For the first time in its 234-year history, the Chamber supported a resolution “for the vacancy of the position of president of the house”, by 216 votes to 210, setting the stage for an unprecedented fight to replace its speaker, a year ago. before the presidential election.
American President Joe Biden expressed his desire for the House to quickly elect its new leader, “because the urgent challenges facing our nation will not wait”, declared press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
McCarthy, a 58-year-old former businessman, had upset conservatives last weekend by passing a bipartisan, White House-backed temporary measure to avoid a shutdown of federal services.
Florida conservative Matt Gaetz, who pushed for McCarthy’s removal vote, gambled that he could oust the House speaker with the support of a few Republicans, helped by Democrats’ reluctance to help the House speaker, who recently opened an investigation highly politicized impeachment trial against President Joe Biden.
Republicans were warned by their leadership that they could plunge the party “into chaos,” but Gaetz, who has repeatedly complained about McCarthy’s failure to honor agreements made with the far right, replied: “Chaos is President McCarthy. Chaos is someone whose word we cannot trust.”
The speaker of the House of Representatives is second in line to the American Presidency. Like many congressmen, he rebuked Donald Trump after the 2021 Capitol riots, but soon backed down and traveled to Florida to make peace with the tycoon, securing crucial support for his ambitions as speaker of the House.
When McCarthy got what he wanted, he faced an uncomfortable reality: His grip on power was at the mercy of hard-line Republicans.
McCarthy had a spat in May with President Joe Biden over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. He reached a last-minute deal to avoid default and, although he considered it a victory for conservatives, he had to face hard-line Republicans, who criticized him for having made too many concessions in public spending.
McCarthy’s limited commitment to Democrats again angered the far right last week when he used the rival party’s votes to avoid a government shutdown. Leading the criticism was Congressman Matt Gaetz, a longtime opponent.
“Kevin McCarthy fell today because no one trusts him,” Gaetz declared after the vote. “McCarthy made several contradictory promises. When they were all fulfilled, he lost.”
As an example of the differences between Republicans, conservative representatives took turns in the plenary to defend and criticize McCarthy, a public demonstration of the internal disputes that provoked Donald Trump’s reaction.
The clash takes place two days after the House of Representatives and the Senate approved, by a bipartisan majority in both cases, a measure to avoid a costly “shutdown” of the government, by extending federal funding until mid-November.
Conservatives were upset by what they saw as a setback from McCarthy, who had promised an end to interim legislation hastily agreed with the support of the opposition party and a return to the budget through the committee process.
