Erin Burnett on Tuesday claimed McCarthy had succeeded in returning his party to power in the House.

“We don’t put pitchers out in the middle of a no-hitter,” he added.

But after a triple loss in Tuesday’s chairman’s vote, McCarthy has to prove it’s not three strikes.