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Rising from the dead on the third day, Kevin McCarthy might have imagined it. When the future members of the new US House of Representatives gathered at the Capitol on Thursday afternoon (local time) to vote again on their speaker, tough negotiations lay behind the Republican faction leader.

He would like to hold this position, but does not get enough votes within his own ranks. The night before, McCarthy had again made concessions to his party’s loose group of 20 dissenters that he never intended to make: for example, that in future a single MP’s vote should be enough to call a vote of no confidence . to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. A super-PAC close to McCarthy, one of those multimillion-dollar fundraisers without which little happens in American politics, also agreed to stop interfering with certain primary races, which would benefit candidates on the far right .

You can no longer hand yourself over to your blackmailers. McCarthy did it anyway – and gambled away. Rather than prevail in the end, the only gain he could make in the day’s five rounds of voting was the level of public humiliation. McCarthy didn’t get a single vote more than the day before. Instead, it became clear how far some dissidents are willing to go and the arbitrariness they display in doing so.

One vote for Trump

Because in addition to Byron Donalds, whom they had put down the day before as an internal opponent of McCarthy, a new name appeared this Thursday. “The Honorable Donald J. Trump of the State of Florida.” Matt Gaetz, one of the group’s spokespersons, nominated him. His co-conspirator Lauren Boebert, on the other hand, brought up a new Kevin, nicknamed Hern, an Oklahoma state congressman. After all, he managed to get three votes in the meantime, while Gaetz was the only one to vote for Trump.

It was once a scenario hyped by Trump fans (and feared by everyone else): that the former president would re-enter the political arena before the next election, with the Republicans making him Speaker of the House of Representatives, after the vice president, after all, the third highest figure in the state. This would be conceivable insofar as an outsider can also be nominated as speaker for the election, it need not be an elected MP.

But Trump, as these days have shown, is only a fringe figure in this game, his name in the field of candidates the little added provocation (and the lone vote for him a welcome cause for some glee on the part of Democrats ). He himself has repeatedly called for the election of McCarthy, who in turn ostentatiously supported him even after the January 6 violence, and visited him at his Florida estate immediately after the change of office. But he also seems insecure: Normally, in such a case, Trump would constantly attack, insult and accuse the opponents of one of his allies.

In this case, however, the opponents are his own people: those MPs on the right wing of the parliamentary faction who spread lies and conspiracy theories, such as the lie about the supposedly stolen elections, who want to undermine democratic processes and whose stated goal is disruption and chaos. Gaetz and Boebert are Trumpists in the classical sense, but Trumpism as a method has long since become independent. They no longer need Trump, on the contrary: they are currently establishing themselves as the new heads of the Make America Great Again brand by not just politically destroying McCarthy as a representative of the party establishment. But mostly by demonstrating their willingness to preempt the Constitution of the House of Representatives and paralyze the entire country to drain the alleged “swamp” of which they recently counted McCarthy among the “crocodiles” (Gaetz).

In doing so, they themselves brought to Congress the dysfunction of which they constantly accuse it today. Because as long as the House of Representatives has no speaker, its elected members cannot be sworn in. Until then, there will be no committees, no working groups, no ability to pass laws, decide on a budget, or monitor the work of the secret services.

The threat this poses to American democracy is still relatively abstract and citizens feel little in everyday life. But that could soon change, for example if the US hits the debt ceiling and the world faces a serious economic crisis, should there be no majority in the House of Representatives to raise it – or still no House of Representatives not to address the issue at all.

Negotiations don’t seem to work

It may take a few more months until then – how many rounds of voting is more difficult to estimate. Boebert and Gaetz have said they would never vote for McCarthy no matter what he offers. The message: No one wins unless we want them to — them, the right-wing extremists, whose positions McCarthy helped make socially acceptable. His only chance now is that there are still enough within the 20 MPs for whom the current anarchy is not the primary goal and who can still be lured with committee posts and other promises – and who realize that the blockade of the party will eventually come to an end very bad.

Whoever it ends up with has already been maximally damaged. The hostage situation in which the dissenters hold the faction will continue. Ultimately, the concessions McCarthy has already made, including more leverage over the house rules committee, are irreversible. It is quite possible that there will be a speaker soon, but that a new one will soon have to be chosen.

McCarthy can hardly expect help from the Democrats: they are under increasing pressure every day to assume the political responsibility of the state and, in abstentions, to reduce the necessary quorum in favor of McCarthy to establish a functioning parliament. to create. But to win a majority on the second anniversary of the violent attack on the Capitol for a man like McCarthy, who to this day does not even consider himself able to face the then wounded police officers – that would take all the efforts of the Democratic Party and administration are doing to hold Trump and those around him accountable.

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