Seven years after narrowly failing to become Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy hopes to get his revenge through his efforts to woo Donald Trump and his loyalists.
At 57, the elected representative from California, who has led the Republican group in the Lower House of Congress since 2014, was nominated on Tuesday by his peers as a candidate for the post of “ speaker “.
With his party poised to regain control of the House, this tanned man with an impeccable gray lock is expected to be elected in January to replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
But the poor performance of the Republicans in the mid-term elections weakens it. The right wing of the conservatives have made it known that they will set their conditions before supporting him.
It will not be the first time that this ambitious and pragmatic man has had to bend down to achieve his goals.
Starting from a classic Republican position, focused on the defense of the market and individual success, Kevin McCarthy has fully endorsed the shift to the right of his political formation on immigration, on crime or against the rights of transgender people.
Faced with allegations of electoral fraud hammered without proof by Donald Trump and the assault on Capitol Hill, he operated a more ambiguous pas de deux.
blunder
A supporter of the Republican billionaire in the 2015 primaries, Kevin McCarthy had initially supported his crusade against the result of the 2020 elections.
Then, shaken by the attack on the headquarters of Congress on January 6, 2021, he quickly declared that Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for this violence.
But a week later, he was being photographed all smiles by his side in the gilded salons of Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of the real estate mogul.
“Today, President Trump pledged to help elect Republicans to the House and Senate in 2022,” he then justified, praising the virtues of a “united conservative movement”.
On behalf of this unit, Kevin McCarthy has also made a rapprochement with Donald Trump’s loyal lieutenants in Congress, starting with Jim Jordan, a pugnacious elected official from Ohio.
I’ve worked with a lot of Republican leaders. Unfortunately, it’s the one with the least substance.
The latter is his “greatest ally” in the race for the presidency of the House, he recently told the magazine Intelligencespecifying to be “better prepared” for the role than during his previous attempt, in 2015.
He was the favorite at the time, but a blunder forced him to withdraw his candidacy.
In a televised interview, he had boasted that a commission of inquiry into the attack on the American embassy in Libya had undermined the chances of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. His remarks had been perceived as the admission of a political instrumentalization of the drama.
Born in 1965 in Bakersfield, a Republican stronghold in the heart of the Democratic state of California, Kevin McCarthy is the son of a firefighter and a Democratic housewife.
However, he quickly resumed university studies and became a parliamentary assistant, then elected local, until entering the House of Representatives in 2006.
A networker, he has become a master in the art of fundraising and handshakes.
Since the Democrats took over the White House, the Californian has chosen the frontal opposition. A year ago, for example, he monopolized the floor in the House for more than eight hours, only to delay the vote on a massive infrastructure investment plan carried by President Joe Biden.
This earned him frank hostility from Nancy Pelosi. “I’ve worked with a lot of Republican leaders,” she said recently. Unfortunately, it’s the one with the least substance. »