Back on Capitol Hill this week, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives exposed its fragility and inconsistency, both heralding a sterile political cycle in the United States. The candidate tipped to occupy the functions of president of the Chamber, Kevin McCarthy, failed by 13 times to collect the 218 votes necessary to exercise this function which he covets for a long time. A stalemate of such magnitude had not been seen for a century.
Twenty elected Republicans hostile to McCarthy’s candidacy blocked his way with a formidable mixture of cohesion and stubbornness, although on the 13e round, McCarthy finally managed to rally some of them, but not enough to snatch victory.
Almost all associated with the Freedom Caucus, itself born from the ashes of the Tea Party, these elected officials arrive in Washington with a particular objective: to push the party ever further to the right, to put the intentions of the Democrats on trial who fed the conclusions of the commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol, perpetrated on January 6, 2021, and limit the government’s spending power, even going so far as to paralyze it if necessary.
As a first blow, and not the least, they succeeded in neutralizing an important institution of the American government, the House of Representatives… It is the legislative arm of which the Republicans however acquired control in a snatch, in November last, during the midterm elections.
At the end of this hilarious spectacle, one must wonder if the ambition that drives Kevin McCarthy will not lead the party to its downfall. Observers of the American political scene point out that McCarthy has only one principle: get the job at all costs, even if it means sacrificing all the other principles. From one rebuff to another, he multiplied the concessions to a voluble minority of the Republican Party. He is ready to accept that only one elected can trigger a vote of confidence, which means that he would live with a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over his head. The Freedom Caucus has already brought down two Speakers of the House, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, let’s not forget that. The California representative is also willing to offer key positions on House committees to extremists in the Freedom Caucus, which will allow them to influence the legislative menu.
His position of vulnerability says less about Trump’s loss of ascendancy than about the uncontrollable ardor of the ultraconservatives within the Republican Party. Notice that McCarthy is hardly more inspiring than the former US president. He was one of its earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. Blowing hot and cold on the January 6, 2021, uprising, he voted against certifying President Joe Biden’s election (like 14 of the Freedom Caucus members). The elected officials who made life difficult for him this week are “creatures” resulting from his political action. McCarthy painstakingly cajoled those lie-intoxicated populists who dismiss him as a member of the political elite (the “ swamp ) responsible for all evil — real and imagined — in Washington.
The Republican Party will be blackmailed by this minority faction, half of whose members are concentrated in three states: Florida, Texas and Arizona. The democratic deficit is obvious. A handful of elected officials who are not representative of the Republican electorate (and even less of the electorate as such) will be in a position to influence the legislative menu for the next two years in the House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House will benefit from less moral and political authority, which is in their immediate interest. The ultraconservatives failed to make the hoped-for gains in the midterm elections. They are in the process of transforming, without much subtlety, their failure at the polls into a triumph over the party they are taking hostage.
Torn between a waning tradition of pragmatism and rising populist intransigence who want to burn down the Democratic house, Republicans this week offered a taste of what awaits American democracy. The House of Representatives is a viable and functional institution where the majorities are clear and unified and the President in a position of authority to deliver the votes. If they fail to meet these two conditions, the Republicans will be condemned to starved legislative advances. And they will offer the Democrats the possibility of presenting themselves as a government of national unity in 2024, as long as they do not in turn succumb to pressure from their radical wing.