One hundred years of more or less smooth transfer of power in the US House of Representatives came to an end on Tuesday. Kevin McCarthy, the leading candidate of the Republican Party, has failed to win a majority of his peers in the election for the presidency of the House. For three humiliating rounds of voting, some 20 Republicans on the party’s far right continued to support other candidates. The meeting was then adjourned and the House is currently without a chairman – something that has not happened since 1923.
Rebellious Republicans say they see the deadbeat presidential candidate as an establishment figure, under whose leadership the House can never become the sharp weapon against the Democrats they envision. One of the Republican delegates sent a letter to the caretaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening, pointing out that McCarthy had already taken the office of the speaker “while after today’s vote he can no longer be considered the designated presidential candidate.” he wrote. “How long can he sit there before we have to classify him as a squatter?”
Also read this profile: Top Republican Kevin McCarthy fluctuates between support for Trumpists and moderates
Even if McCarthy, a delegate from a district north of Los Angeles since 2007, manages to win 218 Republican House members behind him in the days or weeks ahead, his authority will be eroded before he even starts. That seems like good news for President Biden, who faces a hostile majority in the House. That the leader of that majority is a weakling should reassure the Democrats and their president.
Powerful position
The Speaker of the House is potentially the most powerful politician in the Capitol. Formally, she or he is second in the line of succession: if the president and vice president fall away, the presidency falls to the speaker of the House. Informally, the Speaker is the one who sets the House’s agenda. The basis of that considerable power is: being able to collect votes to get bills passed or to push through appointments.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who stepped down last year, was a formidable figure in the Democratic Party and in national politics. As a power politician, she was above average effective—and disproportionately hated by her political enemies—precisely because she could always provide the votes for vital bills, such as President Obama’s health care bill. In the recently released documentary Nancy Pelosi at the House, directed by her daughter Alexandra, Pelosi said she counts votes at night like others count sheep. At important moments you could always see her with a piece of paper in front of her, with the names of the Delegates and the numbers of how many votes she had and how many she still missed.
That Kevin McCarthy fails at this vital part of getting the vote is a certificate of incompetence that it will be difficult for him to shake off. Especially if, in order to win over the last sixteen necessary dissidents, he makes concessions to them that go against the grain of the 202 party members who did vote for him. In recent days, McCarthy has already pledged that critics of the Speaker can request a vote to impeach him at any time.
Exceptional situation
It is unclear what will happen in the coming days. The situation is so exceptional that there are no recent scenarios to play. The possibility of lowering the threshold from “a majority of the House” to “a majority of the vote” has been alluded to in US media. Only the Republicans seem to benefit little from this. The Democrats have kept their ranks closed: all 213 Democratic delegates have voted for Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi’s successor as party leader.
If the Republican faction remains divided along current fault lines, Jeffries will be ahead of any Republican nominee. At most, that scenario could be a big stick for McCarthy to terrify his opponents. For now, it feels like the old days of the Tea Party and their palace revolution have turned against the Republican establishment. Democratic delegates cynically tweeted Tuesday before the session opened that they would bring popcorn to eat while watching the Republican spectacle.