(Washington) Republican Kevin McCarthy was in a good position on Friday evening to finally be elected to lead the US House of Representatives and end an unprecedented political paralysis.
By dint of particularly sluggish negotiations, the group of Trumpists blocking the nomination of this fifty-year-old Californian seemed on the verge of giving in before a 14e vote on his candidacy, scheduled for 10 p.m.
The main interested party was in any case confident in the middle of the afternoon: “I counted the votes”, he assured a crowd of journalists.
Paralysis
The hard core of very conservative elected officials took advantage of the very thin Republican majority won in the November mid-term elections to play spoilsport. And camped on its positions for four days, a scenario not seen for more than 160 years.
This paralysis of the American Congress has had very concrete repercussions: without a “speaker”, the third most important figure in American politics after the president and the vice-president, elected officials cannot take an oath or therefore vote on a bill. It is also impossible to participate in parliamentary committees or to receive sensitive information.
Member of the Republican staff for ten years, Kevin McCarthy has not had a credible competitor. Only the name of group leader Steve Scalise has circulated as a possible alternative, without his chances seeming serious.
The impatience was palpable among the members of the “Grand Old Party”, who largely support Mr. McCarthy’s candidacy, giving rise to very lively debates within this parliamentary group. Many of them also left the hemicycle on Friday in protest during the speech by Matt Gaetz, one of the elected leaders of the Trumpist revolt.
” Chaos ”
Throughout this process, Joe Biden’s Democratic Party has not failed to denounce the stranglehold of Donald Trump’s faithful – many of whom still refuse to recognize his defeat in 2020 – on the Republican Party, two years to the day. after the storming of the Capitol.
“The chaos in the House of Representatives is just another illustration of how an extreme fringe […] prevents them from governing, ”assured the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
PHOTO SHANNON STAPLETON, REUTERS
The anniversary of the Capitol assault “should serve as a signal to the Republican Party to reject the Trumpism that has led it from failure to failure,” said Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer.
But the Democrats, who lost control of the House after the November poll, did not have enough votes to end this paralysis.
Marathon negotiation sessions in the galleries adjacent to the hemicycle, a horde of journalists picking up every statement from this group of free spirits… This election has at times seemed endless.
And for good reason, the 434 representatives of the House had no choice but to continue to vote until a “speaker” was elected by a simple majority.
The cameras of the American parliamentary channel, usually subject to very strict rules as to authorized shooting, have captured many moments of life of this atypical procedure, to the delight of viewers and social networks.