Chaos in the lower chamber boiled over last Thursday when former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was ejected from his seat in a 216-210 vote — a first in United States history.
Surely, this is a one-of-a-kind event: something politicians on local, state and federal levels hope does not start a trend. Unfortunately, many fear that this is only one of many spite-fueled actions to occur in the House recently.
The motion to remove the speaker was headed by Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who has been shrouded in controversy in recent months. Gaetz has developed a track record of problematic behavior not only in the House of Representatives, but also within his own party.
By leading the charge to vacate the speaker’s seat, Gaetz has put a target on his back. So, why would Gaetz and the seven other Republican representatives vote against their own speaker? The justification was “broken promises” on McCarthy’s behalf.
Considering recent rumblings of a government shutdown, you may have guessed that these grievances were derived from budget negotiations. A roundabout way to achieve demands regarding the budget, seeing as Congress cannot move forward with the spending negotiations without a Speaker of the House. Even more, Congress is essentially frozen without a leader. The lawmaking body currently lacks the required means to even address the violence this past weekend in Israel, a catastrophically hot-button issue for global security and foreign relations.
The state of paralysis Congress is experiencing will likely continue for much longer, because a majority vote of 218 is needed to confirm a candidate for Speaker of the House. In many ways, it has become the responsibility of the Republican party to fix this issue. They are the ones who created it. They are the ones who have split amongst themselves, and they are the majority party.
On Wednesday afternoon, Steve Scalise (R-LA) won the house GOP speaker nomination
potentially avoiding gridlock and moving the issue along Still, the House has not elected a speaker. That consequential vote may be postponed longer as Republicans loyal to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the other GOP candidate for speaker, continue to disagree with the party line.
In the case of the Democrats, they backed the removal of McCarthy for some very different reasons. In the game of chess that is politics, any opportunity to soften an opponent’s unity is one that must be capitalized upon. When far-right Republicans came to negotiate the ejecting vote, Democrats jumped out their seats to move the vote forward.
Furthermore, Democrats had some legitimate disagreements with McCarthy’s philosophy and leadership. They insist McCarthy pandered to the Make America Great Again wing of his party and consistently refused to negotiate with Democrats. To put the cherry on top, McCarthy’s inquiry to impeach President Joe Biden has been viewed as vain, unnecessary and vengeful by Democrats, increasing the rift between the two parties.
Thompson commented on the unraveling of the GOP party, saying, “To become speaker, he (McCarthy) had the rules changed to empower the very people who came after him and got him removed from the job.”
That’s right: in order to achieve his speakership, McCarthy agreed to change rules that allowed a single lawmaker to bring an ejection to a vote in order to appease far-right Republicans. Knowing that, I think a blind man could have seen this coming.
It’s suspected that the Democratic party will nominate and back minority leader Hakeem Jeffries from New York as its candidate. While it is unlikely that he will prevail, I ask, who knows? As shown last week, far-right Republicans are not afraid to flip the script and vote against party lines.
Above all, the House must elect a speaker soon in order to avoid a government shutdown that would harm millions of Americans. The last time a shutdown happened was during Donald Trump’s administration, and it was the longest the government had ever been rendered idle in history (35 days). Many negative firsts occurred during that four-year stretch. And to think he wants another four. Clearly, he still has strong allies in Congress, Gaetz for example. I digress.
For the foreseeable future, D.C. politicians have their hands full trying to move things along — therefore, Washington is now the city that never sleeps.
Justice Rose is the opinion editor. He is a junior journalism major from Madison, Miss.
