Republican McCarthy finally elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Republican Kevin McCarthy was finally elected Saturday as speaker of the US House of Representatives after 15 votes, after convincing a sufficient number of ultra congressmen of his own party who refused to support him.

The abstention of six rebel Republicans opened the way shortly after midnight to the election of McCarthy as Speaker of the House with 216 votes, after four grueling days that came to an end today with this victory that puts an end to the chaos in the U.S. Congress.


 
As in the previous vote and unlike the first thirteen, the radical Republicans did not present any alternative candidate to McCarthy, who fought in this last round with the leader of the Democrats in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, who received 212 votes as in the previous rounds.

In this final vote, six ultra Republicans chose to abstain, which opened the way for McCarthy's election, as the number of votes he needed to be elected was reduced.

This last round followed a penultimate one in which tense moments were experienced between McCarthy and radical conservative Matt Gaetz, an ally of former President Donald Trump, who thwarted his election by deciding to abstain when the California lawmaker was close to victory with one vote to go.

According to The New York Times, Trump, who this week urged his supporters to back McCarthy, reportedly telephoned Gaetz when he saw that the party apparatus candidate's election was in jeopardy.


 
McCarthy's nomination caps a grueling and chaotic week on Capitol Hill that began last Tuesday when, for the first time in 100 years, the speaker of the House of Representatives was not elected on the first ballot because he had detractors within his own party.

Those detractors have been a score of far-right congressmen, many of them loyal to Trump and members of the ultraconservative group Freedom Caucus, who have not given their arm to twist until this Friday.


 
In the 12th and 13th votes held on Friday morning some of them have begun to support McCarthy, amid cheers from the rest of congressmen for each step taken to unblock the situation.

Without a Speaker of the House, the 118th Congress has not been able to get off the ground. The only option to elect him was to keep repeating votes until a candidate reached the majority, something that has happened at the gates of the weekend.

To win the support of the fractious Freedom Caucus, a group formed in 2015 by the most extreme Republicans - many of them members of the defunct Tea Party - with the aim of pushing the Republican leadership to the right, McCarthy has had to make certain concessions, which have not been disclosed.



Private agreements related to a series of requests that rebellious Republicans had, such as the power to make a motion of censure against the Speaker of the House, several chairs on the Rules Committee, guaranteed votes on border issues, the head of several subcommittees and having relevance within the Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful committees on the floor.

Following McCarthy's election, all congressmen were sworn in and the new two-year term will begin.


 
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, known in English as "speaker", is an important political figure whose functions include setting a large part of the legislative calendar, deciding which bills are voted on and when.

He will also be the third highest authority in the country, after the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Vice President, Kamala Harris, who also presides over the Senate, and the second in the line of succession. 



After the 15 votes, this unusual event in American democracy comes to an end, since the last time it took more than one vote to elect the speaker was in 1923.

At that time the Speaker of the House was elected on a ninth ballot, five fewer than those held on this occasion, but a far cry from the sixty that had to be held in 1869. . 

 Challenging the Democrats
 
The newly elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, defied Democrats and President Joe Biden on Saturday in a speech at the opening of the 118th Congress. 

The U.S. House of Representatives began early Saturday morning a new stage after the election of McCarthy as its president, after fifteen votes over four days due to the boycott of a group of ultra Republicans, in an unprecedented situation in a century.
 


McCarthy began by joking with an ironic "that was easy, huh? "He then warned that "it is time" to oversee and provide "balance" to the policies of Biden, who minutes earlier had reached out to him in a statement "There is nothing more important than making it possible for American families to live and enjoy the lives they deserve, and that is why we are committed to stopping Washington's wasteful spending to lower the price of food, gasoline, housing and stop the rise of the national debt," he enumerated.


 
He advanced that one of his priorities will be immigration and that he intends to pass legislative initiatives to address urgent challenges such as "the open southern border", energy policies or "the pro-green indoctrination in schools".

He anticipated that one of the first legislative hearings he will organize will be on the border situation: "We must secure the border, no more ignoring a crisis of security and sovereignty".

Likewise, McCarthy said they will address two "long-term challenges" in the chamber: the debt and "the rise of the Chinese Communist Party."

"Congress must speak with one voice on these two issues," opined the Republican majority leader in the Lower House, while stressing that he wants to create a bipartisan committee on China "to investigate how to bring (to the U.S.) hundreds of thousands of jobs" offshored to the Asian country.


 
McCarthy made a veiled allusion to the legislative committee promoted by Democrats without Republican support that investigated the assault on Capitol Hill two years ago and the role played by former President Donald Trump.

"No more one-sided investigations, competing ideas will be tested before the public so that the best ones win," he warned.

"I hope one thing has become clear after this week: I never quit," McCarthy said after his agenda was laid out.


 
In his address, he also expressed his willingness to "work with everyone" to create a better future for the nation and said his door will always be open.

The legislators, including McCarthy himself, were sworn in tonight after days of political chaos, although they did not approve the rules that will govern the operation of the Lower House since they decided to suspend the session until Monday at 17.00 local time (22.00 GMT).

 
Biden congratulates McCarthy after his election and reaches out to him for cooperation
 
 The President of the United States, Joe Biden, congratulated this Saturday to the Republican legislator, Kevin McCarthy, who after fifteen votes was elected tonight to lead the House of Representatives of the country, and extended him a hand to collaborate.

In a statement, Biden reiterated, as he said after last November's midterm elections in which conservatives regained control of the lower house, that he is prepared to work with Republicans.



"Now that the leadership of the House of Representatives has been decided it is time for that process to begin," encouraged the president, who recalled that in the two years of his mandate things have been done for the country thanks to the collaboration of Democrats and Republicans in Congress.


 
McCarthy's election has been blocked these days by the opposition of a score of ultra Republicans who had a series of demands to support him, such as being able to make a motion of censure against the Speaker of the House, several chairs in the Rules Committee, the head of several subcommittees and having relevance within the Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful of the hemicycle, among others.

 
McCarthy, the gray Republican who has unwittingly made history
 
 Although he did not convince everyone in his own party, Kevin McCarthy was the most predictable candidate among the Republicans to become the Speaker of the US Congress after years leading the party in this chamber, but nothing went the first time as expected, and he has ended up making history.



He needed fifteen ballots to be elected after a score of ultra-Republicans refused to support him. It had been exactly a century since a speaker had been elected on the first ballot.
 


McCarthy finally obtained the necessary votes to become Speaker shortly after midnight on Saturday, thanks to the abstention of six of those radical Republicans and after the rest, up to twenty, changed the sign of their vote in favor of him throughout Friday.

On the fifteenth ballot, McCarthy ended up winning with 216 votes, compared to 212 for Democratic candidate Hakeem Jeffries.

 

As it is, McCarthy comes to the House of Representatives with a questioned leadership, but with the firm intention of becoming the scourge of Democrat Joe Biden in his last two years in the White House.



The differences between his supporters - grouped under the label "Only Kevin" - and his detractors - "Never Kevin" - reflect the internal quarrels that he has had to overcome and that he will have to reconcile from now on.



Members of the Freedom Caucus, which is part of the most right-wing wing of the Republican Party, had criticized McCarthy for not having negotiated with them a reform of the rules of debate or the names to lead the congressional committees in the new legislature.
 


McCarthy has never been a figure of full consensus: in 2015, with the Republicans leading the House, he surprisingly resigned to position himself at the top of his party in Congress for lack of sufficient internal support. 



This time, he decided to jump into the pool after the November elections and has not backed down, despite the fact that the accounts have not been in his favor until the last moment to receive the necessary votes to be ratified.

The replacement of an icon
 
 Born in California 57 years ago, McCarthy will have the challenge of succeeding an icon of American politics, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

All this after serving as Republican minority leader in the Lower House since 2019. Since 2014 and until then, with the Republicans running the chamber and John Boehner and Paul Ryan as "speakers", he held the position of "number two in this chamber.


 
In August 2014 when he took that post he made history by rising to the position with just over seven and a half years on the job inside the halls of Capitol Hill.

"He has been able to read which way the party is going and has been able to adjust. He has risen quickly within the hierarchy because he has been able to predict the movement of the party and accommodate his positions and his leadership style," political analyst José Parra, who was an advisor to Democratic leader Harry Reid, told EFE.
 

His mandate, according to the president of the communications and political strategy agency Próspero Latino, will be characterized precisely by following the signals sent to him by "the extreme right-wing elements" within his party.



Two years of Joe Biden's scourge

When he ran for Speaker of the House of Representatives in November, McCarthy promised that he would face each day with a single goal, to address the needs of his fellow citizens. 

But in the meantime, the California representative, married since 1992 and father of two, has already made it clear that he does not plan to reach out to the Democratic side. 
 

The Republicans anticipated after gaining control of that hemicycle in the November legislative elections that as soon as they assumed the majority they intended to investigate the "politicization" of the FBI, the reasons that led to the search of the mansion of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) in August or the alleged business of the Biden family with adversaries of the country, taking advantage of their political ties. 
 


In the same vein, they plan not to give continuity to the legislative committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol while Biden's electoral victory was being certified.

Hence, two years of confrontation are anticipated in this new stage with McCarthy at the head of the Lower House after the last two years, as leader of the Republican minority, he opposed any proposal coming from the White House.
 


On his website he already congratulates himself for having focused his work in Congress on the fight for individual freedom, an efficient and effective government, "free markets" and a "vibrant" civil society.

The same page recalls that McCarthy, the grandson of a rancher and son of a firefighter, grew up in a working-class family and is committed to advancing the American dream for all citizens. His genealogical album also highlights his Italian and Irish origins, and being the first Republican in his family..