American “speaker” Kevin McCarthy, in Washington, October 2, 2023 (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / CHIP SOMODEVILLA)
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 disputes within his party.
After a tense debate between conservatives in the chamber, 216 elected officials, including eight Republicans, voted to 210 in favor of firing him.
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 ushers in a period of intense turmoil in the lower house, where a successor must be elected next week.
Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday evening that he would not run again, even if parliamentary rules allowed him to do so.
“I was the 55th Speaker of the House of Representatives, one of the greatest honors. I enjoyed every moment of it,” he said at a press conference, calling himself “optimistic” despite the debacle.
Due to the very narrow Republican majority, he had already been elected with a pair of pliers in January.
To achieve this post, he had to make enormous concessions, particularly to some twenty Trumpists, including the possibility that any elected official would have the power to call a vote on his dismissal, which Matt Gaetz ultimately did.
– “Conflicting promises” –
“It is in the interest of this country that we have a better speaker than Kevin McCarthy,” said after the vote this elected representative of the American far right, who on Monday filed a motion to dismiss his party’s leader.
“No one trusted him,” Mr. Gaetz added. “Kevin McCarthy had made a lot of contradictory promises.”
The elected official from Florida particularly criticizes the Republican tenor for negotiating a preliminary budget with the elected Democrats to finance the federal administration, which many conservatives rejected. He also accuses him of having reached a “secret agreement” with President Joe Biden on a possible package for Ukraine.
However, the right wing of the Republican Party strongly opposes releasing additional funds to Kyiv and believes that these funds should instead be used to combat the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border.
And it doesn’t matter that the overwhelming majority of Kevin McCarthy’s caucus publicly supported it: the Trumpists had a de facto veto in the House of Representatives, since that institution had a very thin Republican majority.
– No democratic support –
“I don’t regret negotiating. Our government is designed to find compromise,” Kevin McCarthy responded.
Representative Matt Gaetz, elected from Florida, in Washington on October 2, 2023 (AFP / SAUL LOEB)
The 58-year-old Republican seemed to believe for a while that he would manage to save his head, hoping that the political calculations would prevail and that he would get the support of the Democrats, even very fair ones, in exchange for concessions. could enforce.
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 lengthy meeting Tuesday with his caucus.
“There are countless reasons to let Republicans deal with their own problems. Let them wallow in the quagmire of their incompetence and inability to govern,” progressive elected official Pramila Jayapal said adamantly.
In a sign that the disagreements are tearing Republicans apart, conservative elected officials took turns on the chamber to argue for and against Kevin McCarthy. Tom Cole warned of the “chaos” the House and Republicans would be plunged into if Mr McCarthy were impeached.
“The chaos is on President McCarthy,” Matt Gaetz replied.
– Internal fights –
Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the Democratic minority in the US House of Representatives, on September 30, 2023 in Washington (AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
These internal conflicts, exposed in broad daylight, triggered a reaction from Donald Trump.
“Why do Republicans spend their time arguing among themselves, why aren’t they fighting the radical left-wing Democrats who are destroying our country?” the former Republican president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Such a vote had not taken place in the United States in more than a century, and as of Tuesday no speaker had ever been removed from office.
President Joe Biden in the evening urged House elected officials to quickly choose a new leader given the “urgent challenges” facing the United States.
However, the task is likely to be complicated for the Republicans, who will meet in a week, next Tuesday, to agree on a new candidate. A vote is expected to take place the next day.