Roving Periscope: Now, the US House inherits Trump’s dysfunctionality!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: For decades, ‘experts’ in the UK and the US laughed at democratic tremors in India where political instability reigned for years. Now, the shoe is on the other leg: India is politically stable while America and Britain are feeling the heat of being the big daddies of democracy!
Last year, the UK saw three Prime Ministers in as many months. Now is the turn of the US where the grid-locked House of Representatives has failed to elect the Speaker, the second-most-important political office after the President.
Two years after the Trump supporters ‘invaded’ the US Congress after his defeat in the presidential election, the Lower House is now the scene of the lasting legacy of the former President.
For the first time since 1859, the US House of Representatives is gridlocked in an impasse because of wranglings within the Republican Party. Less than a dozen Republican Representatives have held the House hostage to their whims.
And the ruling Democrats, mere bystanders in this intra-Republican drama, are relishing this political instability, not knowing its repercussions will be felt two years later in 2024.
The impasse is because of the Republicans who, despite winning a wafer-thin majority in the 435-strong House in the midterm elections of November 2022, have failed to elect their own majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, as the Speaker. This is because of anti-Donald Trump Republicans’ attempts to prevent the former President from running again in the 2024 presidential election.
In the November elections, the Republicans won a slim 222-212 House majority. That is why McCarthy cannot afford to lose the support of more than four Republicans as Democrats are stoutly united around their own candidate.
At least 200 Republicans have backed McCarthy in each of the votes this week. Less than 10 percent of Republican lawmakers have voted against him—but they are enough to deny him the 218 votes needed to succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.
The media reported that hardline anti-Trump Republicans are digging in against McCarthy’s House Speaker bid. They rejected it for the ninth time on Thursday. Because of this, the House was rendered impotent once again. On his part, McCarthy has been trying to persuade rebel Republicans and even offered to curb his own clout, raising questions about the party’s own ability to wield power.
After it failed to put a majority behind McCarthy’s candidacy, the House reached a level of dysfunction not seen since 1859, when it took 10 votes to select a leader in the turbulent run-up to the Civil War. Even after the 10th vote in three days, McCarthy was nowhere near nailing a majority to become the Speaker.
Because of this, the House has been rendered impotent. It is unable even to formally swear in newly-elected members, let alone hold hearings, consider legislation, or scrutinize Democratic President Joe Biden and his Administration, the reports said.
Trump-backed McCarthy, a US Congressman from California, offered his opponents concessions that would weaken the Speaker’s role, which political allies warned would make the job even harder if he got it.
“What you’re seeing on this floor does not mean we are dysfunctional,” said Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna as she nominated a McCarthy rival, Byron Donalds, for the 10th vote.
McCarthy’s Republican opponents said they do not trust him to stick to the scorched-earth tactics they want to use against President Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate, the Upper House of Parliament.
As a Speaker, McCarthy would hold an office that normally shapes the chamber’s agenda and is second in the line of succession to the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris. He would be empowered to frustrate Biden’s legislative agenda and launch investigations into the President’s family and administration in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the media reported.
The Lower House’s inability to elect a leader also raises questions about whether Republicans will force a government shutdown or risk default later this year in a bid to extract steep spending cuts.
If McCarthy fails to unite Republicans, they would have to search for an alternative from among the two probable candidates, the No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise and Representative Jim Jordan, who have both backed McCarthy.
