The question, thrown on the fly Tuesday evening to the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, having just been thrown from his chair by his peers, shed light on the whole origin of the evil.
“When you look back, do you see anything you could have done differently? » asked CNN reporter Ryan Struyk to the new “ex-speaker”.
“Yes,” replied the Republican from California who, after a historic vote on Tuesday, was removed from office at the call of an ultra-conservative, Trumpist and radical faction very active within his party . “I helped several of them [ces élus contestataires] to get elected, and I certainly should have relied on other people.”
The chaos that has settled in the heart of the seat of American executive power, since the return to the House of Republicans, with a tiny majority, reached a new climax this week, with the fall of Kevin McCarthy. He is the first president in the history of Congress to be dismissed from his prestigious office by a unanimous vote of the deputies.
The number 1 Republican Party in the House had been living in a house of cards since his painful and complicated election last January: 15 rounds of voting were necessary to rally a hard core of Republicans to his candidacy. Republicans affiliated with former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, on the whole, guided more by anger and frustration than by the search for compromise, for the most part and who once again come from demonstrate, through this spectacular dismissal, their destructive potential, both of the country’s democratic institutions and of their own party.
“Ladies and gentlemen: meet the MAGA Republicans of 118e Congress,” summarized Tuesday evening in a press release the chairman of the Democratic National Committee Jaime Harrison at the conclusion of the incredible day in the House. “Since Republicans won the majority in January, we have repeatedly witnessed irresponsible, incompetent and chaotic leadership subjugated to Donald Trump and willing to make a mockery of our institutions.” He added: “Enough is enough! the American people expect a government to serve them, rather than the ego of Donald Trump and that of the MAGA extremists in Congress.”
The criticism is harsh. But it now seems shared by strong figures of the Republican elite, such as Newt Gingrich, former President of the House. On Tuesday, the veteran of American politics called on his people in the House to keep Kevin McCarthy in office and instead to expel from the party the architect of the impeachment plan put to the vote: Florida elected official Matt Gaetz.
A strictly Trumpist, opposed to McCarthy since the start of the new parliamentary session, Gaetz took exception at the end of last week after denouncing the compromise between Republicans and Democrats which made it possible to avoid at the last minute and for 45 days the closure of part of the American government, for lack of an agreement on the budget. He had threatened to take revenge by demanding the head of the “speaker”. He got it.
“Chaos is never America’s strength”
“Instead of taking positive steps to advance the conservative agenda, Gaetz went from TV show to TV show, self-servingly attacking his own party and repeatedly threatening to oust McCarthy as Speaker », denounced Newt Gingrich in the pages of Washington Post.
Coming from this Republican who was one of the founding fathers at the end of the 1990s of the climate of polarization between Democrats and conservatives, a climate which has only increased since then on the American political scene, the charge is doubly formidable.
Newt Gingrich acknowledges having also opposed decisions taken by his party, such as the tax increase desired at another time by George W. Bush, but also recalled that his “rebellions” have always respected the point of view of the party. majority of the Republican caucus. “Republicans in the House have far more important things to do than entertain the ego of a single member,” he said.
210 of 222 Republicans opposed firing McCarthy. The scorched earth policy implemented by Matt Gaetz worked thanks to the tiny vote of eight elected officials from his clan. By adding to the votes of the Democratic minority who decided to vote for the departure of the President of the House, they thus confirmed the precarious status of the elected official.
For former Vice-President Mike Pence, who aspires to win the Republican ticket for the next presidential election, it is “chaos” that took over politics on Tuesday to now place Congress in unknown territory . “Chaos is never America’s strength and it is never the friend of America’s struggling families,” he said while attending a meeting at Georgetown University in Washington.
The Republicans will have to find a new leader when work resumes and above all do so in an environment where reaching a consensus as well as a compromise remains difficult in the heart of a chamber where a handful of elected officials, subjected to the ideological diktat of the electoral base venerating Donald Trump, have obviously become ungovernable.
And the depth of the chaos remains unfathomable: on Tuesday, a Republican elected official from Texas, Troy Nehls, announced that he was going to nominate Donald Trump for the post of president of the Republican majority in the House.
The ex-president has been in a New York court since Monday where he is attending the trial for fraud targeting his real estate empire. He faces other charges, including one for inciting an insurrection against the Capitol.
“President Trump, the greatest president of my lifetime, has a proven track record of standing up for America’s priorities and he will make the House great again,” Nehls said.
According to the American Constitution, it is not obligatory to be a member of Congress to become a “speaker” of the House, but such a scenario has never occurred in the history of the country.