Gaetz wants to dethrone McCarthy: now the Republicans are tearing each other apart

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In an extremely unusual move and very rare in US history, a Republican representative has filed a motion to impeach the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy (58).

Radical Republican Matt Gaetz (41) announced his initiative on Monday evening (local time) in the plenary session of the Congress chamber. In this way he wants to remove his party colleague McCarthy from the top office. However, the question is whether this will succeed. McCarthy immediately responded to the news on X, formerly Twitter. “Bring it on,” the Californian wrote – in German it means “Let’s go” or “Go ahead.”

McCarthy avoided an impending standstill

Gaetz accused McCarthy of working with Democratic President Joe Biden instead of working for the Republican faction. The reason is the budget conflict in the US.

The hardliner Gaetz disagrees with the way McCarthy used Democrats’ votes to avoid a threatened last-minute government shutdown over the weekend. On Saturday, Congress approved an interim budget until mid-November.

Historic step with uncertain outcome

Gaetz’s proposal does not mean McCarthy will automatically lose his job. This requires a majority in the House of Representatives. A vote can also be prevented with motions. The Chamber of Congress will have to deal with this in the coming days. No Speaker of the House of Representatives has ever lost office as a result of such a move, and such a motion has occurred only sporadically in recent decades.

McCarthy recently seemed confident of victory and assured that he would never give up and overcome this resistance. It’s unclear how many lawmakers might ultimately join Gaetz and vote against McCarthy.

No opponent in sight

So far, there is no opposing candidate that the various wings of the deeply fragmented faction can agree on. However, Gaetz has already announced that if in doubt, he would make such a request against McCarthy several times to achieve his goal.

McCarthy was only elected on the 15th ballot in January and is considered seriously weakened by the initial turmoil. At the time, he had to go a long way toward accommodating the radical right into his faction in order to be elected to his position with the help of their votes. Partly due to their pressure, the threshold for a motion to expel was significantly lowered. Since then, radical MPs have put relentless pressure on McCarthy. (SDA)

Source: Blick