After 15 rounds of voting in 4 days, the leader of the US Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy (Kevin McCarthy), finally settled the extreme right-wing forces in the party this evening. The election ended smoothly.
After several days of negotiations and a series of concessions, McCarthy finally crossed the election threshold this evening with 216 votes and became the new speaker of the House of Representatives; Democratic African-American leader Jeffries (Hakeem Jeffries) won 212 votes. It was the most vote-intensive election for a speaker of the House of Representatives since 1859; it took 44 votes to select a speaker that year.
McCarthy’s camp and the far-right forces in the party made significant progress earlier today. The first two rounds of voting overturned 15 negative votes, only 3 votes away from the election threshold, and the number of boycotts in the party fell to 6 people; during the afternoon to evening recess of the House of Representatives, McCarthy Continued communication with the opposition, and further progress was reported during the period. When McCarthy entered the meeting at night, he looked confident that he would win. However, in the 14th round of voting, only two opposition MPs, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, abstained from voting. As a result, McCarthy received only 216 votes and lost by 1 vote; McCarthy went on to Going to Gates angrily, the two had a heated debate, and the scene fell into chaos for a while.
The McCarthy camp originally planned to call for an adjournment until noon on the 9th, Eastern Time, but things seemed to turn around halfway through the vote. The Republican Party abandoned the adjournment strategy and improved to enter the 15th round of voting. With the addition of 4 opposition MPs who abstained from voting, McCarthy finally crossed the threshold of election.
Under normal circumstances, the threshold for the election of the speaker is 218 votes for more than half of the seats in the House of Representatives, but it may decrease with the number of absent members and abstentions. With 6 abstentions in 15 rounds of voting, the threshold for election is 215 votes.
McCarthy, 57, from California, has 16 years of experience in the House of Representatives. After entering Congress in 2007, he was promoted to the leadership of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives in just two years. .
Now that he is holding the speaker’s gavel as he wishes, McCarthy may not be the speaker in the future. The Republican Party currently holds 222 seats in the House of Representatives, only 10 seats ahead of the Democratic Party. Even if the speaker election wins the support of some extreme rightists, given the lack of Republican seats, McCarthy is bound to be often restrained by the extreme right-wing forces in the future. In addition, in exchange for support, McCarthy agreed to restore the previous rule that only one member of the House of Representatives could propose a “vacate the chair” motion, which is tantamount to letting the far right point a gun at his head.
CNN reported that McCarthy’s other concessions include adding more members of the far-right “Freedom Caucus” to the Rules Committee, which can dictate the fate of the bill, ensuring lawmakers have at least 72 hours to review the bill, The amendment to loosen the House Council puts forward restrictions and restores the right of congressmen to cut the salaries of federal officials.
With the new speaker McCarthy qualifying, the new House of Representatives will be sworn in immediately, so that the House of Representatives will officially begin to operate. The new session also symbolizes the end of an era. Former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives in American history, the third person in politics, and the longest-serving Democratic Speaker. Ending her historic tenure as Speaker of the House, she is no longer running for the leadership of the Democratic Party.
In the succession order of the US president, the speaker of the House of Representatives is the second in line after the US vice president and the speaker of the Senate, and is also the third-highest political figure in the US political arena.