GOP in Disarray as McCarthy Struggles to Secure Speaker Votes
With the Republican Party securing the majority in the House of Representatives in these past midterm elections, the race for a new speaker commenced posthaste. Commencing on January 3rd of the new year, Californian Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy faced off against Democrat Representative and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Tensions in the House of Representative among GOP members were palpable from the onset of the election. With Representative McCarthy facing staunch opposition from right-wing Republicans, neither candidate secured the necessary votes to be declared House Speaker in the first ballot. In the ensuing four days, McCarthy repeatedly struggled to secure the necessary votes to be elected to the position of House Speaker. Several far-right Republicans deliberately withheld votes across the ensuing twelve ballots. Namely, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.
Late into the night of January 6th, Representative McCarthy found himself one vote shy of being elected House Speaker on the fourteenth ballot. McCarthy then approached Gaetz and fellow Republican Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado in an attempt to persuade their vote. After a brief standoff and exchange between McCarthy and Gaetz, temperatures flared as Gaetz was confronted by Alabama Representative Mike Rogers. Rogers and Gaetz exchanged choice words with each other, ending in Representative Rogers having to be restrained by a colleague before the situation could escalate.
Soon after, a fifteenth ballot was held in the waning hours of January 6th. Just after midnight at 12:37 a.m., a majority of the Republican holdouts flipped their vote and McCarthy was finally voted in as the new Speaker of the House of Representative. It is difficult to say what this means for the House going forward. What is clear is that the Republican Party remains divided with many Trump-backed right-wingers openly in opposition to McCarthy’s tenure as Speaker. Whatever may come of this public display of division is yet to unfold.
