Battle for speakership a portent of congress turmoil

Kevin McCarthy’s concessions show how GOP fractiousness in a narrowly divided house could threaten some significant bills.

Kevin McCarthy takes the oath of office after he was elected speaker on the 15th ballot on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Republican infighting plunged congress into disarray last week. The larger risk is that fractiousness could imperil some basic functions of government in the coming year.

Kevin McCarthy was finally elected speaker of the US House of Representatives on Saturday, ending a paralysing standoff with right-wing holdouts that raised concerns about his party’s ability to exercise power in congress.

Mr McCarthy’s victory required a historic 15 rounds of voting and was secured only after a late-night session during which Republicans almost came to blows as tempers flared. It also required major concessions to the small group of conservatives who had opposed his candidacy, and turned what would normally be a showcase of party unity into a four-day display of internal division.

Hanging in the balance is the ability of the US government to stay open and pay its debts. Many of the rebels are adamantly opposed to raising the debt ceiling or cutting spending deals with Democrats, and could move to oust Mr McCarthy if he tries to do so.

Also at risk are other measures that would require agreement between house Republicans and the Democrats who control the Senate and White House: funding the Pentagon, sending aid to Ukraine as it battles an invasion, and approving food stamps for low-income people as part of the farm bill, which is typically reauthorised every five years.

“I’m more worried than I was before,” Nancy Vanden Houten, the lead economist at advisory firm Oxford Economics, told The Wall Street Journal. “Maybe the majority of Republicans in the house don’t want any kind of debt-limit crisis, but there is this small group that we’ve learned in the last week seems to have a fair amount of power.”

The speaker wields key influence in Washington by presiding over house business and is second in line to the presidency, after the vice-president. But McCarthy has been weakened out of the gate by the protracted election and the promises he was forced to make to hardliners, who demonstrated the leverage they hold given the Republicans’ wafer-thin majority in the lower house. “Speaker in Name Only” read the headline in the influential Atlantic magazine.

As he accepted the gavel in the early hours of Saturday, Mr McCarthy, who was backed by former president Donald Trump, outlined the Republicans’ aggressive lines of attack ahead of the 2024 presidential race.

He vowed to “pass bills to fix the nation’s challenges, from the wide open southern border to ‘America last’ energy policies, to woke indoctrination in our schools”. On “America’s long-term challenges – the debt and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party – congress must be with one voice”, the 57-year-old Californian told the house.

As the 14th vote got under way before midnight on Friday, Mr McCarthy suffered a shock setback amid heated exchanges as he came up short of a majority by just one vote out of more than 400 cast. When Matt Gaetz voted “present” to deny Mr McCarthy victory, the disappointed Republican leader strode over to the Florida representative for face-to-face talks. Mr Gaetz pointed a finger at Mr McCarthy, who backed off before Alabama’s Mike Rogers lunged at Mr Gaetz and had to be held back with a restraining arm across his face.

Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy face off in the house. Picture: AFP

“The ‘Speaker’ selection process, as crazy as it may seem, has made it all much bigger and more important than if done the more conventional way,” Mr Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “Congratulations to Kevin McCarthy and our GREAT Republican Party!” added the former president, who has launched his 2024 election campaign to return to the White House.

Democrat President Joe Biden optimistically called for more co-operation between the parties.

“I am prepared to work with Republicans when I can, and voters made clear that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me,” Mr Biden said.

The fractious 2023 contest required more rounds of voting than any speaker election since the Civil War in the 1860s. Democrats and some observers expressed concern that McCarthy has offered his far-right critics radical policy commitments that will make the house ungovernable. “It’ll be interesting to see if he can marshal support for the rules package and other deals he cut with the dissidents who held him hostage all week,” wrote David Axelrod, a strategist to former president Barack Obama.

Political scientist Larry Sabato called the vote humiliating and said it produced an exceptionally weak speaker “from the most extreme party caucus since the lead-up to the Civil War”. “Seeds of the GOP’s own destruction have been planted and fertilised,” he tweeted.

AFP