The Defiant Champion of the House Minority Voting Challenge: Rep. Jesse McCarthy’s Scramble Over the Last Two Months
Opening day in the House of Representatives is typically marked by the usual pageantry and the fleeting promise that this Congress will work better than the last. It’s possible that the hopes of the people will be dashed if the House fails to choose a speaker on the first ballot.
A candidate for speaker needs to win a majority of votes of the members in order to be elected. That amounts to 218 votes if no member skips the vote or votes “present.”
According to a senior GOP source, McCarthy is defiant in the face of dissent, and that he believes we are going to war. “Never backing down.”
The obstacle for McCarthy is that he faces a small but determined contingent of hardline conservatives. The GOP leader is in danger of missing critical votes as the group uses leverage in their favor to extract concessions. McCarthy has already given in to many of their demands, but it is not clear whether he will be able to finish them off.
The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan, to show that he is not vying for the job, nominated McCarthy ahead of the vote on the second ballot. McCarthy critics were still voting for Jordan despite the move.
McCarthy raised his voice and was animated as he teed off against his opponents and detailed concessions he has made, according to two sources. He said that he had earned the job.
But when a red wave never materialized in the November midterms, the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans empowered a small band of conservatives – long distrustful of McCarthy – to make demands.
What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.
Comment on “What Happened to Hakeem Jeffries, the First African American Speaker of the House Major Party, during the 2016 Midterm Election,” by Laura Boebert
A New York based journalist and author of a book called “Ok Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind” can be seen here. Follow her on the social networking site. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. There is more opinion on CNN.
Despite finding themselves in the minority, it was Democrats who were jubilant on Tuesday, voting unanimously for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the first African American to lead a major party in Congress, as speaker. He succeeded Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, who led House Democrats for two decades.
But the Republican House majority is a narrow one, and Republican candidates far underperformed expectations in the midterms, as a promised red wave was more of a small but toxic red tide. Many of the most ostracized members of the party, including Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, are members of the cult of former President Donald Trump.
A woman named “furious”, was one of the few Republican’s who cast their vote for McCarthy. These are people with views extreme enough and divorced enough from reality that they would have once been called “fringe.” How fringe is a view if it is held by many members of Congress?
And McCarthy, who in the early days after the January 6 attack said Trump bore responsibility for it but didn’t support his impeachment, and who helped usher conservative extremists into office and then protect them once there, is experiencing the all-too-predictable outcome of handing power to the unhinged.
He seems to understand just how damaging Trump and the cult of personality around him has been to the GOP – his private phone calls made in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, made clear that he worried that members of his own party were endangering other lawmakers with their rhetoric – but then chooses to empower those dangerous members anyway.
The Republican Party may not be able to govern effectively in the next two years, and that could make the upcoming presidential election more partisan than it already is.
The First Day of Congress: a Battle for the House Speaker and the Future of the Senate President Pro Tempore (Dear Senator Patty Murray)
Members-elect have not yet taken the oath of office due to the floor fight in Congress, a tradition that usually starts on the first day of a new Congress.
Incoming lawmakers arrived on the floor on Tuesday with their families in tow, expecting to pose for a photo and get started with their first day as lawmakers, but were instead greeted with a several-hour-wait as the speaker election went to multiple rounds of balloting – the first time that’s happened in 100 years.
Without an approved House Rules package by the end of business on January 13, committees won’t be able to pay staff, according to a letter sent last week by the committee in charge of administrative matters, which was first reported by Politico and obtained by CNN.
It’s just one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could paralyze the House and the Republican majority from operating efficiently in their opening days with some of the harshest penalties falling on rank-and-file staffers.
The senior-most Republican of the committee will be in charge of committees whose chairs aren’t known until the new Congress starts.
But without fully functioning committees, to amend and approve bills before they make their way to the floor for a vote, there will be little legislating. Republicans may have to wait before probing investigations into the administration of President Joe Biden and his family.
There are questions about the future of the presidency if there is no one in the position that is second in line to the presidency.
The Senate president pro tempore is third in line. Sen. Patty Murray was elected to that role Tuesday, making the Democrat from Washington the first woman to hold the position.