Kevin alone in the house After Rainbow’s performance in Poland: Black Eyed Peas are criticized as hypocrites

If you want to become a member of the US Congress, you need last but not least: perseverance. Legendary are the ‘filibusters’, those endless speeches with which the minority in question tries to block a vote. But also on other occasions it can take days, weeks, even months for a session to come to an end. For example, in the election of a new chairman of the House of Representatives. In 1855, when Massachusetts Representative Nathaniel P. Banks wanted the mail, it took two months and 133 ballots to finally get it.

There is a possibility that this record will be broken when the new Congress meets on Tuesday and Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives following the results of the November midterm elections. Although control is not the right term here. “Legislative terrorism,” as one of Banks’ successors, Republican John Boehner, put it, might be a better way.

Kevin McCarthy, the current party leader, wants to run for speaker election. He needs a simple majority of the MPs present, equivalent to 218 votes out of a total of 435 seats. Since none of the Democrats are likely to vote for him, his party’s 222 seats mean he can only afford a handful of dissenters from his own faction. But at the moment there are at least fourteen.

On New Year’s Day, nine Republicans from the right wing of the party in the House of Representatives sent an open letter. In it, they demand, among other things, that a “radical departure from the status quo is needed — not a continuation of the Republicans’ continued failure.” There are also five other MPs who made it clear long ago that they would refuse McCarthy the vote. Kevin alone in the house, Tuesday it threatens to come.

Easy to buy

He has been trying to counter this for weeks by making all kinds of concessions. It was easy with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s far-right conspiracy theorist. She has publicly pledged her vote to McCarthy, in return for which he promised her back on committees after the Democratic majority stripped her of her posts last year over anti-Semitic statements and glorification of violence.

Greene is desperate to join the Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee to launch the impeachment trial against Joe Biden that she has long promised her constituents. In return, she, who otherwise acts against the “establishment” at every opportunity, even in her own party, even supports a candidate who, as the former leader of the parliamentary group, stands for the same establishment.

Others are not so easy to buy. At the turn of the year, McCarthy sank even deeper, promising what he had previously refused to the right-wing: that, if elected, he would make sure there were fewer hurdles for MPs to pass a no-confidence vote against the speaker. start. In a sense, he himself provides the saw with which his opponents within the party could beat him off again at the first opportunity. Which suggests that he is either blind with lust for power or very desperate given his lack of majority, probably both.

Most importantly, he was mistaken that if the deal is nasty enough, things can be fixed. But then came the New Year’s letter from the nine MEPs, which clearly shows that they are still not satisfied. McCarthy’s concessions are “insufficient,” they write, especially since he himself contributed to the “dysfunctionality” of the House of Representatives during his 14 years at the head of the parliamentary group.

Should McCarthy be demoted?

The question is: what do they actually want? Is it really about demoting McCarthy by extorting more and more power from him – and perhaps not about preventing a functioning parliament? According to the constitution, a president must be elected before the House of Representatives can function. If McCarthy misses the majority on the first ballot, which hasn’t happened since 1923 (!), the election must continue until someone finally has the majority. Member of Parliament Bob Good, one of five outspoken McCarthy opponents, predicted that the name of a new “Make America Great Again” candidate would be heard on the second ballot. But how could that be someone that McCarthy supporters—that is, the vast majority of the faction—would also vote for?

In the end, even the blockers would have had nothing but the triumph of exposing McCarthy and thwarting the democratic process of the de facto dysfunctionality of parliament that threatened it. But this shows once again that Donald Trump is not needed to wreak havoc — and that the US political system simply lacks the controls to rein in a right-wing minority and its omnipotence fantasies.

McCarthy, on the other hand, shouldn’t be surprised. After all, he is someone who called these spirits – someone who backed Donald Trump at the time so as not to have to give up his own power. This is what Boehner was referring to in his terrorism equation. To make it to the top of the House of Representatives, McCarthy apparently thought, all he had to do was dump enough sugar cubes on the far-right side of the faction and then take his time with the rest of the project, as if he were at his age . 2016 to 2020 had nothing to do. But Trumpism is persistent. And it’s possible that McCarthy’s botched power play has given him renewed vigor.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.