This is a first in the history of the American Congress: the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from his post on Tuesday, the victim of fratricidal quarrels within his party.
After a tense debate between conservatives in the chamber, 216 elected officials voted to dismiss him, including eight Republicans, against 210.
Immediately after this unprecedented result, a smiling Kevin McCarthy was surrounded by members of his party, who hugged him and shook his hand.
The vote opens a period of strong turbulence in the lower house, where a replacement must be chosen, which promises to be very complicated.
“It is in the interest of this country that we have a better speaker than Kevin McCarthy,” said Matt Gaetz, the elected representative of the American hard right who tabled the motion to dismiss the leader of his party after the vote. left.
“No one trusted (him),” he added. “Kevin McCarthy had made many contradictory promises.”
This elected official from Florida mainly criticizes the Republican tenor for having negotiated with elected Democratic officials a provisional budget to finance the federal administration, which many conservatives opposed. He also accuses him of having concluded a “secret agreement” with President Joe Biden on a possible package for Ukraine.
However, the right wing of the Republican Party is strongly opposed to the release of additional funds for kyiv, believing that this money should instead be used to fight the migration crisis on the border between the United States and Mexico.
And it doesn’t matter that the immense majority of Kevin McCarthy’s parliamentary group publicly supported it: the Trumpists had a de facto veto in the House given the very thin Republican majority in this institution.
– No Democratic support –
Mr. McCarthy, 58, had seemed for a time to think that he would save his head, hoping that political calculations would prevail and that he could extract support from the Democrats, even very fair ones, in exchange for concessions.
Wasted effort.
“It is up to the Republican Party to end the Republican civil war in the House,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a letter after a long meeting Tuesday with his parliamentary group.
“The reasons for letting the Republicans manage their own problems are innumerable. Let them wallow in the mire of their incompetence and their incapacity to govern,” said progressive elected official Pramila Jayapal, implacably.
A sign of the disagreements that are tearing the Republicans apart, conservative elected officials took turns in the chamber to argue for and against Kevin McCarthy.
If the impeachment motion passes, “the House will be paralyzed”, “the Democrats will delight in Republican dysfunctions, and the population will be rightly revulsed”, warned Republican elected official Tom McClintock.
His colleague Tom Cole warned of the “chaos” into which the House and the Republicans would be plunged if Mr. McCarthy were impeached.
“The chaos is President McCarthy,” replied Matt Gaetz.
– What future for McCarthy –
These internal struggles exposed in broad daylight made Donald Trump react.
“Why do Republicans spend their time arguing among themselves, why don’t they fight the radical left Democrats who are destroying our country”? wrote the former Republican president on his Truth Social platform.
Such a vote had not taken place for more than a century in the United States, and no speaker had ever been ousted from his post until Tuesday.
Republicans are due to meet around 6:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. GMT) to agree on a new candidate.
Could Kevin McCarthy attempt a comeback? The hypothesis is not far-fetched, because he is entitled to resubmit his candidacy.
At his own risk: he had already been elected by force in January, due to the very slim Republican majority.
To reach the perch, he had to make enormous concessions with around twenty Trumpists, including the possibility that any elected official would have the power to call a vote to remove him.
A promise that came back to haunt him on Tuesday.
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2023-10-03 21:43:16
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